It's a bit unusual--a newspaper of the stature of 'The Hindu' to publish a first-lead, front-page retraction. Look at this morning's newspaper and you'll see what I'm referring to. A story on the investigations into the fake encounters' case, contributed by Neena Vyas ('The Hindu', May 5) under the caption "Geeta Johri report speaks of collusion of state government" prompted the Home Secretary of the Gujarat government to send a rebuttal. The gist of the response of the editor-in-chief of 'The Hindu' 
is that "The Hindu retracts its frontpaged assertion... We deeply regret these serious errors in a story that drew on documents we relied upon in good faith.We agree we should have verified the facts...before publishing the news stories."
For someone who's been a 'Hindu' reader all his life one can't remember the paper eating its words in a long time! Perhaps, if it leans less to the left, in an all too blatant fashion, these things wouldn't happen. It isn't the business of a newspaper to lean this way or that--just tell us the plain and simple truth without using either red or saffron lenses.
'The Hindu' has a good 'local' story on work commencing on the Seetaphalmandi-Malkajgiri section of the local train network, but keeps telling us, true to officialese, that 'works' will be completed by September and that SCR is taking up the 'works' at a cost of.... The paper also has a report worth mentioning on the third page on the 'face-to-face' programme conducted by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and a very well-written story on Pune (Anand Parthasarathy) becoming the first 'unwired' city in net terminology, in the country, ahead of Bangalore and Hyderabad.
As for the other newspapers, there's not much to write home about. 'The Munsif' continues to run its weekly cartoons lampooning MIM leaders, but what it needs is a more creative cartoonist.
- Saty: dioscuri.hyd@gmail.com
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