SRINAGAR: Kashmir’s top editors’ body has crawled out of its self-created shell, not to break its silence on the government’s crackdown on journalists or the sufferings of the Valley’s people but to chastise criticism of this silence as “vilification”. The Kashmir Editors Guild on Wednesday held its first meeting since the removal of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status on August 5 last year and the accompanying government clampdown on the then state’s entire population. Yet the only unambiguous words of censure in its statement, issued on Thursday, were reserved for the “vilification” by “vested interests” looking to “undermine the institution of media in Kashmir”.
Guild sources suggested the targets included some leading Jammu and Kashmir journalists who have questioned their peers’ reportage, for instance, the way most of them have sidestepped the pellet injuries caused to Muharram mourners in security force firing this month. “KEG members regretted that the vilification campaigns launched by the vested interests from within the systems of governance, within and outside the wider social media and offshore are aimed at undoing the Himalaya of reportage on which Kashmir’s history rests,” the statement said.
Guild sources said the editors had been particularly incensed by the writings of Anuradha Bhasin executive editor of the Jammu-based The Kashmir Times, the region’s oldest English-language newspaper in the news and opinion website, The Wire.–Agencies
