From Manila to the Moon and a lot in between: Bhaskar's story is the story of journalism in the past seven decades.
Published Aug 07, 2023 | 10:00 AM ⚊ Updated Aug 12, 2023 | 10:13 AM
The cover of 'The Changing Mediascape'.
At the insistence of senior editors at the Malayalam daily Madhyamam, and its weekly magazine, veteran journalist BRP Bhaskar began penning his memoirs. The serialised memoirs were so popular that publisher DC Books compiled them into a book, Newsroom, that proved to be a bestseller.
The success of the autobiography in Malayalam led to calls for an English translation.
Bhaskar, now 91, however, preferred to pen a new work, as he felt Newsroom was “by and large, a book in the Kerala context. It addresses the last seven decades of Indian journalism through a Malayali viewpoint”.
The result is The Changing Mediascape (published by the Kerala Media Academy; ₹350), which Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin is slated to release at an event in Chennai on 8 September.
South First brings you excerpts of the book, with permission of the author and publisher.
As I look back on my 70 years as a journalist, what strikes me most is the enormous change in the media landscape to which I was a witness during this period.
When I stepped into journalism, the Indian media scene was simple. The print, dominated by daily newspapers, was its biggest and most important element. Then there was the radio.
Both had come in the colonial period, the newspaper through private initiative and the radio under government auspices.
In the West, the press and democracy may be said to have grown up together. As early as in the 19th century the US Congress and the British House of Commons, recognising the role newspapers were playing as means of mass
communication, allowed their representatives into the halls where they conducted their deliberations so that they could watch the proceedings and inform the public about them.
Edmund Burke identified the press as an emerging political force. Pointing to the Press Gallery of the Commons, he said there sat the fourth estate which was probably more powerful than the other three. The Church and the nobility, which counted among the three estates of the realm at one time, suffered serious erosion of authority as feudalism declined. The press then became more important than them as a countervailing force against temporal power.
Hicky’s Bengal Gazette or the Original Calcutta General Advertiser, a weekly published during 1780-82 from Calcutta (now Kolkata), the capital of British India, was India’s first newspaper. Its single copy price was Re.1, which was no pittance at that time. It sold about 400 copies each week.
India was conquered bit by bit by three separate armies under the East India Company’s offices at Calcutta, Bombay (now Mumbai) and Madras (now Chennai). It was only after the Mutiny of 1857, which Indians regard as the First War of Independence, that the British government assumed responsibility for the administration of the colonial possessions.
Hicky had an uneasy relationship with the East India Company, which the people under its rule respectfully referred to as the Honourable Company or Company Bahadur. When he wrote about corruption by Governor-General Warren Hastings and Company officials, they had him jailed on charges of libel. The Company also launched a newspaper of its own.
Hicky managed to bring out the paper even when he was in prison! The Company then seized his types and printing press.
Hicky’s bitter experience did not deter ambitious Indians from venturing into the risky newspaper business. When
critical voices emerged in the fledgling Bengali press, the colonial administration introduced a harsh new law applicable only to vernacular newspapers.
Two brothers who were running a Bengali paper named Amrit Bazar Patrika switched to English overnight to get out of its clutches.
Rajyasamacharam, published from Illikkunnu, near Thalassery, from 1847 to 1850 is said to be the first Malayalam
newspaper. Hermann Gundert, a German missionary of the Basel Evangelical Mission Society, was its editor.
The people of Kerala remember him for his manifold services to Malayalam language and literature. He wrote a book on Malayalam grammar, produced a Malayalam-English dictionary and translated the Bible into Malayalam.
An issue of Rajyasamacharam, produced on a litho press, consisted of eight sheets 51⁄2 inches by 81⁄2 inches in size. It gave information of general interest on various subjects. More importantly, it spoke up against caste discrimination.
The rulers of princely states differed in their approach to newspapers. When Kandathil Varghese Mappila, the founder of Malayala Manorama, sought permission to start the newspaper, the Maharaja of Travancore not only granted permission but also allowed it to use the royal emblem.
Mulk Raj Saraf, of Jammu, who had worked on Lala Lajpat Rai’s Urdu daily, Vande Mataram, published from Lahore, wrote to the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir seeking permission to start a newspaper. He got a reply saying His Highness did not feel the need for a newspaper in the state.
The early days of the press in every Indian language is a fascinating story that is yet to be told fully. In the final phase of the colonial period, there were two kinds of English newspapers in India’s big cities: British-owned newspapers which generally shared the political and economic interests of the colonial power and Indian-owned newspapers, many of them sympathetic to the nationalist cause even if they were not able to spell it out.
In Calcutta and Bombay, the main commercial centres, two British-owned newspapers, The Statesman and The Times of India respectively, were the market leaders. In Madras, to begin with, The Hindu and The Mail, which was British-owned, were competing evening papers. During World War II The Hindu turned a morning paper in the city. The change was dictated by censorship delays. The source of all war stories was the British news agency Reuters. It sent the war reports, after clearance by the British censors in London, to its subsidiary, the Associated Press of India. The reports were subject to further censorship by British Indian censors, in the light of their own sensibilities. The re-censored reports reached newspaper offices too late for inclusion in the edition which should be out by evening.
When the British moved the capital from Calcutta to Delhi, The Statesman started an edition there but the largest
newspaper in the city was The Hindustan Times, which was started by the Akalis. Later Pandit Madan Mohan Malavya, who was active in both the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha, got control of it.
The World War brought the British and Indian newspaper streams together. Rather, the colonial administration made sure that both helped in the war effort. Some very nationalistic newspapers stopped publication as they did not want to submit to censorship. The government encouraged the other newspapers to set up a national body to cooperate with it. Thus was born the All-India Newspaper Editors’ Conference. Its first President was Kasturi Srinivasan, editor of The Hindu, a newspaper with a nationalist record. On one occasion, angered by an editorial of the paper, the government had ordered it to furnish a security deposit of Rs. 5,000. The Hindu deposited the money and followed it up with a stirring editorial in which it vowed to continue its fight.
Two years after the war, the British divided India and quit.
Within five years, India framed its Constitution, and held the first general election under universal adult suffrage. In this period, all British-owned newspapers except The Statesman fell into Indian hands. Big business houses brought into their stables the British-owned newspapers as well as Indian-owned ones which were up for grabs.
As a result, a large section of the press came under Big Business control. The Times of India and allied publications became part of the Dalmia-Jain group, and The Hindustan Times became part of the Birla empire.
The Indian Federation of Working Journalists, a newly formed trade union, voiced its concern over this development. The first Press Commission, chaired by Justice GS Rajadhyaksha, looked into this matter and made a recommendation to immunise the Editor against interference by the owners in their day-to-day working. The Commission recognised the owner’s right to lay down the paper’s policy. It said when an Editor was appointed, the owner must give him a charter outlining the paper’s policy. He should not be removed during the contract period unless he deviated from the agreed policy.
The government did not enact legislation to give effect to this recommendation. It made laws to give effect to
recommendations with regard to service conditions of journalists. One law provided for appointment of wage boards periodically to revise salary scales of both journalists and non-journalists. These laws are still on the statute book but governments have lost interest in their implementation. Also, the journalists’ movement has lost the strength to demand that the laws be implemented. This illustrates the differing nature of the changes that have taken place: Some are good, some are bad, and some indifferent.
It was amid the changes of the early 1950s that I decided to become a journalist. Government service was a favoured job option then, as it is now. But I could not imagine myself as a part of the government at any level. One factor that led me to journalism was my close association with a few journalists who were on the staff of Navabharatham, a Malayalam paper which my father, AK Bhaskar, ran when I was in college. My father’s plan for me was a life in bureaucracy. But I couldn’t think of myself as a part of the governmental machinery.
My professor of Mathematics at college, Balakrishna Sharma, had taught at a college at Hyderabad, Sind, before
Partition and worked as part-time correspondent of the Associated Press of India (API) there. On learning of my
interest in journalism, he said: “Mathematical training will help you in journalism, both disciplines demand precision.”
Setting my eyes on a wide horizon, I thought of a career in English language journalism. I did not see the newspaper as a power centre. I saw it as an institution which should serve as the eyes and ears of the society.
The two English dailies that circulated in my part of the country were The Hindu and The Indian Express, both
published from Madras. No newspaper advertised their staff requirements. Those wishing to join a newspaper had to establish contacts with the owner or the Editor. I happened to know G Ramachandran, founder of Gandhigram in Tamil Nadu, who was associated with The Indian Express earlier. When my father learnt that I was in touch with him to explore the possibility of joining that paper, he said if I was determined to go into
journalism, The Hindu was a better option, and he would talk to its Editor, Kasturi Srinivasan, on his next visit to Madras.
The Hindu was launched as a weekly in 1878 by a band of young nationalists, led by G Subramania Iyer. In 1889
it became a daily. S Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, an affluent lawyer, who was associated with it as legal correspondent,
acquired control of the struggling paper in 1905. He put it on a sound basis by boosting both circulation and
advertisement revenue. While remaining close to the rising nationalist movement, under him the paper adopted the ways of the quality press in Britain. Although the country’s size and the limited transport facilities did not allow nationwide circulation of a daily, The Hindu’s name spread far and wide. On visits to India from South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi travelled to Madras to meet the Editor of The Hindu and enlisted his support to the cause of Indians abroad. It was in The Hindu that Jawaharlal Nehru wrote his impressions of the Soviet Union after his first visit to that country in 1927.
Kasturi Srinivasan was kind enough to take me as an editorial trainee. When I reported to him, he sent me to
CR Krishnaswami, the senior-most of the paper’s three News Editors. He asked PK Balasubramaniam, one of the three Batch Leaders (the official designation of Chief Sub-Editors in The Hindu then), to take charge of me. PKB (everyone was known in the office by his initials) offered me a chair and said I could sit there, observe everything, and learn.
The Hindu’s newsroom was a big hall. At one end sat the three News Editors. From there, they had a commanding view of the hall.
Apart from the General Desk, which processed national, foreign, city and regional news, there was a Sports Desk and a Commercial Desk also in the hall. The Chief Reporter and other city reporters also worked from there.
The Hindu had a high reputation for accuracy. Spelling and grammar mistakes were few. Credit for this was due to the elaborate proofing system followed in those days. The first proof of all news items sent to the press was given to everyone at the desk. After making the corrections marked by the proof-readers, a fresh set of proofs was sent to the copy editors concerned. At that stage, he could make changes in the report if necessary. Then a new set of proofs, marked Final, was taken. This, too, went to all desk hands. All three News Editors also got all the proofs. The system gave everyone at the desk the opportunity to see each news in its first and final form. Of course, the Printer’s devil could not be totally avoided.
As a trainee, my working hours were from 10 am to 5 pm. I spent the time observing everything and trying to learn, as I was told to do. This went on for a month. I then told PKB, “I have not done any work so far. Shouldn’t I start working?”
Immediately, he picked up a bunch of papers from the pile in front of him and gave it to me to edit. It was a cable from the Colombo correspondent. It opened with these words: “Prime Minister Senanayake may die any moment. Obituary follows.”
The man awaiting death was Don Stephen Senanayake, the first Prime Minister of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He had fallen from horseback when he went for a ride the previous morning and lost consciousness.
Government doctors were attending on him. The World Health Organisation asked one of its teams of doctors, which happened to be in Colombo, to join them. India and Pakistan sent neurosurgeons to Colombo. Britain also offered the services of an expert.
Telegraph authorities used to allow abbreviations and combining of words, known as cablese, so that newspapers
could reduce the number of words and save cable charges. My main task was to eliminate the cablese and render the obituary in proper English. I did that and handed over the edited version to PKB. He went through it and appeared to be satisfied with the final product.
I left the office in the evening with the satisfaction that I had finally started working. But I did not expect the obituary I edited to go into the morning edition. For, PTI reported in the evening that there was a slight improvement in Senanayake’s condition.
But Senanayake died that day, and the obituary appeared, along with the news of his death, in the morning paper. The obituary provides an opportunity to evaluate a person’s contributions in their totality. The write-ups on Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi that the Time magazine published when they died are, in my view, examples of good obituaries.
As a champion of the American cause, the magazine was not quite well disposed towards these leaders in their lifetime. On their death, it graciously acknowledged some of their qualities which it had glossed over previously.
The Hindu news desk in Chennai had a hierarchical set-up which could match that of any governmental bureaucracy.
The new entrant’s first assignment was to prepare the Today’s Engagements column of the next day’s City edition, drawing material from letters or notices received from organisers of public functions.
The feature had three sections — Religious Discourses, Entertainments and Miscellaneous, in that order. All religious discourses were of Hindus, by Hindus, for Hindus. In recent years I have seen in the paper material relating to Islam and Christianity on occasions like Eid and Christmas.
The second section listed music and dance concerts and other entertainment programmes. The last section mentioned other public events.
For the trainee there was no relief from the drudgery of Today’s Engagements until the next trainee arrived, which
could be a year later. At that stage, he would move up the ladder and become a member of the team that handled news from the southern states, which generally arrived by ordinary post.
As one moved up further, one got the chance to edit City copy filed by reporters in Madras, then Foreign news and finally National news.
While at the regional desk, I received a report from the paper’s correspondent at Mercara (now Madikeri), capital of the small state of Coorg, which was later merged in Karnataka and became the Kodagu district. It said Dhanalakshmi, aged 18, had been living without taking food or water for a long time and was able to do all the work a girl of her age normally did at home.
I did not believe it was true. I had completed one year’s training and become a regular Sub-Editor only a little
earlier. Someone at that level had severe limitations on deciding what to print and what not to. I conveyed my scepticism to my Chief Sub-Editor. He asked me to talk to the News Editor.
I talked to the senior-most among them, CR Krishnaswami. It was to him that we normally turned for solutions to
problems. I showed him the report from Mercara and said I couldn’t believe it. To my surprise, he asked me to publish it. CM Ramachandra who sent the report was a good reporter, and what he had written must be correct, he said.
The Hindu used to carry classified advertisments on the front page in those days. All news items, howsoever startling, were put on inside pages under single-column headlines. That was how even news of Gandhi’s assassination was carried in 1948. That report appeared under a three-deck single-column headline, which was the most that was permissible at that time. The next day, making partial amends, the paper gave the report of the funeral at Rajghat a banner headline but the story still did not earn space on the front page.
I told CRK that if we believed the Mercara report, we must give it prominence and publish it with the girl’s photograph. “Let the news go today,” he said. “I shall send a telegram to Ramachandra to send her photo. We can use it with a follow-up story.”
Most reluctantly I edited the report, and it appeared in all editions distributed the next morning. When Dhanalakshmi’s photograph arrived, it was published with a report that said people from far and near were visiting Mercara to see her. The Hindu report on Dhanalakshmi was reproduced by several Indian and foreign newspapers, including The Times of London, thanks to the newspaper’s high credibility. Dhanalakshmi attained worldwide fame as the Wonder Girl of Coorg.
Among those who travelled to Mercara to meet Dhanalakshmi was Justice ASP Ayyar, a member of the Indian Civil Service and judge of the Madras High Court. After talking to her, he said the girl appeared to have acquired
ancient Indian saints’ ability to sustain themselves on air. India was experiencing acute food shortage at that time.
In the Lok Sabha, a member said that if we could find out how Dhanalakshmi was able to sustain herself without eating, we might have a solution to the problem of food scarcity. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said he would ask the Bangalore Medical College to examine the girl and provide a report.
On instructions from the Central government, Dhanalakshmi was admitted to the Medical College Hospital for investigation. One night hospital authorities reported that they had caught her brother while he was trying to smuggle some food items into her room. That brought the curtain down on the story of the Wonder Girl of Coorg.
I had learnt much from CR Krishnaswami. I still hold him in high esteem. He came to the office every morning with a copy of the day’s Hindu, marking all mistakes his eagle eyes had spotted. On the margins he indicated what was wrong with the report and how the matter should have been presented.
It was his immense faith in a promising young reporter that resulted in his misjudgement on the Dhanalakshmi story. On another occasion, I was able to prevent him from making a similar misjudgement.
When Macmillan released Frank Moraes’ biography of Nehru, K Balaraman, The Hindu’s New York-based correspondent, who covered the United Nations and the United States, filed a brief report. It ended with the observation that the book contained some information which was not known previously. To illustrate the point, Balaraman wrote that Moraes mentioned how Nehru had handed over an empty envelope to the Governor-General, Lord Mountbatten, on 15 August 1947, saying it contained the list of the ministers to be sworn in later in the day.
I was editing the report. I was already aware of the story of the empty envelope. But Balaraman had a reputation for infallibility in The Hindu office.
I told CRK I was aware of this story and so this could not be the first time it was appearing in print. I sought his permission to delete that part from the report.
“Don’t cut it,” CRK told me. “Balaraman won’t make a mistake.” I went back to my seat and started trying to figure out where I could have read about that empty envelope. I went to the office library and rifled through the pages of one book after another. I located the story in Mission with Mountbatten by his press officer, Alan Campbell Johnson.
I took the book to CRK and showed him the relevant portion. He then let me edit out the last paragraph of Balaraman’s despatch. The Hindu had serialised excerpts from the book a few years earlier.
Manila had a number of vibrant newspapers. On taking up residence in Quezon City, the university town where I had to spend at least 10 months, I read the two leading morning newspapers, The Manila Times and The Manila Chronicle, regularly for a few days before settling for one of them.
Both papers had extensive coverage of foreign developments, which was one of my primary requirements.
I found the Times more conservative and pro-American than the Chronicle. I learnt that the owner of the Chronicle was a sugar baron. The Philippine sugar lobby was unhappy with the US as it was buying more sugar from Cuba, and the Chronicle’s displeasure on this account occasionally found expression in its columns.
I grew fond of the Chronicle’s three regular columnists — IP Solionco, who was also its Editor, Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil and Ernesto O Granada. Their columns appeared in the above order, one below another, in the last two columns of the editorial page. I decided that the Chronicle would be my paper.
One morning, I walked into the Chronicle office and told the receptionist I was a visiting journalist and would like to meet Mr Solionco. He said Mr Solionco was on a visit to the Soviet Union.
“In that case, can I see Mrs Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil?” I asked. “Mrs Nakpil doesn’t come to the office,” he said. “She sends the column from home.”
“How about Ernesto O Granada?” I asked. He looked at the wall clock and said, “Ernie must be coming any time now. Would you like to wait?”
When Ernie Granada came, the receptionist told him I was waiting for him. I told him I was a journalist from India. He then led me to his room. After we had talked for a while, Ernie asked me to come to the National Press Club in the evening. “I’ll be there at 7 pm. As a visiting journalist, you are entitled to guest membership.”
It was the beginning of a great friendship. Apart from being a columnist, Ernie, as an Assistant Editor, wrote editorials. On India’s Republic Day and Independence Day, he regularly wrote editorials applauding the country’s progress.
When President Garcia said he planned to visit India, he asked in his column, “What can President Garcia talk to India’s President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who is a philosopher, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who is a statesman?”
I asked Ernie why he ran down Garcia in this manner. “These people know nothing about what is going on in the
world. They need to be reminded about it,” he replied.
During a short break in academic activity after the first semester, the Governor of Sorsogon invited the 15 exchange scholars at the University of the Philippines to visit his province. The day before we were to leave Manila, I got a message from Rose, a young lady working in the office of Defence Secretary Jesus Vargas, asking me to see her before leaving for Sorsogon.
She was a friend of Juan R Francisco, a Filipino who was working for a PhD at the University of Madras on a Government of India scholarship. I had made friends with Juan before leaving for the Philippines. Rose was one of several persons to whom he had written introducing me.
Rose told me that a Filipino student of the university, who was already known to me, would be with us on this trip. She advised me to be on guard as he was joining the group as a nominee of the military intelligence unit.
At the provincial capital, the Governor warmly welcomed us and handed over each one of us to a school teacher from a different town. We were to spend two days with the teachers’ families. Thereafter we were to move together as a group, visiting one town after another. At each place, the Mayor held a reception for us, which was well attended.
I spent the first two days in the town of Prieto Diaz on the Pacific coast as the guest of a lady teacher. When we met at the Press Club on my return from Sorsogon, Ernie asked me about the tour. I told him it gave us an opportunity to get an idea of small-town life in the Philippines. In the course of our conversation, I happened to mention Rose’s warning to me about the intelligence watch on us.
Ernie referred to this in his column. He questioned the propriety of a military intelligence watch over exchange
scholars who had to be treated as the country’s guests. The Asia Foundation, which was later publicly identified as a CIA conduit, was one of the bodies funding the Ramon Magsaysay exchange scholar programme.
Participants in the programme from all Asian countries except India and Indonesia were selected by the US missions in those countries. The two non-aligned countries made their own arrangements for the selection of scholars.
When the US sent marines to Lebanon there was a protest demonstration outside the US embassy in Manila, which was apparently organised by a left-wing group. The embassy took photographs of the demonstrators and found that a University of the Philippines graduate who had been given a visa to go to the US for higher studies was among them. Embassy officials went to his house and cancelled the visa stamped on his passport.
Following this incident, the chairman of the Committee on Anti-Filipino Activities (CAFA), a counterpart of the Un-
American Activities Committee in the US, scheduled an inquiry into alleged Communist infiltration in the state university’s campus. The student whose American visa was cancelled was summoned to be examined as the first witness.
When the CAFA proceedings opened, Ernie Granada was in the press gallery. The committee’s chairman, in a rabble-rousing speech, held forth on the grave danger of Communist infiltration to which the 16,000 students of the prestigious university were exposed.
Pointing to the student who had been called to testify, he said, “Suppose he is a Communist …” From the press gallery, Ernie said, “Suppose he is not a Communist …” The chairman tried to ignore the interruption and
continued. But Ernie followed up every poser of the chairman with a counter-poser. The chairman was harping on the Communist danger. Ernie was pointing out that the CAFA was conducting a witch-hunt.
Finding the going tough, the chairman adjourned the hearing. It was never resumed. A Congressional committee has the power to punish anyone obstructing its work. CAFA members did not invoke the power as they realised that Ernie was making a valid point. The US embassy, too, realised that its knee-jerk reaction was uncalled for. It reinstated the cancelled visa and let the student go to the US for studies.
Needless to say, only a journalist with impeccable credentials could have done what Ernie did that day and got
away with it.
During the summer holidays, four of us, two Indians and two Sri Lankans, spent four weeks in Japan. I was impressed by the progress made by that country, which had been devastated by two atomic bombs, in the 14 years since the end of the war. Anti-Japanese sentiments were very strong in the Philippines in view of the bitter
experiences of war-time occupation.
I had a friend, Edilberto N Alegre, whose elder brother was a young Filipino officer who had been killed in the
war. I told Eddie if there was an opportunity to go to Japan, he shouldn’t miss it. As it happened, a social service group was sending two Filipinos to Japan for a month-long tour. Eddie applied and was selected. But by the time he got the foreign exchange permit (which in that country had to be obtained to be eligible to apply for a passport), he realised that he should take a ship the next day to reach Japan in time to participate in the programme.
I thought Ernie Granada might be able to help him get a passport quickly. But he was not in the office, house, or his regular haunts like the Press Club. I found him at the Chronicle office the next morning around 11 o’ clock. I told Ernie my friend Eddie had to board a ship bound for Japan at 4 pm and asked if he could help him get a passport. Ernie immediately gave a letter of introduction to a friend in the Foreign Office, who not only issued a passport immediately but also spoke to the Japanese Ambassador to kindly grant him a visa without any delay. Eddie was able to take the boat.
Eddie came back as an admirer of Japan. A year later, he went back on a Japanese scholarship to study the language. After learning the language, he translated a couple of Japanese works into English.
Friendship with powerful people in the Foreign Office did not persuade Ernie to soften his criticism of the Foreign
Ministry’s working. In reply to a question about Ernie’s criticism, an exasperated Foreign Secretary told newsmen one day, “I am waiting to see Ernie Granada to punch him in the nose.” Ernie closed the next day’s column with these words, “For the information of the Foreign Secretary, I am available in the Chronicle office from 11 am to 5 pm every day.”
Inevitably, Ernie Granada infuriated President Ferdinand Marcos more than any earlier President. When students, workers, and peasants rose against the corrupt regime, Marcos accused the Communists of using the protests to create trouble. A diary he kept at the time, which is now in the public domain, mentions a 1970 dinner meeting with Chronicle owner Eugenio Lopez and members of the paper’s editorial board. On that occasion, Ernie Granada told him not to ignore the voice of the students, which was the voice of the people, and not to throw the issue into the hands of the Americans.
Marcos wrote that Lopez was arrogant. Three weeks later, Marcos wrote, “Manila Chronicle columnist Ernesto
Granada’s language is offensive. He writes as Lopez demands. He blames me for the riots. He alleges that I paid goons to infiltrate the demonstrations, destroy property, and thus turn people against the protesters.”
Marcos also recorded that his mother had written to say that a friend of Lopez’s had informed her that Lopez had paid some people to kill him and that he believed it. The diary entries of the period indicate that Marcos was
already thinking of declaring martial law and cracking down on the protestors. The crackdown came two and a half years later. Newspapers, including the Manila Times and the Chronicle, were shut down. Many were jailed and some were killed by the army.
Ernie Granada’s name was on the list of persons to be arrested but soldiers who went to take him into custody did not find him in his house or office. He remained underground and stayed in touch with some close friends. One of them advised him to surrender at a police station in Manila as the army might bump him off if he fell into its hands.
On the first day of the crackdown, the government announced the arrest of 97 persons in connection with alleged Communist plots. They included three senators and several journalists and activists. In three months, the number of arrests rose to more than 8,000.
Amando Doronila, who had succeeded Solionco as the Editor of the Chronicle, was among those arrested. He and
I were together at the month-long seminar of Asian Editors organised by the American Press Institute three years earlier.
The CIA reportedly intervened to secure his release. Marcos released him. From the prison he was taken to the airport and put on a flight to Australia. He worked with an Australian paper until the fall of the Marcos regime.
Ernie Granada came out of jail, his health shattered. He did not survive long thereafter. He was a martyr to the cause of fearless journalism.
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Apollo 11 spacecraft took off from the Cape Kennedy Space Centre on 16 July 1969 with three crew members. Its mission was to accomplish man’s first landing on the moon.
The Soviet Union had opened a new era in space exploration on 4 October 1957 with the launch of a small craft named Sputnik (Russian word for satellite) in a low orbit around the earth. It was the first man-made earth satellite. For three weeks it sent radio signals to earth. Then its batteries ran out. After orbiting silently for some more weeks, it fell back into the earth’s atmosphere and was burnt up.
The success of the mission encouraged the Soviet Union to launch Sputnik 2 on 3 November 1957 with Laika, a dog, on board. It was the first living being to go into space from the earth. Laika did not return. At that stage, the space programme did not involve plans to bring the craft and the passengers safely back to the earth.
On 12 April 1961, the Soviet Union shot into space another craft, named Vostok, with Yuri Gagarin, a 27-year-old air force pilot, on board. After circling the globe just once, he returned safely to be hailed as the first man to go into space.
Since no smooth landing facility was available, Gagarin had to parachute himself to Earth. He landed in a Soviet village. It was the time of the Cold War. The Soviet Union’s clear lead in space exploration was a matter of concern for the US leadership. Less than a month after Gagarin’s flight, on 5 May 1961, NASA sent Alan B Shepard into space. He did not orbit the earth. His was a suborbital flight. Modest as the mission was, its success encouraged US President John F Kennedy, who was determined to win the space race, to announce plans to land a man on the moon within a decade.
UNI had no correspondent in the US in those days. We were distributing news reports from the Associated Press and reconciled ourselves to relying on it for coverage of the moon landing mission also. As the date set for the mission approached, we gathered that, since the entire world media that wanted to cover the historic event could not be accommodated in the Media Centre at Cape Kennedy, NASA was setting up another Press Centre in Paris where it would make available all material relating to the mission at the same time as in the US. We also learnt that the US embassy in New Delhi would make arrangements to accommodate an Indian news agency correspondent at the Paris centre. We assumed the embassy would give the Paris slot to UNI as the other Indian agency, PTI, had resident correspondents in both the US and France. But the embassy’s choice fell on PTI.
As soon as we learnt about this, our Editor and General Manager, GG Mirchandani, dashed off a letter to the embassy outlining the reasons why UNI should have been accommodated in the Paris centre. In just two hours, the embassy replied, saying it was requesting NASA to accommodate UNI, too, in Paris.
Mirchandani decided to send Deputy General Manager TV Rajagopal, the senior-most journalist of UNI, to Paris. In view of UNI’s budget constraints, Rajagopal had to keep the daily wordage from there at a low level.
Every day the AP distributed a list of tasks the Apollo 11 crew members were to perform the next day. We circulated it to our subscribers in India. Many of them published it in the morning edition under the heading “In Space Today.”
As the crew performed each task, the AP sent a report on it. Everything went on smoothly, according to the schedule.
The AP provided advance reports on important space events. These were issued with an embargo, which mentioned the time at which it could be published. It also cautioned newspapers to publish it only after making sure that the scheduled event had taken place.
The practice of distributing reports in advance with an embargo, which news agencies worldwide follow, helps newspapers in the coverage of events that take place close to the edition time by enabling them to typeset and proof-read reports and keep them ready to use after the event took place.
According to the schedule released by NASA, on Sunday, 20 July 1969, two Apollo 11 crew members, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, would leave the spacecraft in Eagle, a module attached to it, and land on the moon’s surface at a place named Sea of Tranquillity at 4.14 pm US Eastern Standard Time. That corresponded to 1.44 am on Monday, 21 July, in India. That is, around the time Indian newspapers close the pages of the morning editions.
Normally, I didn’t go to office on Sundays. Deputy News Editor KPK Kutty would be there. But this was not just another Sunday. I decided to go to the office in the afternoon and stay there until the big event was over.
Judging by the way AP was handling the moon mission coverage, I was sure it would provide an embargoed advance report on the landing. Our man in Paris, Rajagopal, had not been fling advance reports. The report that he sent after the event would not reach in time for the morning editions.
I, therefore, decided to prepare an advance UNI report on man’s landing on the moon and distribute it with an embargo so that when the night shift started work on the morning edition it had before it a UNI option too.
I went into the room of the General Manager’s secretary, which was unoccupied on Sundays, and worked on his
typewriter. I thought it best to avoid technical details and focus on the historical significance of the event. The opening paragraphs of the advance report that I prepared, under a Paris dateline and TV Rajagopal’s byline, read as follows:
Man is on the Moon. “Reaching for the limitless expanse of space, Man today arrived on the Moon, Earth’s closest neighbour and satellite, which has beckoned him nightly throughout the ages.
“It was the most glorious moment yet in the saga of Man. He had broken out of the confines of the planet to which he had been bound since birth for his first look at the Universe from a celestial body.
“It was yet another thrilling act in the cosmic drama which began a dozen years ago.
“Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr, the newest heroes of the space age, landed on the waterless Sea of Tranquillity on the Moon’s cratered surface, ready to set foot on it – and walk into the Hall of Fame.
“For the two men, who went ‘in peace for all mankind,’ it was the fulfilment of a dream countless generations had dreamt, of a commitment President John F Kennedy had made when he declared having a man on Moon this decade and bringing him back safely a national goal of the United States.
“The climactic point of the seven-day voyage to the Moon and back came at 0144 IST today when Eagle, the fragile, spidery lunar module of Apollo 11, landed on the Moon with Armstrong and Aldrin on board. It was the first time a manned craft had made a landing outside Earth.”
This was the lead story in many Indian newspapers on the morning of July 21. Some of them took the liberty of changing the dateline to The Moon. One made it Sea of Tranquillity. It is the standard rule of the newsroom in newspapers as well as news agencies that no report should go out without being edited. I gave the moon story to Kutty to edit and release to newspapers with the customary embargo. When we worked together, it was to him that I gave for editing whatever I wrote. After editing the copy, Kutty told me he had misgivings about circulating an advance report. What if something went wrong, he asked.
I told him the AP was sure to file an advance story. Would it be fair on our part not to distribute it? He agreed that we could not hold back from our subscribers an AP report that was going at the same time to newspapers in other countries.
(Corrigendum: The copy earlier inadvertently said Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan would launch the book in Chennai on 7 August. It has been corrected).
