Reporter's Diary: Meals for media seeking information at Apollo

Keeping this in mind, the state information department usually provides meals and snacks at important government functions and even during the assembly sessions to ensure that reporters capture the proceedings well. Now, reporters sitting outside the Apollo Hospitals are being provided free meals by the government. The information department has been ordering regular meals from good restaurants and provides them to reporters stationed outside Apollo so that scribes out there do not have to worry where to go for their next meal. 

Apparently, the only criterion for a reporter to get a free meal is to state his name and that of the media house he represents to officials before the food arrives. An untoward outcome of this has been that Apollo  has of late, been witnessing a huge crowd of reporters, and even some wannabe scribes, during meal time. 

Ironically, the policemen posted at the hospital are not entitled to any free meals and the reporters gorging on the free food has apparently not gone well with the cops. One of them even went on to say that ‘while those who spread rumours and misinformation are provided free food (referring to opposition party channels and publications), we  go after these rumour mongers and have  to go home hungry.’ — Tharian Mathew, Chennai