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STATES,WEST
BENGAL
Press
Clipping
Stung
by the rising popularity of the Trinamool Congress and the media attention
on Mamata, Left Front workers vent their ire on journalists
By
Labonita Ghosh
The
bomb came flying through the darkness. It smashed against the side of
a bus and exploded, sending shards flying. Some got lodged in the metal,
some in the trees lining the narrow, slushy mud road. But most were buried
in the faces of Trinamool Congress workers returning home after Union
Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee's rally at Chamkaitala in West Bengal's
Midnapore district on August 9.
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Journalists
from all over the state
are up in arms against the assaults
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With 300
busloads of Trinamool supporters winding
their way through CPI(M) heartland, an attack was inevitable. When word
reached Mamata at the head of the mile-long convoy, she turned her car
around and waited till the last bus had reached the safety of a "neutral"
town. Then she turned to journalists of a local daily, whose car had narrowly
escaped the bomb: "I saved your lives as well. Do you think they
would have spared you just because you're the press?"
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HACK
ATTACK
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JUNE
29: Crew of Eenadu TV attacked by CPI(M) workers in Garbeta
in Midnapore district.
JULY
23: Journalists covering Salt Lake polls attacked inside a polling
booth by CPI(M) cadres.
AUGUST
8: CPI(M) workers attack journalists within the precincts of
a police station in Jalpaiguri.
AUGUST
9: Journalists leaving after a Trinamool rally roughed up by
CPI(M) cadres in Chamkaitala.
AUGUST
10: Ten journalists, including a woman, beaten up at Writers'
Building.
AUGUST
13: TV reporter attacked in Uttarpara-Kotrang, a woman beaten
up at Writers' Building.
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Prophetic
words. For in the weeks following the Chamkaitala rally, journalists all
over the state found themselves viciously attacked by workers of the ruling
Left Front. In the past two months, there have been at least eight such
incidents-five of them within a week (see box). The most shameful was
an assault right inside the state's administrative headquarters, Writers'
Building, by a group from the Information and Cultural Department which
is supposed to liaise with the media. Last week, mediapersons from all
over the state converged at Calcutta's Press Club for a protest rally.
Some deputations later met Governor Viren Shah and Deputy Chief Minister
Buddhadev Bhattacharya to demand an end to the unwarranted aggression.
"These are clear signs that the CPI(M) is hitting the panic button,"
says a senior reporter.
There's
reason enough. Faced with Mamata's inevitable electoral onslaught-a process
set in motion by the Trinamool capturing the Calcutta Municipal Corporation
recently-cadres of the ruling front are getting edgy. In pockets all over
the state, CPI(M) workers are falling back on the primitive though effective
methods of terror to protect their turf. Last week, both Chief Minister
Jyoti Basu and Bhattacharya apologised for the incidents and said that
their partymen had been warned against obstructing the media. "Such
attacks just cannot be condoned," Bhattacharya admitted.
With
the battle for Bengal hotting up, one can perhaps trace some "provocation"
to the recent municipal polls. On the day that the Salt Lake municipality
went to polls in June, a TV crew camping inside a booth in ward No. 16
in the exurb managed to film the rampant rigging that was going on. Furious
that the lid had been blown off their well-oiled booth capturing, CPI(M)
workers turned on the press. The incriminating footage, however, made
it safely to the studios and was beamed by several channels that evening.
It eventually led to a repoll. Although the CPI(M)
later won the seat, it was clearly a tainted victory. But an attack by
CPI(M) workers on a Eenadu TV reporter in the Uttarpara municipal elections
last week turned out to be futile-the Trinamool wrested the seat from
the Left Front. "TV crews are the first targets," says Barun
Sengupta, editor of the Bengali-language daily Bartaman. "You can't
improve or alter that picture. They show you things just the way they
are."
Sometimes
scribes do go over the top. In recent months, most dailies seem overly
preoccupied with CPI(M)-bashing. "When party workers see mindless,
accusatory editorials written to malign me, they understandably lose their
cool," says CPI(M) politburo member Anil Biswas. "Journalism
is all about reporting truthfully, and that's not happening anymore."
Recently a newspaper headlined that Biswas had called Mamata a bandit
queen. A corrigendum refuting the report was buried in the inside pages.
Another time, controversial Sports Minister Subhas Chakraborty was cornered
with the same question-whether he would quit the Left Front-11 times in
25 minutes. When Chakraborty snapped back with an expletive, the press
pounced on the unprintable and forced him to apologise. Conversely, the
media's darling, Mamata, seems to have been prematurely elevated to the
status of chief minister. The press never tires of her sound bytes. That
perhaps is what really riles the Reds.
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