The Hindu responds to a blog allegation

Few days I had linked to this post by Churumuri on DesiPundit. The piece talked about an apology issued by The Hindu with regard to an Open Page article about the Indian participation in an auto show in Germany. The blog post had questioned the motive behind The Hindu’s apology. The Readers’ Editor make a reference to this blog post in his weekly column and gives a detailed response.

The reader's query was a legitimate one and called for an answer. On a different plane were the insinuations and assumptions in a commentary by Arvind Swaminathan on churumuri.wordpress.com, the website run out of Mysore "by a bunch of talented, if somewhat obsessed Mysoreans," as Ramachandra Guha put it. For this was another opportunity to decry N. Ram, The Hindu's Editor-in-Chief. "Staffers in The Hindu," according to this commentary, were aghast at this surrender to corporate forces, represented by an automotive firm (factually inaccurate), with advertising clout. With glee, it pointed out that the Editor had not included any reference to the date of publication of the article in question, missing the fact that the date was in the preceding item to which the apology was tagged.

Even more amusing was the query whether before publishing the apology, Mr. Ram had consulted K. Narayanan, the Readers' Editor, "whom he touts as the panacea of [sic] all journalistic ills in the country." Why his "sources" in The Hindu, whom he cites again and again, did not give this information to him is a matter for conjecture. The barb aimed at me shows lack of understanding.

I don’t know how Churumuri is going to react to the above response. This elaborate response shows that The Hindu is interested in responding to some of the criticisms made by the blogosphere. This kind of response will probably prompt more people to come out in the open. Will The Hindu also care to explain why they refused to carry Sevanti Ninan’s column on Sun TV?

Update: Churumuri has a ten point response. It would be interesting to see whether The Hindu takes this debate further and responds to some of the questions posed by Arvind Swaminathan of Churumuri.