The other day, Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen floor leader in the Telangana assembly went out of his way to praise chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and said he had never seen such a progressive and secular chief minister in the entire country.
Going a step further the MIM leader said for KCR, the chief minister post was too small and he deserved much higher position (read the Prime Minister post).
Setting aside the background story of the MIM leader praising the Telangana Rashtra Samithi supremo, the interesting part of the episode is that almost all the newspapers had given a prominent coverage to Akbaruddin’s speech in the assembly and his praises on KCR.
While KCR’s family newspaper Namasthe Telangana played it up as its banner story, which is expected, other prominent dailies like Sakshi and Andhra Jyothy, which have also been singing paeans on KCR for quite some time, have also gave the huge coverage with pictures.
However, the news was completely missing in the main edition of Eenadu, the largest circulated Telugu daily in the country.
It was not only surprising, but also shocking for KCR and his bandwagon, because if Eenadu does not cover the news, people would not take it seriously because of the credibility and reach of the daily.
Sources said an agitated KCR ordered his media management staff to find out why Eenadu did not cover it and whether its chairman Ramoji Rao was aware of it or not. He even reportedly pulled up the Eenadu reporter who covers the TRS beat.
When the matter was brought to the notice of the Eenadu management, it ordered an enquiry. During the process, it was revealed that the reporter who covered the speech in the assembly did not exactly follow what MIM chief said on KCR.
He simply gave the report confining it to the issues concerning the minorities raised by Akbaruddin and the government’s reply to the same.
The editorial in-charge in the desk found it to be very insignificant report and pushed it to inside pages.
The sub-editors who were handling inside pages also did not like the story and pushed it to the Hyderabad tabloid edition. And the in-charge of the tabloid also was not very interested in it and sent it to inside pages.
Finally, it appeared as a single column story in 13th page of the tabloid, without any reference to his praises on KCR!
Needless to say, the management reportedly apologised to the chief minister and pulled up the entire editorial staff from top to bottom!
