The Readers' Editor writes: What Scroll got right – and what it got wrong

On January 16, the UAE Ambassador to India said at a news conference that he had no information about his government confiscating Rs 15,000 crore worth of property in Dubai belonging to Dawood Ibrahim, who is wanted in India for his alleged participation in many crimes including the Bombay bomb blasts of 1993. That should set at rest a media spin praising the Narendra Modi government for having got this done.

Ten days earlier, the Scroll.in contributor TA Ameerudhin had already called out this bit of fake news. In a short but comprehensive piece in this publication, the writer had exposed this bit of manufactured propaganda for what it was. From one source to another, he followed the trail of this story and showed readers that there was no source other than the purveyor itself: Zee News. Now we have official confirmation that the Zee News report was a fake.

Sometimes it is not lies but biases in arguments that too need to be dissected. However, in an enthusiasm to expose the biases and slants, writers need to be a little careful and avoid going to the other extreme.

There was an example of that as well in the past fortnight. This story on the new round of questioning of the Haj subsidy tried to argue that while it is this subsidy that attracts critical attention, there are many Hindu pilgrimages that also see “direct and indirect” government expenditure and are yet not questioned. The evidence the article gives mixes up two things: subsidies some state governments give to individuals to go on certain Hindu pilgrimages and government expenditure on Kumbhs and such like Hindu pilgrimages. The latter is the larger outlay. But any government is duty bound to spend on facilities when large numbers of people peacefully gather on any occasion – whether it is a Kumbh or a recreational event. You can’t fault such outlay citing it contravenes Article 27 of the Constitution (as the article does). Nor can you describe it as a subsidy.

There are indeed many issues relating to government involvement in the Kumbhs or Amarnath Yatra, but subsidising them is not one of them. The only example the article gives of a subsidy for Hindu pilgrims is that provided by a number of state governments. This is a relatively new phenomena and has grown in recent years. It is a well-known fact but it is still needs to be sourced. Unfortunately, this particular story provides sources for many other government expenditures but not this one which I would see as a different kind of problem.

This is the kind of article which had to be written and could have been done well. The readers deserved it. The fault here I think is more of Scroll.in editors than the writer. It was simple to fix and the writer could have done it easily with the guidance of the desk. The weakness of the piece was compounded by the desk giving the article a much stronger headline than warranted.

Sexual harassment case

Sometimes we have a report with a small piece of news which does not require a story of its own. Last fortnight, news of the Bharatiya Janata Party MP Yogi Adityanath from Uttar Pradesh leaving the national executive meeting presumably because he was presumably not allowed to speak, got its own separate story. It is known that this BJP MP is not happy with the party leadership, but should we read too much into one gesture? It may have been better if this piece of news was woven into an article that looked at a number of UP election related issues, as indeed it was in this article on the BJP rebels in UP that appeared a week later.

The past fortnight has seen a number of important reports and commentaries. I will end by mentioning two.

The first is the report on a policewoman in Chhattisgarh taking on an Inspector General of Police on a sexual harassment case. It is a distressing report bringing out the impunity with which high officials behave with their subordinates. An internal enquiry has been held but no charges have been filed against the IG, and that is impunity all over again. However, such officials do need to be called out in the media and I did not see this report anywhere else in the English media.

The second is the series by Supriya Sharma reporting from one village in east UP ahead of and running through to the elections. The three articles that have appeared so far give us a genuine sense of what is happening on the ground. There is more to come and the three articles (this one, this one and this one) have already laid out life in a village ahead of elections in a way that few others have done.

Readers can write to the Readers’ Editor at readerseditor@scroll.in.