[Reader-list] Siddharth Varadarajan on the injustice of an award to Neeta Sharma

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear all,

Please do read and circulate Siddharth Varadarajan's excoriating  
critique (posted yesterday on his blog) of the way in which the  
unethical conduct of a journalist Neeta Sharma has been awarded with  
the Indian News Broadcasting Award for 'News Reporter of the Year  
2010'. Ms. Sharma, currently with NDTV planted false stories about  
the journalist Iftikhar Gilani while she was a reporter with the  
Hindustan Times.

best

Shuddha
----------

http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/2010/09/such-journalists-should-be- 
exposed-not.html

06 September 2010
Such journalists should be exposed, not honoured

I have written to the jury which gave the Indian News Broadcasting
Award for News Reporter of the Year 2010, Hindi, to Neeta Sharma of
NDTV India, protesting their choice.

Neeta Sharma was the reporter who wrote a false story in the Hindustan
Times in 2002 calling Iftikhar Gilani, a senior and respected
journalist who is the Delhi bureau chief of Kashmir Times, an ISI
agent. Her story, which was based on a plant by police and
intelligence officials, contributed to Iftikhar's incarceration and
caused him no end of trouble, especially with violent inmates and
jailors at Tihar. As a reporter, she has never apologised for her
story. Until she does so, I consider her a blight on my profession. I
am sickened by the thought that such a person could have received an
award for her so-called reporting. My letter -- and all the details of
that sordid incident -- is appended below ...

Dear Vinod [Mehta] and other jury members,

You were part of a jury that recently gave Neeta Sharma of NDTV India
a 'reporter of the year' award.

While I am not familiar with her work on TV, her earlier work as a
reporter for HT was reprehensible. Indeed, I have no hesitation in
saying she was a blot on the profession of journalism. And that until
she makes amends by tendering an unqualified apology to the biggest
victim of her unprofessionalism -- Iftikhar Gilani -- she ought to be
considered beyond the pale.

While at the HT, she was an accomplice in the police attempt to frame
Iftikhar Gilani, the respected bureau chief of Kashmir Times on false
charges. I have recorded the issue and circumstances of Neeta Sharma's
unethical behaviour in my Introduction to Gilani's book, My Days in
Prison, which was published by Penguin in 2005:

    Since the DGMI ‘opinion’ made no reference to the published
document, Iftikhar’s counsel tried in vain to have the courts take
cognisance of it and demand that the military provide a second opinion
expeditiously. Here, the case hit its third and fourth roadblocks,
which was the timorousness of the lower judiciary and media in matters
ostensibly relating to national security and official secrets. What
was surprising was that despite the alacrity of the courts in filing
contempt proceedings against those who try to manipulate the course of
justice by misreporting or misrepresenting what transpires during a
hearing, the concerned judge took no action against a wholly
fabricated news report which appeared in a national daily the first
time Iftikhar was produced in court: “In the course of hearing on
Monday, Geelani (sic) reportedly said he had been passing on
classified information about the movement of Indian troops to the ISI.
When chief metropolitan magistrate Sangita Sehgal asked him if she
should record this in his statement, Geelani nodded in assent.”[1] The
news was false and amounted to contempt of court. Yet, no action was
taken.

    As for the gullible crime reporter who was fed this story by the
Delhi Police Special Cell, no apology was ever made. I happened to be
introduced to the reporter in question at a colleague’s wedding in
2004 and when I said I had a bone to pick with her because of the
hit-job she had done on Iftikhar Gilani, she said, “I don’t know any
Iftikhar Gilani”. I was angry but decided to give her a bit of advice:
“The police officials who used you to plant that story have escaped
with their reputations intact. But what you did will remain a blot on
your reputation as a journalist so long as you don’t apologise to
Iftikhar”.

    Neeta Sharma’s story was important to the police because it
appeared just at a time when a petition drafted by Aunohita Mojumdar
and other journalists and friends of Iftikhar was gathering steam. A
brief report about the campaign had appeared in The Times of India on
June 10 and the police and IB quickly realised the need to nip any
journalistic acts of solidarity in the bud. Editors could be leaned
upon (and they were) but there was no better deterrent to the
campaigning spirit than a concocted confession by Iftikhar that he had
been an ISI agent all along. Soon, the floodgates opened and any
number of malicious reports appeared across much of the Indian media
accusing Iftikhar of being a traitor and militant, smuggler and
jihadi, a sex fiend and “spy claiming the privileges of a newsman”, in
the libellous words of the Bharatiya Janata Party MP and one-time
journalist, Balbir K. Punj.[2]

    [1] Neeta Sharma, ‘Iftikar Geelani admits ISI links’, Hindustan
Times, June 11, 2002 [2] Balbir K. Punj, ‘Dissimulation in words and
in images’, Outlook, July 8, 2002
    http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/2005/02/my-foreword-to-iftikhar- 
gilanis-my.html

Iftikhar has also spoken about this in interviews and elsewhere:

    But what really affected my family and me most was a was a four
column story printed in Hindustan Times on June 11 saying I was an ISI
agent. It was a by-lined report by Neeta Sharma. Surprisingly, the
reporter quoted me saying that I had confessed to being an agent, and
to my illegal activities when I was appearing at one of the hearings
at the sessions court. Later a police official asked me whether I had
spoken to any reporter which I had denied.

    This really hurt my family and me. The next day my wife went to
speak and complain to Shobhana Bhartia, Executive and Editorial
Director of HT and told her all this was untrue and they should print
an apology which the paper did.
    http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/searchdetail.php?sid=651&bg=1

Elsewhere, he has written about the same incident:

    The mother of all mischievous reports about me was by a Neeta  
Sharma, crime
    reporter of the Hindustan Times and now with the NDTV. She
reported that I had admitted before the court to having ISI links. The
report said, “Iftikhar Gilani, 35 year old son-in-law of Hurriyat
hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani, is believed to have admitted in a
city court that he was an agent of Pakistan’s spy agency”. She went
even further, and reported that Syed Ali Geelani was so happy with
Iftikhar’s working with the ISI that he gave his daughter to him in
marriage. What a ridiculous report! Thanks to friends in the Hindustan
Times, and its Deputy Chairperson Shobna Bharatiya, the paper
corrected itself.
    http://www.sarai.net/publications/readers/04-crisis-media/ 
29iftikar.pdf

Not surprisingly, Iftikhar has criticised the decision to give Neeta
Sharma an award despite her failure to acknowledge her mistake and her
failure to apologise for the unsavoury incident:
http://beta.milligazette.com/news/090-dubious-journalist-gets-award

As a colleague and friend of Iftikhar, and as the author of the
Introduction to his book, I have no hesitation in also expressing my
unhappiness at her selection.

I hope that even at this late stage, you as jury members can either
find a way to withdraw this award or at least shame Neeta Sharma into
acknowledging that the basic code of a good reporter involves
respecting the truth and having the decency to say sorry when you make
a grave mistake.

Yours sincerely,

Siddharth Varadarajan
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net