The much-publicised interview of Pervez Musharraf recently obtained by a senior journalist of The Hindu brought home two truths. The first concerns the fact of the interview itself.

That "scoop" proved, yet again, that when it comes to a national adversary, our English press interprets an interview only as a platform for the interviewee to express his views, however inimical to the country's point of view. Unlike the BBC or the press in the West, our journalists have no desire or spunk to cross-examine or contradict their subject personality.

Thus, Musharraf in that The Hindu interview was allowed to get away with the lie that Kargil was undertaken by the Mujaheeds, not by the Pak army, and then was permitted the cheek of saying that India should trust him, take him at face value. It reminded one of that interview of Pakistan's foreign minister by Star TV's political editor after Pakistan's nuclear tests following Pokhran II. The foreign minister was then let off with his lie that India had been the aggressor in all the wars fought with Pakistan till then. And these media folks of ours want us to consider them as professionals, leave alone as patriots.

It is truly as amazing as agonising that these media men and women of ours seem to derive some perverse pleasure in permitting foreigners to run down our country without even the pretence of putting up a defence. The extensive reproduction of hostile Pakistani newspaper writings in our English press in recent months is proof. It will, of course, be justified as the privilege enjoyed by a free press, never mind the calumny that is slowly sown in the minds of a large impressionable and otherwise uninformed readership. Fie on such freedom.

rest of the article is at http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/feb/01arvind.htm

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