The Post clarifies in face of protest from PMO

‘The Washington Post’ on Thursday admitted that certain parts of its controversial article on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were taken from one-year-old edition of an Indian magazine after the PMO slammed the write-up as “unethical and unprofessional” conduct by the author.

Faced by an unusually strong protest from the PMO, the Post published a correction with regard to quotes attributed to the Prime Minister’s former Media Adviser Sanjaya Baru and political historian Ramachandra Guha. “An earlier version of this article failed to credit the ‘Caravan’, an Indian magazine, for two statements that it originally published in 2011.

“The assertion by Sanjaya Baru, a former media adviser, that Singh had become an object of ridicule and endured the worst period in his life first appeared in the ‘Caravan’, as did an assertion by Ramachandra Guha, a political historian, that Singh was handicapped by his ‘timidity, complacency and intellectual dishonesty.

“While both men told ‘The Post’ that the assertions could accurately be attributed to them, the article should have credited the ‘Caravan’ when it used or paraphrased the remarks. The article has been updated,” said the correction.

Earlier in the day, the Prime Minister’s Office lodged a protest with “The Post” against the news report, for the journalist’s failure to accommodate the government’s version and use information published in an Indian magazine eight months ago. The article, which trigged angry reaction within the government and the Congress described Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a “tragic figure” and “a dithering, ineffectual bureaucrat presiding over a deeply corrupt government.”

Rebutting the article published in the US daily on Wednesday, the PMO said the write-up was “one-sided assessment” of Singh.

“Despite all lines of conversations open, you never got in touch with us for our side of the story though you regularly talk to me about information from the PMO. We do not complain about criticism of the government which is a journalist's right,” Pankaj Pachauri, PM’s Communications Adviser, said in his letter to Simon Denyer, author of the report and India bureau chief of The Post.

Denyer, however, remained unfazed by the PMO’s rebuttal. “I stand by the story,” he said in his reply, posted on the website of the US daily along with PMO’s rebuttal.

He said he had requested for an interview with the Prime Minister on three occasions. He had also requested for an interview with PM’s advisor T K A Nair and principal secretary Pulok Chatterji.

Accepting that Denyer’s interview request was declined, the PMO, however, contended that an e-mail reply to his request clearly stated the interview was declined till the Monsoon Session of the Parliament.

“At that stage the Monsoon Session of Parliament had not even begun. In any case my story touches on the fact that Parliament has been adjourned every day throughout the current session by opposition calls for the PM to resign, which is a story I felt should be told, interview or not,” Denyer said countering the charge.

Singh’s former media adviser Sanjaya Baru complained that his eight-month old quote from an Indian Magazine (Caravan) was "rehashed and used" in the article.

Denyer quoted Baru as saying that Singh had become an object of ridicule and endured the worst period in his life. Baru’s assertion first appeared in the Caravan magazine last year. “I spoke to Baru personally on the telephone during the reporting for the story. He confirmed that these sentiments were accurate,” Denyer contended.

The Post used an old quote of historian Ramachandra Guha in the same magazine. Guha was quoted as saying that Singh was handicapped by his “timidity, complacency and intellectual dishonesty.”

Singh will go down in history as India’s first Sikh prime minister and the country’s third-longest-serving premier, but also as someone who did not know when to retire, Guha said.