Veteran journalist and Padma Shri awardee Patricia Mukhim from Meghalaya and also the editor of The Shillong Times, has resigned from Editors Guild of India (EGI).
According to reports, accused the body of “elitism” and cited that the EGI’s “complete silence” in speaking up for her, but responding with alacrity and “playing to the gallery to defend celebrity editors/anchors whose voices matter”, as the for her resignation.
In her resignation letter, Patricia Mukhim gave the example of how the journalists’ body responded with “alacrity”, and issued a statement condemning TV news anchor Arnab Goswami’s arrest but did not issue any statement in her case.
Last week, the Meghalaya High Court had refused to act over a police complaint filed against her for a Facebook post she had put out in July.
Mukhim claimed that she had briefed the top journalists’ body in detail about this case. “I now wish to resign from its membership. There are several reasons for doing so. First, as a journalist, I don’t belong to that august league of celebrity editors whose newspapers are widely read and web-based news portals are hugely popular,” she said in her letter.
“I come from the fringes both geographically and in terms of my own status in an association I consider hierarchical by its very composition. I had shared this High Court order with the Guild hoping that it would at least give out a statement condemning it but there was and has been complete silence from the executive,” she added.
“Ironically, the Guild responded with alacrity and issued a statement condemning Arnab Goswami’s arrest (a non-member), not on grounds of journalistic pursuits but on an abetment to suicide case. I see this as a classic case of the Guild playing to the gallery to defend celebrity editors/ anchors whose voices matter while choosing to deliberately ignore a plea (unstated) from one of its members,” Mukhim wrote in a strongly-worded letter to Seema Mustafa, the newly elected President of Editors Guild of India.