The right to know, the ideal behind media freedom, will be complete only if people have the right to live, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said.
Many were oblivious of that fact and it was not good for the country and its people, he said while opening the 80th anniversary celebrations of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] mouthpiece Deshabhimani here on Tuesday.
Deshabhimani was launched as a weekly by the undivided Communist Party of India on September 6, 1942 from Kozhikode. It was developed into a newspaper four years later.
Mr. Vijayan said efforts were being made to destroy the constitutional ideals of freedom, secularism, and socialism. The attempts were to put people’s unity and the country’s sovereignty in peril. “In this context, the country is looking up to the leftist alternative political model being put forth by Kerala... Extreme right-wing forces, however, are trying to weaken this model. We need to realise the danger before it is too late. It is the responsibility of leftist media organisations such as Deshabhimani to protect the alternative model,” he said.
Writer M.T. Vasudevan Nair, who was the chief guest at the event, said Deshabhimani had been serving people’s aspirations and trying to solve their problems over the years and hoped that it would continue to do so. Mr. Vijayan released a book chronicling the newspaper’s history.
