Letter to The Hindu: "Police Preparing List of Passport Holders"

[nityanand jayaraman]

Hello all:

Would help if a few others could also write to The Hindu seeking fairer coverage.
ciao, nity

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: nityanand jayaraman <nit...@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, May 16, 2012 at 7:06 PM
Subject: Reg: "Police Preparing List of Passport Holders"
To: Siddharth Varadarajan <svarad...@gmail.com>, let...@thehindu.co.in


Dear Editor:
I was disappointed to read the article titled "Police Preparing List of Passport Holders" dated 11 May, 2012. It is not uncommon, and probably even acceptable, that reporters have their sources, and that the identity of some of these are kept anonymous. In this article, the reporter quotes a "top police official" and a "senior revenue official" and no other named source to issue what amounts to an open threat to protestors -- that their passports "may" be impounded; and that their ration cards would be suspended. If your reporter was reporting in public interest and wanted to keep his sources anonymous, that would have been okay. But for that, he would need to have at least balanced the story with a comment from a lawyer on the validity of the proposed actions. In the absence of that, I can only surmise that the reporter was joining the police and the revenue department in threatening the protestors with dire and illegal consequences using the medium of your newspaper. This is not journalism. This is abuse of a platform available for free and fair comment.
Sincerely,
Nityanand Jayaraman
H16/9 Seevakan Street
Kalakshetra Colony
Besant Nagar, Chennai 600 090