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Letter to Editor of Times of India

4

Friday, September 16, 2011 by

To,


The Editor,
Times of India,
Mumbai

Dear Sir,

This is with regard to the article ‘Reaping Gold through Bt Cotton’dated August 28, 2011. It was most disappointing to see such an article which sounds almost like an advertorial, but written by a journalist of the paper being published in your newspaper. There are a few points I would like to highlight:

1) A footnote states that the article is a ‘Reprint of.. TOI Nagpur edition’. There are sufficient stories on successful ecological farmers that can be highlighted if the publication feels it has a scarcity of stories to cover and it is forced to reprint!

2) A note by the journalist mentions that the trip to Yavatmal was “arranged” by Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech, it therefore comes as no surprise that the story is one sided with no independent views and sounds like a promotional piece for Mahyco-Monsanto’s Bollgard I and Bollgard II.

3) Yavatmal is a district that has 2117 villages of which only 2 were visited. This is an insufficient and inaccurate representation of the district and a particularly bad one as the district has seen a large number of farmer suicides.

4) All the farmers mentioned in the article have land ‘anywhere between 10-40 acres and none of them was ever a marginal farmer’. The author fails to describe the plight of majority of our farmers, who are small and marginal farmers mostly dependent on rainfall for irrigation, money from private money lenders and other problems.

The appearance of this article is particularly significant at a time the biotechnology industry is trying to get the BRAI bill, favourable to industry, cleared as per news reports. It is also pertinent that a series of advertisements are being published in the Times of India, Economic Times and Mumbai Mirror. One hopes that the editorial content of this newspaper is not governed by advertising revenues alone.

As you are aware biotechnology and particularly the GM crops issue is a very contentious and problematic, with numerous problems with GM crops surfacing around the world. At this juncture it is hoped that newspapers like yours will report objectively on the issue in the true spirit of responsible journalism.


Sincerely,

Ruth

Image for representational purpose only. Image curtesy Google Images

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A letter to the NT editor, dated 27th Aug 09.

3

Thursday, August 27, 2009 by

To

The Editor
The Navhind Times
Panaji Goa.

27th August 2009

Subject: Wrong terminology used in article.

Respected Sir,

I was ashamed to read an article on your paper with the headline reading ' School for Mentally Retarded Children Opened at Canacona' on page 7 of your issue dated 27th August 2009. While, it was admirable to cover the opening of the second school for these children, the terms used in the article were upsetting. The more polite term used to describe children with low IQ levels would be 'Mentally challenged' or 'Mentally handicapped' and not 'Retarded'. It is often the case that people use the term 'Mentally Retarded', it is possibly because they do not know the right terminology, but for a newspaper of such standards to use it throughout the article and even in its headlines is simply inexcusable.

As a media vehicle, you automatically act as an influencer to your readers, using terms like these only demeans these children. The word 'retarded' in comparison to the word 'challenged' formulates very different images in the minds of the reader; the former is negative and demeaning, while the latter gives hope. I have seen and worked with mentally challenged students, and you may agree with me that their work, is often far more sophisticated and intelligent than that of a 'normal' child of the same age. The point I'm trying to make is that these children are gifted in ways that we can hardly imagine, we have no right to deem them as 'retarded' when they have proved time and again that they are capable of doing as much as we can if not better.

It is my hope that your team of editors, will in future be more sensitive to such issues and avoid such errors.

Thanking you.

Yours sincerely

Ruth Sequeira

(Student of Sophia College)

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