The Ghost Editor Strikes

The media is divided, polarised and fiercely competitive—but four newspapers thought alike and were on the same page for at least one day. Also, it’s perhaps a first in history. People in Odisha were stupefied when they found Friday’s headlines for the lead story on front pages of four leading vernacular newspapers screaming in unison: “Bhokara Bhugola Ebe Bhatahandi” (The zone of hunger is now a rice bowl). The quartet that had the same brain wave, at the same time, were The Samaja, Sambad, The Prameya and Nitidina. A fifth, The Samaya, tried to be a little different, replacing ‘ebe’ (now) with ‘aji’ (today)!

The headline referred to how the Indravati irrigation project had changed the face of Kalahandi, the district once known in the country as a home of poverty, starvation and malnutrition. But it was too glaring to be taken as mere coincidence. Not just the headlines, even the texts read more or less the same, take a word here or leave a word there. It was obvious that the source of all four headlines was the same. May be the editors of the four newspapers just could not resist the temptation to use the catchy headline in the source material.

The Samaja, the oldest surviving newspaper in Odisha, gave the game away somewhat by putting the heading under ­inverted commas, as is done when quoting from something. Any residual doubt about the possible source of the news ­report was removed in a Facebook post by the Mukhiguda ­reporter of the newspaper, where he cried out his anguish at his report on the event filed from the spot being ignored in ­favour of the one that was carried on the front page.

Given the backdrop of the story—chief minister Naveen Patnaik inaugurating a spate of projects, including the ­much-awaited Upper Indravati lift canal system that would ­irrigate 25,000 hectares—the most obvious source of the ­identical headline, and the accompanying text, was the press release issued by the chief minister’s office (CMO). But a quick perusal of the CMO handout revealed no such thing. The ­‘irresistible’ headline was traced to a WhatsApp group for ­journalists run by the media advisor to the ruling Biju Janata Dal. It is common knowledge in Bhubaneswar’s press circles that the handouts issued on this group are treated with greater veneration than the official press release, and are used by most media houses without any major changes.

By Sandeep Sahu in Bhubaneswar