imate boss. After all, both
of them were professionals who knew and understood the
law of libel and defamation. Lambert, flashing his
customary smile by way of indulging me, a novice in the
game of politics, said it was a condition of his
contract. Besides, what was the big deal? An editor
could just as well express his own viewpoint as that of
the owner. It wasn't a loss of freedom. We live and let live.

Reporters too

I thought about it and gradually came to the conclusion
that reporters also indulged in self-censorship. Facts
may appear to be sacred, but as a reporter I choose
them to slant a 'story' in a particular way. Moreover,
space in a newspaper is always limited, forcing me to
write to a certain word count, in effect compelling me
to sacrifice many 'facts'.

The above was true not only in Goa and Bombay where I
worked as a general reporter for The Indian Express
(1965-66) but also in Toronto where I worked as a copy
editor on the foreign desk of The Globe and Mail in
1975-76. The foreign editor would throw at me reams of
teletype copy from Reuters, Associated Press,
Agence-France Presse, and The New York Times News Service
on a current story, such as race riots in
Johannesburg, or post-revolution democracy woes in Portugal
or the Patty Hurst kidnapping by the Symbionese
Liberation Army in San Francisco, and ask me for a
10-inch column story. This required that I cut out a
lot of 'facts' from the 2000 words of wire copy and
shape a news story in about 500 words.

Going back to Goa, I remember the one-sided coverage
that Navhind Times carried during the month-long
campaign for the historic, first general elections held
on December 9, 1963. And I was part of it.

Now Vaikuntrao Dempo, younger brother of Vassantrao,
was a Congress candidate in the Pernem constituency.
The Dempo Brothers had made a substantial cash
contribution to the national Congress Party, in effect
buying a ticket for Vaikuntrao in the Goa elections.
The local Goa Pradesh Congress Committee, headed by
Purushottam Kakodkar, a freedom fighter and an apostle
of Mahatma Gandhi, was deluged with names of suitable
candidates. It was hard pressed to make a judicious
choice, a key problem being the candidate's vision of
the future of Goa.

At this time, after the 30-member Goa Legislative
Consultative Council, headed by Maj.-Gen. Candeth, the
mustachioed military governor, was dissolved and a writ
for the first democratic elections