‘VRO caught while taking a Rs 1000 bribe’…breaking news. If the same happens with an MRO taking Rs 10,000, the news will be big breaking news in all the regional channels. We already know how the media intensifies the telecasts if a government employee is caught with lakhs of rupees in an ACB raid. This said, what would be the run down if IT department flash raided 35 properties of an industry giant who rose to fame as one of the multi-billionaires in the country? Top headlines, continuous news scrollings, special bulletins with analyses and what not! But this is not the scenario while the Income Tax (IT) Department conducted raids on 35 Megha Krishna Reddy-owned premises across the country. Except for two channels who gave a single breaking scrolling, all the local media remained mum. What is the reason behind the silence of Media, which is supposed to be the voice of the public raising the issues?
When the news of IT raids broke out, Megha Engineering Company’s PR team responded on a quick note with a press release and has sent it to all the media main offices. The press note claimed that it was just a routine inspection by IT officials which happens on a regular interval basis. With this, the two channels that covered the news so far also stopped telecasting the updates on the IT raids.
Krishna Reddy was rumoured to have cordial relationships with all the mainstream media heads and also that he had invested a lot in the respective industry. Adding to this, Megha Group has recently made close allies with both the governments of Telugu states bagging various huge contracts. This has apparently snubbed the media to remain safe side rather telecasting the raids. But what still remained a question was, why are the channels who once opposed the government remained mum? Besides a few web portals, none of the mainstream media dared to cover the news.
