A two-year-old case regarding alleged illegal felling of trees in Kerala’s Wayanad has recently found its way back into prime time news shows in the state, leading to a battle between Malayalam TV channels. Reporter TV, a Malayalam news channel originally launched in 2011, was relaunched earlier this month with Anto Augustine, one of the prime accused in the tree felling case, as the MD and managing editor. Anto and his brothers, Roji and Josekutty, face 43 cases related to the cutting down of trees. Under the new management, Reporter TV has been doing stories defending the Augustine brothers, even as other channels have been revisiting the case. Reporter TV also sent journalists to Wayanad, running a series of reports alleging that the family of the managing editor of Mathrubhumi – a Malayalam media house with a prominent newspaper and a news channel that has been stepping up reporting on the tree felling cases – had forged documents to sell off government land. Mathrubhumi managing editor M V Shreyams Kumar said he did not want to comment on Reporter TV’s allegations. At the centre of the storm are allegations regarding the felling of thousands of protected trees from government land assigned to farmers and tribals that took place during the last leg of the previous LDF government’s tenure. The issue came to the fore in June 2021, a month after the present LDF government came to power.
