बीबीसी के लिए यह पत्र तैयार करने के बाद ‘मीडिया स्कैन’ की टीम ने तय किया था कि इसे नहीं भेजना है। बीबीसी पर चल रहे विवाद के बीच लगा कि इसे जारी कर देना चाहिए
Dear Sir,
This letter is in reference to BBC’s coverage of recent media conference organised by *Media Scan* at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi. First of all, we would like to thank your organisation for the extensive coverage accorded to our event. We are humbled to receive attention from the worlds’ oldest national broadcasting organisation. Your coverage gives an opportunity to smaller but committed organisation like us to communicate with the global audience. But only if you give voice to us rather than manufacture it.Just like BBC, our organisation Media Scan also aspires to promote plurality in the media and it strives to provide a platform for the marginalised sections of the society. Our recent event titled ‘National Journalism in the present context : Media & the Myth’ was also conceptualised and executed on the same idea of looking beyond the mainstream media. For the same event, we invited reporters, not only from the mainstream media but also from far flung, remote Indian states, away from the national capital and hub of Indian media – New Delhi. We also conducted seminars with leading intellectuals to analyse the media coverage of the marginalised community in the contemporary media scape. To our satisfaction, we brought together diverse speaker set – from the terrorist infested Indian state of Kashmir as well as the maoist infected states of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. We also gave a platform to wide ranging Dalit voices, most of them idiosyncratic in their own rights, otherwise painted by mainstream media in stark shades of black and white. And also the marginalised intelligentsia joined us, the one which is waiting to be heard, discarded only for being unsuitable to contemporary media agenda.Unfortunately, some miscreants in the mainstream media twisted the event’s coverage for their own interest. And the mainstream media, once again, seemed to failed the marginalised. Instead of capturing the spirt of this gathering, & its ideas ; the mainstream media flocked in front of IIMC gates, marred by staged protests. Result- Except for a few Journalists with rigor and tenacity for the profession, the media community failed to highlight the outpouring of the marginalised community during the event. Surprisingly, one of your reports, too, seems to be grossly misrepresenting our seminar. This report titled ‘आँखों देखी – Account of eye witness’ is published by BBC Hindi on 20th May 2017. This report is not only opinionated but it is incomplete as it does not cover the whole event in its entirety. In a sleight of hand, this report has carefully knit picked phrases from few speakers out of their actual context, to portray this seminar in a particularly condescending way. Apart from being factually incorrect on many occasions, the headline itself reeks of an agenda against the seminar. In the headline, a 15 minutes fire ritual is highlighted over a whole day seminar on Journalism. The writer didn’t even bother to attend the whole event and wrote an opinionated report based on conjectures.This report goes on, further, to say our sessions were attended by just 20-40 attendees while in actuality the attendees were at least 3-4 times more than what is reported for these sessions. We also take objection to the report for addressing our speaker in a disrespectful way. The writer, deliberately, tries to portray representative marginalized voices present in our event as nondescript persuaders – less deserving of any attention. The report doesn’t stop at that, it mocks the and it tries to de-legitimize many national award winning voices present at the seminar. It even fails to name most of the speakers present at the event in an attempt to ridicule them as voices of their masters, parroting an agenda. If this was not all, this report leaves no stone un turned in shaming the Indian National Identity. It mocks India’s premier institution of media education – IIMC and its esteemed director is portrayed as someone who is wearing a garb of responsibility and bravura.Naturally, we are confounded to receive such an irresponsible report from a responsible news organization like yours. Your reporter, who covered this event, was also hostile with the organizers and he offered to pay us for the complimentary lunch extended to all our participants. So we are attaching our bank account details to receive his support :
Thanks and regards,
Vedansh Pandey,
Director (Partnership),
Media Scan