TOI campaign against police: logic of illogic
-Yogesh Sharma

The controversy over the reports of Times of India against Ahmedabad Police Commissioner O P Mathur has thrown up many issues relating to the basics of journalism. I am not going into the legal merit of the case. Let the Court decide it. The issue here is purely from the point of view of media without any bias against TOI or its reporter. 
The idea is basically to discuss the need for observing certain basic rules while reporting, whether matter is casual or as sensitive as the TOI issue. 
In this case TOI has written half a dozen articles against Mathur. Some of these articles have also made sweeping statements against entire police force. All this is on the basis of the statement of one person, an accused Khurdush. TOI itself admits in one report that the statement of Kurdush has not been investigated by any agency. 
Interestingly, word alleged or allegation has not been used even once! At the same time none of these statements is a quote from the CBI record. Copy on May 27 says "most of the police force of Ahmedabad on his payroll" while the copy on May 28 says "entire police force was on the payroll of the Latif gang". The inverted commas have been added by me .

It is very clear that in the absence of the word allegation, the statement give the impression that they are true. My observation may sound trivial. But when a copy is examined legally, this is a great basis to judge the intent of the writer. And that's why in our good old days great care was taken about sensitive matters and the word allegation was used quite frequently.

All copies are based on the statement of Kurdush. No where, the views of others, particularly the person affected, have been taken. This can be right if we are reproducing something from a Court judgment or order. But certainly not in the case of a statement which has not been proved true by the Court of Law or any authority. 
Only to avoid such situation, every journalist is taught to balance the copy with the views of others. 
Now the question is of the value of the statement of Khurdush. He made a statement before the CBI on May 18, 1993. CBI is not a Court. It is like any other police station. Statement of an accused before police has no legal value. It can not be taken as evidence without other corroborating evidence. It has value if the accused is turned approver. But in this case, Kurdush is still only an accused. 
Can we run a campaign and call a police commissioner a dubious person on the basis of a statement of a person who himself is not reliable in the eye of the law? Any journalist has to check these elementary facts before writing.  
TOI may make any claim about the authenticity of its story. My idea is not to challenge the TOI's claim. The fact is that some basic elements of journalism have been blatantly ignored. 

Story of Khurdush's statement ...

Let me disclose a great fact related to the entire episode. A day before the TOI ran the story, many newspapers of Ahmedabad received a fax. It had an anonymous letter which some vigilant citizen had written to the Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The letter was along with a copy of statement of the Khurdush which he had made before the CBI. The telephone number reveals that the fax was sent from the Shahpur area of the walled city. 
In the letter, this vigilant citizen had drawn the attention of the CM to the statement of Kurdush with suggestion cum demand that action should be taken against Mathur. It is not known whether the vigilant citizen had really sent the letter to the CM or not. But he sent it to newspapers, is a fact. 
This statement is quoted in TOI campaign as the sole basis for describing Mathur as the man of Latif.  
Any student of journalism should make it a rule to check the facts before writing on the basis of anonymous letters, howsoever great the letter may appear. In this case, these facts had appeared in Gujarat Samachar in 1994. This led to an inquiry by the IB which found the allegations baseless.  
We must always be aware of the fact that media is power and so it is a great instrument for many in their power play. Many times such stories appear in the name of investigative reporting. If we see majority of the investigative pieces, they are generally result of this power play of people. A journalist should also view such copies from this point of view.