Considering myself as a protege of Lambert, I enjoyed a special status at the paper, doing both reporting and sub-editing. It didn't take me long, though, to notice that Vassantrao Dempo, the elder brother, was keenly interested in the image of his newspaper and its editorials. He had hired two editors, a Catholic and a Hindu named T. V. Parvate from Maharashtra, ostensibly to give balance to the paper's news and views. Often at around 5:30 p.m., I would see Mr. Dempo carefully perusing the editorial that Lambert or Parvate had written before it came to the newsroom. The editors wrote on alternate days. I would know, for example, that Dempo had suggested a change in how a certain point of view was expressed in Lambert's editorial because Lambert often invited me to sit across his desk while he wrote an editorial that was based on my news report. Mr. Parvate, a fast and fluent writer, only occasionally asked me into his partitioned office to verify a fact or a figure. Naturally, my curiosity propelled me to ask Lambert why it was necessary for him or Parvate to have their editorials okayed by the ultimate boss. After all, both of them were professionals who knew and understood the law of libel and defamation. Lambert, flashing his customary smile by way of indulging me, a novice in the game of politics, said it was a condition of his contract. Besides, what was the big deal? An editor could just as well express his own viewpoint as that of the owner. It wasn't a loss of freedom. We live and let live. Reporters too I thought about it and gradually came to the conclusion that reporters also indulged in self-censorship. Facts may appear to be sacred, but as a reporter I choose them to slant a 'story' in a particular way. Moreover, space in a newspaper is always limited, forcing me to write to a certain word count, in effect compelling me to sacrifice many 'facts'. The above was true not only in Goa and Bombay where I worked as a general reporter for The Indian Express (1965-66) but also in Toronto where I worked as a copy editor on the foreign desk of The Globe and Mail in 1975-76. The foreign editor would throw at me reams of teletype copy from Reuters, Associated Press, Agence-France Presse, and The New York Times News Service on a current story, such as race riots in Johannesburg, or post-revolution democracy woes in Portugal or the Patty Hurst kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army in San Francisco, and ask me for a 10-inch column story. This required that I cut out a lot of 'facts' from the 2000 words of wire copy and shape a news story in about 500 words. Going back to Goa, I remember the one-sided coverage that Navhind Times carried during the month-long campaign for the historic, first general elections held on December 9, 1963. And I was part of it.