Kohima, March 1 (MExN): The Kohima Press Club today has condemned “veiled threats” allegedly made on a member of the club.
As human beings, we accept shortcomings from all sides, but the Club will not tolerate expressions of threat to any member of the press fraternity, veiled or direct, KPC asserted in statement issued after a special general meeting on March 1.
“We outrightly condemn such threats levelled on not just journalists alone but on anyone.”
The statement is related with issues arising out of what the KPC termed as the issue of “unprofessional and arrogant behaviour” of BJP state media convenor Sapralu Nyekha in dealing with journalists after she allegedly “handed out a press release on February 17 containing erroneous information about the visit of a Union Minister to Nagaland.”
The KPC had earlier expressed dismay with the Nagaland unit of BJP’s handling of the issue.
The issue could have been put to rest with a simple admission of professional mistake and issuance of a clarification by the media cell convener in question, the Club maintained.
However, the callous attitude of the state BJP leadership to whom the KPC has already notified about the matter with evidence on February 18, has emboldened the erring functionary to issue personal threats while continuing to publicly slander a senior member of the press/media fraternity, it added.
Accordingly, at the meeting on March 1, the KPC “unanimously acknowledged that the issue at hand is being interpreted as personal whereas it never was.”
The issue was never about the convenor as an individual but as a responsible representative of a political party, it said.
Two senior journalists, with the sole concern that disseminating misinformation compromises the credibility of the Fourth Estate, had merely suggested that the party’s local media cell crosscheck all statements before releasing communiqués to the press, the KPC further recounted.
However, the Club maintained that the concerned convener reacted to this suggestion with unwarranted aggression and launched an unrelenting personal attack singling out one particular journalist, a senior member of the press club, amplifying a “false narrative that the issue at hand was personal between her and the concerned journalist.”
According to the KPC, attempting to turn it into a “personal issue with a member of the press club,” the said convener reportedly allowed her husband to call the KPC president and “make veiled threats on the concerned member of the club to the extent of locating the concerned member’s residence with his ‘youth.’”
In this connection, the KPC stated that it is making “public without any malice, that if any untoward incident happens to the concerned member, or to any KPC member in the backdrop of such uncalled-for threat, the present state BJP media cell convener as well as the state party leadership will be held responsible.”
It must be noted here that in response to the clarification sought by the KPC, the BJP National Spokesperson & Prabhari, Nagaland State, Nalin Kohli a letter to the President of KPC had asserted on February 25 that it is “not the party's intention to condone any outburst against any journalist.”
“Let me place my record, my personal and my party’s stand that we believe in freedom of press and appreciate the good work of the media in Nagaland,” he stated. However, he added that it would not be correct for him “comment or intervene on personal relations. “It is left to the two to resolve issues, if any, between them.”
However, the recent statement from the KPC suggests that the issue still lingers.
