Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's COVID-19 news briefings could get more politically intense in the coming days.
Mr. Vijayan said attempts by a section of the media to tarnish him and his office at the behest of their ‘handlers’ could compel him to use the widely watched news briefings about the daily pandemic situation to answer political charges.
The Chief Minister had stated that nobody should accuse him of having shied away from answering questions by journalists. The tirade of "false charges" against the government had compelled Mr. Vijayan to review the stance that he would not discuss politics at COVID-19 news briefings.
The Congress has attempted to counter Mr. Vijayan by making his "repeated assaults on journalistic freedom" a political talking point.
KPCC president Mullappally Ramachandran set the ball rolling on Sunday by accusing Mr. Vijayan of having attempted to browbeat the media into submission.
He said Mr Vijayan's "assault on independent media" reflected the mindset of the CPI(M) which did not see any moral wrong in assassinating political opponents in cold blood.
The Chief Minister was inherently disdainful of independent media. He had infamously shooed them away from government meetings. He did not want the press to reflect the truth.
Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala criticised Mr. Vijayan "for using" the widely broadcast COVID-19 news conference as a high-profile platform to berate opponents and push political propaganda.
The war of words over journalistic freedom and reporting ethics came against the backdrop of Mr. Vijayan's repeated criticism of the "relentless attempt" by "some sections" of the media to unfairly tie his office with the UAE-consulate-linked gold smuggling scandal.
Mr. Vijayan maintained that covert forces afraid to criticise the government straightforwardly had intrigued with a "syndicate" in the media to tarnish his office.
A group that had vowed to commit suicide if a person of Mr. Vijayan's political background occupied the Chief Minister’s chair had recruited the media cabal, Mr. Vijayan had asserted recently.
The group, through misleading television news scrolls, talk shows, and print headlines had attempted to draw an equivalency between the previous "scandal-tainted" Congress government and the LDF rule, he had said repeatedly.
The Chief Minister had faced a barrage of questions from media persons over the past two weeks on the "close links" of his former Principal Secretary M. Sivasankar with Swapna Suresh, the second accused in the gold smuggling case, including her appointment as an employee in the government's Space Park project.