Hindu and N.Ram are blatant liars

As I grew up, like many of the kids in South India, I was taught that 'The Hindu' is one of the best newspapers in the land. Whatever it reports were supposed to be correct and I lived with the same opinion till a few years ago. I even used to revere it.

Till my final year in college, it never caught my mind that it was just passing news, just like a RSS feed aggregator. I was not able to see any series which were exploring socio-political, economic and other active issues in depth.I don't know why never did it occur to me that Hindu never concentrated on Active Issues of the society.

Apart from the Indo - US Nuclear deal covered in detail by Siddarth Varadarajan, I feel no other matter (One more which comes below) was pursued seriously as by it. There aresome good journalists like Sai Nath, V.R.Krishna Iyer, but I believe neither of them are bound to Hindu alone.

I lost my respect for Hindu after seeing the way it is covering the Tamil Eelam issue. It has always painted a rosy picture of the Sinhalese. One blatant example how partial Hindu is can be seen in the below article,

http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/04/stories/2009070457542000.htm

When the entire world is concerned about what is happening in the Concentration camps,

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6676792.ece

the way Ram has written is a violation of the basic principles of journalism.

There are lot of peoples who have been questioning the condition of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The autocracies of the Rajapakshe and his Government were blatantly bought into light after the assassination of Lasantha Wickramatunga, a person who was not afraid in expressing his views against the Government's action against the innocent people. Do read Lasantha's editorial, that throws light on the scheme of things in Sri Lanka, which was published after his demise. Lasantha knew that he would be murdered sooner or latter for his anti government stance, hence he wrote the editorial in advance and asked it to be published after his death.

I am proud and happy to see people like Lasantha, who are the embodiment of journalism. I don't know how people like N.Ram have the heart to do such false propaganda. To my knowledge Hindu has never published anything which says Tami people where killed or were hurt by the Sri Lankan Army. Is it not comical to say that in an operation of such a vast magnitude, an operation which was carried out mercilessly didn't hurt any Tamil?

I don't hesitate to call N.Ram a b*******. A interesting bit of News, Sri Lankan government awarded Ram, the Sri Lankan Ratna, the highest civilian in honor that is conferred by Sri Lanka in 2005.

Certainly we are living in an Orwellian world.

Lot of times I used to ask myself this question. Are we living in a world which just gives the impression of being rational? Where was this rational when Africa and Asia were colonized, their natural wealth ravaged, their resources replenished and their people harassed, murdered, basic rights crushed. Didn't it all happen until 50 years back the impact of World War II made colonization a burden

Though I despise war not just it is violent, but the damage it leaves, the trauma it gives to lot the soldiers, people who were involved in the war for no reason of their own, that too in a war which is of no direct or indirect consequence to them. I would certainly tell that in the past 1 century more than 75% of the wars which we have seen are because of the selfishness, foolishness and cleverness of the people sitting on the top. George Orwell had precisely explained this in 1984. I would recommend everybody should read the book, one of those which change the way you see the world.

I am blabbering something else than coming to the point of this post. The recent happenings in Iran and the way Western Governments and Media has handled it reminds me of the Iran in 1953. At that time also we had precisely the same situation which we are now in.

Iran was headed by Mohammed Mosaddeq, a person who was democratically elected as the Prime Minister of the Iran. The crisis began in 1951 when Mosaddeq decided to nationalize the Oil resources of Iran. This came as a severe jolt to the British Government as it had the exclusive control over the Oil Industry. A war against was on Cards which was averted because of Truman's didn't budge. It is quite comical indeed to see a country not able to decide what to do with its national resources. Don’t know what does Sovereignty mean?

Luckily Truman didn't budge or else we would have seen another war, which history would have recorded as a War against the acts of the evil Prime Minister Mohammed , a tyrant paying no heed to the welfare of people. The two decades after the World War II were full of covert operations of the Two Blocs (especially C.I.A. & K.G.B.) in overthrowing the Governments which didn't agree with them either ideologically or economically. I believe Iran was the first stone on either side to fall for a covert operation.

When Eisenhower came to power in 1953, one of his first action, was to authorize C.I.A. to proceed with Operation Ajax, an operation whose goal was to overthrow Mosaddeq and install in a favorable government for the block led by USA. CIA trained, funded and armed SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence wing of Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. After the coup, Pahlevi was installed as the head of the Government and was in power till Iranian revolution in 1979.

A coup which removed a democratically elected Government by a dictator, the democracy western world is shouting about now.

After all this things do you want me to still believe that U.S. and U.K. are shouting for democracy in Iran? Absolutely not. There must be some motive behind this, don't know what exactly it is. Oil is a primary reason; one more reason is that Iran was planning to start a trading exchange for Oil, that too in Euros.

Everywhere I see the news that Iran Opposition is complaining about alleged misappropriations in the election. But if they are able to blog continuously, give photos of police beating the youth, why can't they give some solid proof of the alleged fraud in elections.

There might be something wrong in Iran and they way certain things are happening in Iran are not pretty good, especially woman rights and an individuals freedom. But certainly something of the magnitude which press and the governments are describing is not happening. Whatever maybe wrong with the internal politics of Iran, certainly they are not killing innocent civilians in their own or some other country for a threat whose odds are more than one in a million.

Why can't the western Media criticize Israel’s activities in West Bank and Gaza Strip? A country called Palestine which existed before 1947 is no more. All its inhabitants are subjected to ills which I believe nobody should ever get again.

Why didn't they talk a bit when Sri Lankan government crushed the rights of Tamils, and did Genocide? Not even a single gruesome picture came in the mainstream media during the past one year.

Certainly we are living in an Orwellian world.

Yet another illustration of our media's responsibility.

I was just browsing through NDTV's site now. I noticed that the bomb blasts in Lahore has got a higher precedence than the Cyclone in West Bengal.

Worst Still, in case of CNN-IBN Deccan Chargers arrival was considered more important.

Don't know where this is going to end.

Media is a tool to dispense information, but it has ..........

I wrote this post at Human All Too Human Blog. Gautam helped me in editing this blog. Do leave your comments at Human All Too Human and not here.

Yesterday, I had been to a meeting with some friends regarding the challenges facing the IT industry, the story shifted to the traits of media in India.

Lets take a typical example of what they are doing now. When Sanjay Dutt was sentenced to jail, all the tv channels ran a live coverage of his movement from Arthur Road jail in Mumbai to the Yerwada Jail in Pune. In the same state, Maharashtra that is, where thousands of people who are committing suicide, they did mind covering this. The hot discussion was whether Dutt will celebrate his Diwali incarcerated or free?

Worse still, Times Now conducted a SMS poll on whether Sanjay Dutt should be acquitted or not? Crazy indeed. I don't understand why there is a court then? Some ran a story asking whether Sanjay deserves prison after imparting Gandhijiri to the people after Munnabhai. Isn't it completely insane? For the sake of TRP, they are just telling whatever they want. Times of India ran an article whose purpose I am yet to understand.

Whenever a natural calamity or accident happens, TV channels race to show the debris and injured. They believe showing people dripping with blood is an excellent coverage which precisely isn't. Never do they make an analysis of why it happened. Constructive journalism has almost vanished off in Indian Media.

In the events of 2007 listed by CNN IBN, one of the events was Bipasha Basu kissing Ronaldo, Sanjay dutt getting sentenced and lot of other crap. It seems the development of high-speed interceptor missile, Advanced Air Defence by our DRDO is a lesser achievement compared with Bipasha kissing Ronaldo. There is not a single event which shows the challenges faced by India. They seem to show all is well, which is were the purpose of Media fails.

These days they are even influencing the decisions by the court by conducting sms polls on what the people think and putting pressure on the judiciary itself. Why do these people give an opinion provided they don't know the facts about the case.

It doesn't end there, the stories which deserve a mention, issues which require attention are never mentioned. For a state to be successful, media must be rational, it must act as a tool to dispense information not as an entity to influence decisions.