Apologies and Explanations

Nishant Kauntia, Batch of 2018

Now that the dust of the elections is settled, some matters need to be addressed. A few days ago, Manasi Rao wrote a response to an article published on The Edict, and criticized us, The Edict’s Managing Editors, for being irresponsible with our journalism. I consider it my responsibility to respond to the serious concerns that Manasi has raised regarding the journalistic practices of The Edict.

Listed below are the various counts on which Manasi has criticized the decisions of The Edict, and our responses to each one of them.

1. We tagged Manasi Rao’s Facebook profile to the article

When referring to Manasi in the article, ‘Resignation of a Representative’, we linked her Facebook profile to her name. This was something new that we had started doing with our articles, and it seemed harmless until we realized that it could make a healthy criticism seem like an antagonistic, personal attack on somebody’s public persona. I want to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to Manasi for the lack of professionalism displayed by us in this instance.

2. We invited Manasi to respond to the article on the Facebook Comments Section

After the article was published and shared on the Ashoka University Undergraduates Facebook group, a Managing Editor of The Edict commented ‘Manasi Rao, would love to know your opinion on this ’, or something to that effect. While this was an attempt to communicate The Edict’s commitment to providing both sides of the argument, choosing Facebook for such communication was a mistake on our part. The comment was deleted within hours of its posting.

3. The original article has been republished on a shady website

Since publication, the article ‘Resignation of a Representative’ has been edited in light of certain ambiguities. The original version of the article was taken and republished by a website epeak.in (who has also now republished Manasi’s response). As a media organization, we can only be held responsible for the content we host on our platform, but we also cannot ignore our role in the causal chain of events. Attempts made by The Edict to get the republished articles taken down have not been successful. We hope to work with Ashoka’s Media team to figure out a solution for this issue.

This has also raised concerns regarding The Edict’s content being accessible to anybody on the Internet, including future employees and graduate school admission panels. While we are sympathetic to Manasi’s concerns, we believe that when any student takes up the responsibility to represent the entire student body of Ashoka, they sign up for the public scrutiny of their decisions. For her specific situation, we have linked her response as the first line of the original article, so as to ensure that her perspective is not lost.

We have not yet encountered a compelling reason to restrict our reporting to members of the Ashoka community. On the contrary, The Edict remains a helpful resource for prospective students, parents and alumni who wish to keep up with Ashokan life and culture. Our writers also often link articles they have written for us in their resumes. These are a few reasons based on which we decided against restricting The Edict’s content to the current Ashoka community.

4. The Article was not fact-checked and cited properly

Manasi pointed out that the article had not been fact-checked properly, and we partly agree with her. The author referred to e-mails in which Manasi expressed that ‘the principle was not on her side’. This was not entirely accurate, and our fact checking in this instance was not up to the mark. Manasi only mentioned that there was a need for some legislation on the matter for future instances so that conflicts could be avoided, and the article has been updated in light of this information.

Another criticism was that her e-mails to the entire student body, referred to in the article, were not cited. The original article that quoted Manasi’s email mentioned the date of the e-mail. The quotes chosen from the email were chosen to present an accurate and charitable picture of her arguments. Since her quotes were not taken out of context or misleading in any way, we did not see the need to link the entire email. When Manasi insisted that the entire email be accessible, we arranged for that without any objection and within 10 minutes of her request.

Manasi also takes issue with the lack of citation to certain other emails about the matter, such as her communication with the Election Commission and the author’s communication with Dr. S.Y Quraishi, referred to in the article. These e-mails were not cited because they were not public in nature, and the author decided not to reveal any personal communication on the public forum, referring only to the parts of those e-mails relevant to the issue.

5. The article should not have been written by a past member of the AUEC

Manasi also takes issue with the author’s previous affiliation with the AUEC. She argues that the conflict of interest would render him unable to provide an objective, unbiased account of the debate regarding a house member’s resignation from their party. The article was not intended to provide an objective account of events, but a factual yet specific point of view. It is for this reason that the article is unambiguously listed under the ‘Opinions’ column of the newspaper, and carries a disclosure stating the author’s affiliation with the AUEC and that his views are personal, and not of The Edict. We do not see this as a serious concern, and stand by our editorial decision to publish this article by a former member of the AUEC.

6. The point of the article is to attack Manasi

This was the concern raised in Manasi’s response that hurt us the most. The Edict is strongly committed to not allowing any personal attacks, and fostering a sense of healthy, constructive criticism. The point of the article was to raise a red flag, and do so in the public eye, so that the House takes action to fix what the author thought was a loophole in our electoral system. Two day after the article was published, the HoR was going to take a vote on the amendment argued for in the article.

It was not possible to argue for this amendment without talking about the context in which it had (according to the author) previously been misused. Perhaps the tone of the article could have been more civil to all parties concerned, and we promise to strive for the same in our future endeavors.

I am grateful to Manasi for taking the effort to lay out the journalistic shortcomings of The Edict. We have been invested with the trust of the Ashokan community, and must be held accountable for the power that comes with that trust.

To that end, we encourage more Ashokans to hold us to higher standards and question us on the point, accuracy and consequences of the content we publish. In exchange, we promise that we will always be ready to lay out the reasoning behind the decisions we make, and will strive to be more responsible with your trust and our journalism.

Nishant Kauntia is the Editor-In-Chief of The Edict.