There is something rotten in the state of English print media in the Tamil Nadu capital city of Chennai. Any journalist with a grain of news sense would agree that the most important and news worthy event in the State on 15 December was the Tamil Nadu Assembly, in a special sitting, adopting a unanimous resolution expressing anguish over Kerala’s false propaganda on the safety of the Mullai Periyar dam and the State government asserting that under no circumstances would it sacrifice its legal and constitutional right over the dam.
Ever since the dam was commissioned 1895, Mullai Periyar has been life-line of the people of Theni, Dindigul, Madurai, Sivaganga and Ramanathapuram districts on the rain-shadow region of the Western Ghats.
The dam is located on a 8,500-odd acre plot of land in the Tamil-majority Peermedu taluk of Idikki district, Kerala, taken on a 999-year-lease by the erstwhile Madras Presidency.
Of the four English daily newspapers published from Chennai, The New Indian Express and The Deccan Chronicle treated the Assembly resolution as the lead story in their editions dated 16 December. They also spelt the dam correctly, unlike their other two counterparts.
The Chennai edition of The Times of India, which is already facing charges of being headed by an all-Malayalee editorial team, did not consider the story worthy of page one treatment, but pushed it to the inside pages.
