Editors Guild Of India’s Fate: Fact-Finding Mission To Facing Legal Battles
By
Nava Thakuria, New Age Islam
7 September
2023
Editors
Guild of India (EGI), the acclaimed national forum of editors in the largest
democracy on Earth, is currently in the media headlines for an unusual reason.
EGI, which was founded in 1978 with objectives to protect press freedom and
raise the standard of editorial leadership for newspapers and periodicals in
India, today faces allegations of possessing bias observation on ethnic
conflicts in Manipur and even flaring up turmoil with its initiative. Even it
had to approach the apex court for instant relief to some of the members.
The debates
began as the EGI released a report on 2 September after it’s three-member
fact-finding team visited the northeastern State (7 to 10 August) to study
media coverages of the Meitei-Kuki violent clashes that snatched away the lives
of over 160 individuals, wounded many more residents and also displaced
thousands of families as their villages were under attacks since 3 May. The
report slammed the internet ban and criticized the State authorities’ partisan
role during the conflicts.
Soon two
police complaints were lodged against the EGI’s fact-finding team members
(Seema Guha, Bharat Bhushan and Sanjay Kapoor) along with their president Seema
Mustafa citing various IPC sections for provoking enmity between different
communities and deliberate attempts to flare up religious sentiments. The FIRs
were reportedly filed by Ngangom Sarat Singh (a retired government engineer)
and Sorokhaibam Thoudam Sangita, a common resident of Imphal East district. The
EGI expressed shock over the police complaints as well as harsh reactions to
their report.
But
incidentally two major media bodies of
Manipur also denounced the allegations floated by the EGI in its report, which was completed in four days. All
Manipur Working Journalists Union (AMWJU) and Editors Guild Manipur (EGM) took
a strong exception to the ‘half-baked’ report were the Imphal-based journalists
were misrepresented. Both the organizations, while releasing a joint media
statement, urged the EGI to issue a clarification, otherwise they had resolved
to go for legal actions against the national body.
“The report
has many contentions and wrong representations which are damaging to the
reputation of the media fraternity of Manipur, especially the Imphal-based news
outlets. The EGI report claims that its terms of reference was not
investigating the genesis of the problem, but they all the same do so in a
seemingly motivated manner.
The EGI
ended up committing many factual errors in the process,” said the joint statement, adding that the EGI’s team with no
basic facts claimed that riots were initiated by the Meiteis on 3 May in
Churachandpur locality.
In regard
to a photograph of a burning building, the EGI captioned it as belonging to a
Kuki family, but in reality, the particular building was the office of the
State forest department in Churachandpur. The EGI has lately corrected the
mistake. The EGI report also claimed that many Kuki-Zo houses along with
churches in Meitei dominated areas were destroyed on 3 May itself, but it’s
false as the riots spread to the Imphal valley after some days only. It also
claimed that most of the valley-based newspapers and news channels took
dictations from the CM’s office, which is found highly objectionable by the
office bearers of AMWJU and EGM.
Speaking to
this writer from Imphal, Rinku Khumukcham, the editor of Imphal Times,
clarified that the Manipur government has not lodged till date any FIR against
the EGI members as widely reported by various media outlets and journalists’
organizations based in New Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai. He however admitted that Manipur chief
minister N. Biren Singh during a press briefing on 4 September, after appealing
to all residents of the State to maintain peace and tranquillity, strongly
condemned the EGI report on media coverage of the turmoil that gripped the
State for over four months.
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Nava Thakuria is a northeast India-based
professional journalist who is an engineering graduate.
URL: https://newageislam.com/current-affairs/editors-guild-mission-legal-battles/d/130619
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