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Indian media gets bloody nose
over China reporting
WSN Network
 New
Delhi: Displaying its capacity to turn utterly rabid, and then
losing no time in exposing itself as to how it bows before the
government of the day, the Indian media seems to have gotten a
rather bloody nose in its reporting about China over the past few
days.
Top Indian
newspapers and TV channels went to town proclaiming and shrieking
that the "Chinese are here" and that they have painted "Republic of
China" on stones here and there, but after Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh asked them to cool off, both Beijing and New Delhi scotched
swirling rumours about military incursions, shooting incidents and
even an imminent conflict along the Line of Actual Control.
"There is no
cause of worry or concern,” Chief of the Army Staff Deepak Kapoor
said on Saturday.
And, in an
indication of how seriously the government is taking the
scare-mongering, the Home Ministry has decided to file an FIR
against the two reporters of The Times of India who filed a story
claiming Indian soldiers were injured in firing by the Chinese.
The story, ‘Two
ITBP jawans injured in
China
border firing,’ was published as a lead in that newspaper on
September 15, leading to official denials by the Foreign Ministries
of both countries.
“We have taken
this story very seriously. We are going ahead with our decision to
take criminal action against the two reporters and we will soon file
an FIR. They have quoted some highly placed intelligence source in
their story. Let them appear before the court and tell who is this
source who gave them information,” top sources in the Home Ministry
said.
Though they
refused to say what crime the two reporters would be charged with,
MHA officials said Indian law proscribed the promotion of enmity
with other countries.
National
Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan urged the media to be restrained. “I
really am unable to explain why there is so much media hype on this
question,” he said, expressing concern that if such coverage
continued, “someone somewhere might lose his cool and something
might go wrong.”
16
September 2009
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