Smriti Irani & BJP’s media disconnect
Video grab of Smriti Irani spat with reporters in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, June 10: Union Minister Smriti Irani was seen browbeating a reporter in Amethi. In place of replying to the query of the concerned reporter, Irani purportedly threatened to speak to the owner of Dainik Bhaskar, the employer of the reporter.
A week before the rail accident, Union Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw was ranting against a reporter with the editorial heads of The Indian Express. The concerned reporter had written a critical story on Vande Bharat train. The minister lamented to Raj Kamal Jha and Vaidyanath Aiyer, Editor in Chief and National Affairs Editor respectively, that the concerned reporter suffered from a negative mindset.
Neither Jha nor Aiyer contested the claims of the minister. The incident took place in the presence of several media persons at the Ashoka Hotel where the BJP held a function to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the Narendra Modi government.
Malini Parthasarathy embarrassed the management of The Hindu, the Chennai-based newspaper, with her open support of the claims of the Modi government that Sengol was indeed handed over by Tamil Nadu-based Adheenam to Lord Mountbatten as a commemorative token of the transfer of power by the British government. She quit the newspaper as editor after the daily carried investigative reports to trash the claims of the Modi government in defence of the Sengol theory.
The unwritten rule in the BJP pressers for long has been to let the party-friendly reporters ask questions during rare briefings by important leaders of the saffron outfit. The BJP media team has perfected the art of arranging interviews with top leaders during elections to give out the message that the publication is being obliged.
During the stint of one former minister in the Railways, a negative story published in a daily would be the ground for change of the beat of the concerned reporter. The ministers are emboldened with their ‘name-dropping’ habits of the managements of the newspapers with reporters to cow them down from asking critical questions.
The Niti Aayog is the principal think tank of the government. The media interaction with heads of the think tank is now history. No question is also entertained by the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on why his secretariat indulges in “pick and choose” in issuing passes to reporters to cover the proceedings of the lower House, all in the name of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Thus, Irani is exhibiting the patented art of the media management by the ruling BJP at the Centre, and she is not alone in practising it.
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