MANGALORE : Rajdeep Sardesai, well-known journalist and Chairman of Editors’ Guild of India has said that he has held detailed talks with journalist BV Seetaram on the continuing attacks on media men and media offices in Mangalore by fundamentalist forces. He also said such attacks were highly condemnable.
Speaking to reporters during his visit to the city to participate in a function, Rajdeep said “Earlier when Karavali Ale was attacked the media in Mangalore had not protested against it. Now, as a continued part of it the fundamentalists’ group is launching attack on media offices. Myself and BV Seetaram have held detailed talks in this regard. There is a need for the print and visual media to launch a united movement against his development and also expose the misdeeds of the fundamentalists as done by Karavali Ale newspaper and its chief BV Seetaram.”
“Even today communal forces have an eye on Karavali Ale against which they had launched an attack and had even targeted its circulation network,” Rajdeep said adding “Local journalists should not be indifferent towards the attack on another daily.”
When local scribes had a grouse against CNN-IBN when they said “ The CNN-IBN by widely publicizing the pub attack and church attacks in Mangalore, has brought a bad name for Mangalore,” Rajdeep seemed visibly perturbed by such a communal bent of mind of he scribes and said “ some news have the eligibility to be a national level news.” Sagarika Ghosh, Political Editor of CNN-IBN who immediately intervened questioned “Is it that according to you it was wrong on our part to make it a news?.”
When Rajdeep referring to P Sainath, the Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu who had commented at a recent seminar that some newspapers still stuck to the paid news policy, said the media board of the government has until now not been able to stop this practice, a journalist questioned “Your own Lokmat daily’s name has been included in the P Sainath report.” Reacting to this, Rajdeep said “even our newspaper was not an exception to this policy, the situation is however not the same now.”

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