The Times of India “trimmed” an interview published in the newspaper with music conductor Zubin Mehta to remove his quote on wanting peace for Indian Muslims. The quote was later added to the online version of the interview.
In the interview published earlier this month, Mehta was asked for a “message” for India, to which he said: “Well, I speak to a lot of Indian friends, and I get my reports from them. I hope my Muslim friends in India will live in peace forever.”
The issue was first flagged by The Wire, which published an interview between Karan Thapar and Mehta.
During the interview, Mehta said: “I gave an interview to The Times of India over the phone from Los Angeles two weeks ago. A very good interview; and I read it, it was verbatim perfect. The last sentence I told the man, and I met him recently, and he admitted, they took out the last thing I said: ‘I hope my Muslim friends can live in peace forever in India.’ And that was not printed in The Times. It was cut off, and the writer couldn’t give me a reason why.”
The Times of India subsequently tweeted about it:
The TOI interview with Mr Mehta was long and had to be trimmed to fit the page. The line being referred to was towards the end of the interview and got left out in that process. Subsequently, Mr Mehta spoke to the interviewer about its omission and it was restored online.
— The Times Of India (@timesofindia) August 21, 2023
The Wire confirmed that the quote did not appear in the newspaper’s print edition. Archived versions of the online story also do not contain the quote.
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