THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Prominent writers, filmmakers and journalists have called for stringent assessment and investigation into the recent TV channel expose that led to the resignation of Transport Minister A K Saseendran.
By airing the report, the channel has questioned the social mores of the Malayali who is already traversing a turbulent phase. Not only did the channel ignore the decencies required of a news media watched by people including minors, it also let go of facts and the sense of truth needed in each news report, said a statement by writers Sugathakumari, Anand, Satchidanandan, Sara Joseph, Zacharia and N S Madhavan, filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan and journalists T J S George, B R P Bhaskar, T V R Shenoy and S Jayachandran Nair.
The channel does not identify the woman who purportedly spoke to the minister, said the statement issued by writer Pradeep Panangad on behalf of writers and journalists. At the same time, there are enough indications of mutual consent behind the conversation.
“If that is the case, what is the public interest in a conversation which was purportedly carried out between two individuals? The media definitely has the responsibility to critically appraise people in power. But that socially acknowledged right should not end up as a heinous invasion of an individual’s privacy,’’ the statement said. The media’s expression of a moral policing mentality is dangerous to society, it said.
Furthermore, the question arises how the channel got hold of the conversation. If it is genuine, no complainant has come forward thus far.
Even the nation’s security agencies possess only limited rights to tap phone calls made by individuals. It is a criminal offence if the conversation is authentic and it was tapped by anyone else other than a complainant. It is also punishable. If it was fabricated, then again it is a serious offence, the statement said.