Claiming core values ‘defied’,The Hindu family ousts Editor,CEO
N Ram stated that the decision to make changes was on the basis of recurrent violations.
Claiming that Siddharth Varadarajan as Editor and Arun Anant as Chief Executive Officer had strayed from the “core values” of The Hindu,N Ram,chairman of Kasturi & Sons Ltd (KSL) and publisher of The Hindu and group publications,on Monday effected “deep-going” top-level changes at the 135-year-old English daily.
After what sources said was a stormy board meeting split down the middle,Varadarajan was re-designated as Contributing Editor and senior columnist while Anant was removed from his post. Later in the day,Varadarajan,on Twitter,announced that he had quit: “With The Hindu’s owners deciding to revert to being a family run and edited newspaper,I am resigning from The Hindu with immediate effect.” Anant’s position,according to a statement issued by the company,will be determined by the 12-member board later.
Following the changes,N Ravi has taken over as Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu; Malini Parthasarathy,who is the director of The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy,has been appointed Editor and Nirmala Lakshman director with oversight of literature,arts and culture section. Effectively The Hindu has now returned to being a family-run newspaper.
Speaking to The Indian Express,Ram said that although all directors admitted to “problems” with the leadership of Varadarajan and Anant,six opposed the regime change. “I,with my brother N Murali,am the principal author of the change based on our close observation of the wrong turn of events at The Hindu,” Ram said.
The six directors who opposed the move,including K Venugopal and K Balaji,issued a statement that “the vote on the said resolution was tight 6-6 and was passed only with the casting vote of the chairman N Ram.” Calling this “invalid,” they said they would “contest the decision through an appropriate mechanism.”
Incidentally,Balaji was appointed as managing director in charge of production and business strategy but has refused to accept the post.
In a statement that the newspaper posted on its website later in the evening,Ram said that the decision to make the changes was “made chiefly on the ground that there were recurrent violations and defiance of the framework of the institution’s longstanding values on the business side and recurrent violations and defiance of… the mandatory Code of Editorial Values applicable to The Hindu.”
“There was editorialisation in the guise of news and manipulation of news coverage,” Ram said declining to give specific instances. Varadarajan’s tenure also saw “loaded items on politicians” and “pieces that should have appeared in the edit pages and not as news stories,” Ram said. He also accused Anant of showing a lack of respect of employees,including a “communal approach” at times.
Asked about these allegations,Varadarajan told The Indian Express: “If indeed policies or editorial values were flouted,the solution would have been to get another professional editor. The fact that the owners have come back into editorial itself provides the answer to your question.”
In an e-mail response,he added: “Of course,there were occasional instances of editorialising that slipped in,just as they did when Mr Ram or Mravi edited The Hindu earlier. But I fear this is merely an excuse to reverse the earlier decision to professionalise the newspaper. Under me,The Hindu became more feisty and readable than before,had better local coverage in the cities it publishes from than before,regularly broke major stories and investigations,fearlessly took on powerful corporate interests that the rest of the media chose to ignore,refused to mindlessly join media bandwagons whether on Modi or Pakistan or dumbing down of news,ran powerful,trend-setting national and international reportage and had emerged as a major trendsetter in the public sphere.”
Parthasarathy did not respond to an e-mail and a text message,Anant was unavailable for comment.
The sudden turn of events comes less than two and a half years after Varadarajan took over in mid-2011 and was the first editor of the paper in nearly five decades who did not belong to the Kasturi family. Significantly,his appointment was challenged by BJP leaded Subramanian Swamy who filed a petition in the Delhi High Court contending Varadarajan’s ineligibility for the job as he is US citizen.
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