A PRODUCER with Zee News has resigned from the TV channel after expressing reservations over its “biased coverage” of the JNU protests and the sedition charge against the university’s students union leader.
Vishwa Deepak, an output producer, was part of the team that produced a Zee News show on the night of February 9, when alleged anti-India slogans were raised in the JNU campus during a protest against Parliament convict Afzal Guru’s hanging.
Footage telecast on Zee News formed the basis of the Delhi police’s suo motu FIR on the incident following which JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested.
In a letter to Zee News on Sunday, Deepak stated that the channel had broadcast a video of students raising slogans with a caption that said ‘Pakistan Zindabad’.
“The video which had no “Pakistan Zindabad” slogans in it, we played repeatedly to spread madness. How did we establish that Kanhaiya and his associates were chanting slogans when all we heard were voices coming from the darkness. Our biases made us hear Bhartiya Court Zindabad as Pakistan Zindabad,” stated his letter.
Speaking to Media, Deepak said Zee News aired footage of students chanting ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ repeatedly, but it did not have any such slogans in it. “We heard inaudible slogans from the grainy video. Editors at Zee News felt this sounded like ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ and that’s the caption we went with,” he said.
The letter has been translated and reproduced with permission from Vishwa Deepak. The channel’s editor, Sudhir Chaudhary, however, was quoted by Newslaundry as saying, “On a daily basis people leave and people are being recruited, it is a normal affair. When people leave, they write such nasty letters. This is the organisation’s internal matter.”