When photojournalists from Goa faked sword picture

When photojournalists faked sword picture
BY RAJAN NARAYAN

And a few more stray thoughts and a few more observations for
yet another Sunday. For a Sunday following the week when the
Goa Bachao Abhiyan had strong reservations over accepting the
draft Regional Plan 2021 which has reportedly been finalized.

For a Sunday following the week when the Sangh Parivar-backed
citizens' welfare committee accused the GBA of becoming part
of the government. For a Sunday following the week when the
Times of India carried a report claiming yet another attempt
to topple the government by Vishwajit Rane. For a Sunday
following the week the editor of The Navhind Times, Arun
Sinha, sought the help of the Editors' Guild to take on
Penpricks....

TIMES OF INDIA CLAIM

AND a few stray thoughts on the claim of the Times of India
that Digambar Kamat had survived yet another toppling bid by
the group of eleven. Though the TOI does not mention
Vishwajit Rane, it is clear that he is the first-time MLA
from North Goa who is alleged to have masterminded the latest
toppling bid.

The story only shows how desperate the TOI is to establish
itself even if it means cooking up stories. There is no
denying the fact that Vishwajit Rane is unhappy with Digambar
Kamat. The source of the unhappiness is Digamber's continued
opposition to SEZs. It is an open secret that all the three
SEZs which have been allotted land by the IDC and were
approved both by the Centre and the State governments have
the patronage of the Ranes. Indeed, it was during the tenure
of Rane as chief minister that the allotment of land was made
to Meditab, Raheja and Peninsula SEZs.

But Vishwajit is fully aware that the Centre is not inclined
to replace Digamber with papa Rane. Indeed, it was the
refusal of the Congress High Command to accept the yuvraj's
demand that papa be made the chief minister in preference to
Ravi Naik that resulted in the compromise choice of making
Digamber the chief minister.

And surely a national paper should know that the Congress
High Command is extremely unlikely to entertain any demands
for change in leadership when the future of the Congress-led
UPA government at the Centre itself is at stake. Indeed the
reason why all the toppling bids against Digamber Kamat have
failed so far is because of the TINA factor.

The ground reality is that there is no alternative to
Digamber Kamat. Not that Digamber is the most competent
Congress MLA. But the rebels cannot agree among themselves on
who should succeed Digamber Kamat. Much as the yuvraj may
dream and hope, there is no possibility whatsoever of
Pratapsing Rane being acceptable to the Congress High Command
as an alternative to Digamber Kamat.

In fact the last time around, it as made clear to the Yuvraj
that if Digamber was replaced, the chief minister's kodel
would go to the first choice of the high command -- Ravi
Naik. And even though Ravi Naik's vocal chords may have been
affected in the course of his recent cardiac operation in
Bangalore, he is still not as voiceless as the high command
or the yuvraj presumes.

AGITATION, IRRITATION

AND a few stray observations on the agitation and irritation
and fury and rage of The Navhind Times editor, Arun Sinha,
with the anonymous journalists who run the blog called
Penpricks.

Indeed, the principal item on the agenda for the meeting of
the Editors' Guild convened by Arun Sinha last Friday was the
Penpricks blog. Not just Arun Sinha, but editors of all
newspapers in Goa are sore about being taken for a ride by
Penpricks.

The blog, which is run by a group of disgruntled journalists,
most of whom being former employees of Herald, issued a
fabricated press note claiming that a notorious Nazi war
criminal had taken sanctuary in Goa, who had then been
arrested just across the Goa border in Karnataka.

The blog claimed that the Nazi had exposed his cover when he
had sought to sell an expensive organ to some private party.
The scam was planned meticulously with a neo-Nazi type symbol
morphed into the letterhead, claimed to be issued by some
German organization.

None of the local papers, or for that matter many of the
national papers, bothered to check out the story with either
the German embassy or the Karnataka and Goa Police, and
carried it, some of them very prominently.

The editors were left red-faced when the blog Penpricks
revealed that the whole story was a scam which it had
fabricated to expose the incompetence of editors and senior
editorial staff. The Nazi scam came on top of a succession of
exposes; many of which were close to the truth over the
working of the media in Goa.

In the past, the Penpricks blog had conducted a sting
operation exposing how the former editor of the Herald, Robin
Abreu, had expressed his willingness to sell not just
editorial space but the Holy of Holies, the editorial itself
to an advertiser. It also had partly established that the
former editor of Herald, Robin Abreu, was in the habit of
plagarizing from editorials from other newspapers.

RAJAN DEAD

Penpricks has been quite unfairly fair or fairly unfair in
targetting all editors and publications though, relatively
speaking.

The Navhind Times and Herald have been its principal targets.
The Goan Observer has, of course, been one of the favourite
whipping boys of Penpricks. To the extent of not only
accusing me of being a yellow journalist but even declaring
me dead.

IN fact, some who saw only the heading declaring me dead and
did not read further, really thought I was dead or at least
seriously ill. I received several calls from close friends
and several friends kept calling each other to find out if I
was seriously ill and had been admitted to hospital.

Arun Sinha raved and ranted and was insistent that the
Editors' Guild should file a criminal complaint against the
Penpricks blog to the Director General of Police. I was
present there entirely by accident, or maybe because Arun
Sinha thought that as a victim of Penpricks I would endorse
his campaign of vendetta against them.

I have nothing against the comments that the Penpricks blog
makes, including the comments they keep making about me. I
think they are revealing, sometimes a little irritating and
very often hilarious. I must admit that they have tended to
be very personal and malicious at times.

But unlike Arun Sinha, I have no objection whatsoever to
media blogs that are critical of people in the media. But I
do believe that those who wish to criticize others should
have the courage to identify themselves. I believe that the
cloak of anonymity with which they surround themselves is
despicable. Those who run the Penpricks are behaving like
whores -- a community who it has been famously said exercise
power without responsibility. I fault the Penpricks for their
cowardice and not for their comments, which in any case I
treat with contempt.

SWORD SCAM

AND a few stray observations on the sword conspiracy, not of
the migrant Muslim residents of Moti Dongor but by the photo
journalists of Margao.

The photographs of swords that appeared in several newspapers
were not of the swords seized by the police from the truck
owned by Bashir Sheikh, the main accused in the Moti Dongor
sword seizure case.

I understand that the photograph that was carried was
actually a staged photograph of swords that were borrowed for
the photograph from a business establishment which stocks
'nakli' swords for 'natak' companies doing historical plays.

Apparently, the photo journalists of Margao were very upset
with the DySP Umesh Gaonkar over the beating up of one o
their colleagues by the police. They were further enraged
when Umesh Gaonkar refused to show them the swords which were
seized.

So they decided to teach him a lesson and allegedly entered
into a conspiracy to fake the photograph. They went to a
costume and props supplier, got some 'nakli' swords from him,
photographed them and sent it to the publications they were
associated with, claiming that it is a photograph of the
swords seized.

And the editorial staff of the newspapers, none the wiser,
published the photographs, not having any reason to suspect
that they were photographs of fake swords.

If the editors object to the postings on the Penpricks blog,
they should be equally furious and indignant and agitated
over the duplicity of the photo journalists of Margao. In
fact, this is not the first time the photo journalists of
Margao have engaged in such dubious practices.

I recall being a victim of the dishonest photographers myself
when I was the editor of the Herald, when I was sent
morphed pictures showing Dayanand Narvekar behind bars in the
police lock-up.

Though the truth is that Narvekar successfully manipulated
things to ensure that he did not spend even an hour, leave
alone a night, unlike Mauvin Godinho, in the police lock-up.

SOURCE- GOAN OBSERVOR