The headline of a story on the acquittal of four alleged Naxals in a daily broadsheet read '4 Naxals acquitted'. The report contradicted itself if these people were acquitted, how can you call them Naxals in the headline? This clearly shows the prejudices that exist in the minds of 'objective' journalists.

The media has become a judiciary of sorts and we have started pronouncing our own judgments based on the little proof that we have. It makes me wonder who gave us this right. A senior colleague always told me that we do not need to be stenographers, taking down copious notes of what the police officers tell us and then printing them verbatim. But that is what we tend to do if the police labels someone a terrorist, we call him the same, without waiting for the court judgment.

In the age of quickie journalism, we forget the basics and canons of this respected field.

For the last few weeks, after Operation Green Hunt was announced by the state against the Maoists, there were many news channels and papers that had camped in Naxal-affected areas, the names of which many journalists had never even heard before. We read, saw and heard the news of how the security forces were fighting the Naxals. But, ironically, the other side of the story was hardly ever presented. There was no Naxal speaking. I know it is very difficult to locate them, but isn't talking to them our job, isn't that journalism?
Broken news has been renamed breaking news and everybody enjoys broadcasting it and writing it. Forget Naxals, there wasn't even a villager or adivasi quoted. Strangely, the home minister, whose ministry supposedly launched the 'battle' denied that there was any Operation Green Hunt and this term was coined by the media.u00a0