{"id":70717,"date":"2019-06-26T01:55:28","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T20:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/?p=70717"},"modified":"2019-06-26T01:55:28","modified_gmt":"2019-06-25T20:25:28","slug":"biased-government-and-biased-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/2019\/06\/26\/biased-government-and-biased-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Biased government and biased media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Editor,<\/strong>
\nBengal – the latest \u2018hotel topic\u2019 in national sphere, right from Centre to media. If the sorry picture of rest of India gets cleverly swept under the carpet and all focus gets directed towards the state of affairs in Bengal by the Who’s Who of the BJP, the central government, the biased section of the media and vested interests, naturally Bengal would come in centre-stage.
\nPolitical killings. Be it in Kerala or Odisha, political killings are rampant.
\nAs far as the medical field is concerned, physical assault on doctors is an all-India, even international, phenomenon with such incidents also reported from Pakistan to China and USA. None other than the Indian Medical Association had reported that 75% of Indian doctors have experienced physical assault at workplace in 2017.
\nMore than 100 children have died in Bihar due to encephalitis within a few days. Had it happened in Bengal, the Centre and the national media would have taunted and abused Bengal and Mamata Banerjee in the most vulgar fashion possible, projecting “collapse of medical infrastructure” in the state.
\nDuring the last five years, Haryana to Karnataka, and Gujarat to Assam saw how absolute innocents were cold-bloodedly murdered in the name of gow mata. Intellectuals to journalists shot dead for protesting against communalism. The less said about the atrocities on the Dalits or the spate of \u2018honour killings\u2019 the better.
\nImmediately after the start of the second innings of \u2018good days\u2019, cow-related lynchings have been witnessed in Madhya Pradesh. A poor Muslim was shot in Bihar\u2019s Begusarai with the diktat of \u2018Go to Pakistan\u2019; a youth in Haryana has was beaten up for wearing a skullcap. While a Hindu doctor somehow escaped the wrath of the \u2018nationalists\u2019 in New Delhi (who gheraoed him) by uttering \u2018Jai Sri Ram\u2019 as demanded, no such luck for a group of Muslims in Assam’s Barpeta who were severely thrashed for refusing to bow down to their diktat.
\nNot to forget the arrest of Jitrai Hansda (professor-cum-drama personality) in Jamshedpur for his protest against infringement on the dietary rights of tribals (beef) through a Facebook message posted as many as two years ago. What about detention of journalist Prashant Kanojia in Uttar Pradesh for a mere tweet deemed \u2018objectionable\u2019 to some high profile person?
\nAnd saffron-led Uttar Pradesh \u2013 the land of the BJP \u2018stalwarts\u2019 and hosting the Lok Sabha constituency of none other than the Prime Minister. Not a single day passes when gangrape, torture on minor girls to Dalits to minorities don’t take place there.
\nYet neither to UP nor to the other states the Centre asks for any sort of report despite the series of scandals, failure, and violence. Also, the media (a large section) do not make it centrepiece news, unlike the happenings in Bengal.
\nIf this selective portrayal of one and only Bengal in bad light where \u2018democracy has got throttled\u2019 is not a bizarre specimen of political vendetta, if this is not biased journalism, then what is it?
\nIt is high time the BJP-led Centre learned to act liberal enough to view all states, irrespective of the colour of the local regime, in an absolutely equal footing because Central governance should reside above all norms of petty parochialism and political bickering. And a large section of the media should also learn to exercise their neutrality instead of acting biased and prejudiced in favour or opposed to any political party or state.
\nSincerely, <\/strong>
\nKajal Chatterjee,<\/strong>
\nKolkata<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Editor, Bengal – the latest \u2018hotel topic\u2019 in national sphere, right from Centre to media. If the sorry picture of rest of India gets cleverly swept under the carpet and all focus gets directed towards the state of affairs in Bengal by the Who’s Who of the BJP, the central government, the biased section […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-70717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-readers-forum"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}