Kohima Press Club dismayed at state BJP, condemns threat levelled against journalist

Kohima, March 1 (MTNews): The Kohima Press Club (KPC) has expressed dismay at the Nagaland unit of BJP’s handling of the issue of what it called “unprofessional and arrogant behaviour” of its state media convenor Sapralu Nyekha in dealing with journalists after she handed out a press release on February 17 containing erroneous information about the visit of a Union Minister to Nagaland.

KPC stated in a press release on Wednesday that 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. “Instead, 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,” KPC said.

It went on to say that the state BJP media cell convener not only lacked professional decency to gracefully accept a professional error “but tried her best to turn it around claiming it was a personal issue between her and a member of the press club.”

“We believe it was her bounden professional duty to retract the press release which had already been circulated to all media houses, after the error was pointed out, and issue a corrected statement,” KPC said.

KPC also said that the issue was never about her as an individual but as a responsible representative of a political party. “It is absolutely ridiculous that she tried to turn this matter into a personal issue when the matter started in a group of professionals over a professional subject,” 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 state BJP media cell convener reacted to this suggestion with unwarranted aggression. In the following days, she launched an unrelenting personal attack singling out one particular journalist, who is a senior member of the press club, amplifying a false narrative that the issue at hand was personal between her and the concerned journalist,” KPC maintained.

Saying that the Kohima Press Club is not concerned over whom the BJP media convener has personal problems with, it said, “If she has any personal issue with any journalist, she should address it personally, not in a professional setting.”

In view of the “unprecedented turn of events with regard to the issue,” the Kohima Press Club held a special general meeting on March 1 where it “unanimously acknowledged that the issue at hand is being interpreted as personal whereas it never was.”

KPC said that, in her attempt to turn it into a personal issue with a member of the press club, “Nyekha 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’,” adding that the Kohima Press Club will not tolerate expressions of threat to any member of the press fraternity, veiled or direct. “We outrightly condemn such threats levelled on not just journalists alone but on anyone,” it added.

In this connection, the KPC stated 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.