Media Mullahs

In an interesting oped titled ‘Messianism versus democracy’ in The Hindu this is what Prabhat Patnaik had to say: “Maulana Bhashani, a popular peasant leader in what is now Bangladesh, used to give marathon speeches that were interrupted when people went home for lunch or dinner, or even for a night's rest, and resumed when they re-assembled afterwards; and the speeches contained much information about everything…”

Here’s another excerpt from the article: “Messianism substitutes the collective subject, the people, by an individual subject, the messiah. The people may participate in large numbers, and with great enthusiasm and support, in the activities undertaken by the messiah… but they do so as spectators. The action is of the messiah; the people are only enthusiastic and partisan supporters and cheerleaders. If at all they ever undertake any action on the side, this is entirely at the messiah's bidding, its ethics, rationale and legitimacy never explained to them…” Well, I don’t agree with quite a few parts in the article but this post is not to debate that. Patnaik probably has inadvertently described religious following itself. The para I quoted can be used for Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohammad, Moses or any other prophet you can think of. Imagine if prophets from centuries ago had 24X7 media in their time.

Till the time a messiah from the general public, as Patnaik sort of describes Anna Hazare, comes around the role is usually played by those hyper media celebrity anchors and hosts. Each one passionately intent on heaping some agenda on viewers and readers. Desperately agitated and tired with the twittering and twattering of people on the social networks criticising her, one prominent media cacofonix called them ‘Internet Hindus’! If Maulana Bhashani’s marathon speech is an indicator our media celebrity speakers would have to be called the ‘Media Mullahs’.

If Prabhat Patnaik does a casual count of the number of followers our Media Mullahs have on their twitter accounts he will find them outnumbering those out on the streets supporting Anna Hazare. Secondly, to those who dismiss the crowds as not representing all of India one must point out that if social scientologists like Yogendra Yadav can make conclusions for the nation on sample populations of 20000 then the population sample of Anna is far more superior and far more reliable where accuracy is concerned. But in the crowds in the media are also those whose criticism of Anna’s effort is based on sloganeering and not completely on facts. Is everything in Anna’s protest fair? Obviously not. You are unlikely to find any mass movement in history where you are likely to find every part being fair and logical. This is simply because the end objective of mass movements are their stated objectives and that is that. Sometimes even unstated objectives like the partition of India are achieved/conceded. We don't exactly hang our earlier messiah, Mahatma Gandhi, for that.

Some innocent tweets wondered why Barkha Dutt wouldn’t go to Ramlilamaidan to cover the protests when she considered it so important to rush to Egypt and Libya. The reasons for her not doing so is pretty obvious to people who have followed her reporting over the years. But taking the cue the other media mullahs rushed to Ramlila. Rajdeep Sardesai went to meet Anna and even had a photo op. Rahul Kanwal of Headlines Today is reporting live from Ramlila today. After his return from Ramlila, Mullah Sardesai’s pattern of discourse has substantially changed. You can expect a similar change in Mullah Kanwal’s approach. The media mullahs may also have to slowly admit that the battering they receive from Internet Hindus is not entirely unjust or misplaced.

What does it say about our media mullahs when they invite those who trash people or protests with absolutely no logic at all? Mahesh Bhatt calls the Anna movement Taliban. Does that make sense? Yet he figures prominently on NDTV and CNN-IBN. Nikhi Wagle of the CNN-IBN group also tweets of religious bias and questions secularism of the protests. Since when was secularism the agenda of the protests in any case? Since when was a religious tone or bias the agenda of the protests? But both Bhatt and Wagle would like to tweak facts brazenly to lend some insidious motive to the event. And where Arnab Goswami is concerned, he is already a convert and is doing a non-stop coverage of the event.

What Prabhat Patnaik misses is that when the protest eventually winds up the only messiahs left continuing the messianism will be our Media Mullahs. They may just have to alter their agendas a bit.

Get Swamy

Seema Mustafa, in response to Subramanian Swamy’s article in DNA wrote: “The language that the politician who heads the one-man Janata Party has used is reprehensible to say the least and I am sure there are laws in this country that can be invoked to take him to task for inflaming passions through complete falsehoods.” There you are, a veiled invitation to trigger happy secularists to drag Swamy into FIRs and court cases over what he has written. Did she manage to have the desired effect? You bet!

Now, if the statement Mustafa made had come from some ‘secular’ politician it would have been understandable. Unfortunately, it comes from a journalist. Journalists are usually the ones to shout themselves hoarse over freedom of speech and ironically it is a journalist who tries to invoke the law to prosecute someone who has expressed his views. This is not just true for Seema Mustafa, this is true for all the so called secular media which doesn’t hesitate to drag The Gita into concocted controversy but doesn’t have the balls to ever even mention the Koran. If the secularists will somehow and someday learn honesty then the likes of Swamy wouldn’t need to write provocative articles. Swamy also exposes how thin and flimsy the tolerance of these secularists are. I had the privilege of going to school but had to learn in later life that the moghuls that our school textbooks glorified were actually villains and enemies of Hindus. You can now expect all the self-righteous nonsense to flow from the minorities commission and other groups to follow.

Here’s the first one from a petition by constituents of Harvard University:

“Swamy proposes a truly shocking set of "strategies" for "deter[ring] terrorism" in an op-ed appearing in the July 16th edition of the Daily News & Analysis, an Indian newspaper. These include "declar[ing] India a Hindu Rashtra in which non-Hindus can vote only if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus"; "[r]emov[ing] the masjid in Kashi Vishwanath temple and the 300 masjids at other temple sites"; "[e]nact[ing] a national law prohibiting conversion from Hinduism to any other religion"; and "[p]ropagat[ing] the development of a Hindu mindset…..Writing in the wake of the July 13, 2011, bombings in Mumbai, Swamy has exploited this event not only to promote a vision of Indian society based on Hindu supremacy, but to disparage and cast suspicion on the entire Muslim community in India. "Muslims of India," he states, "are being programmed by a slow reactive process to become radical and thus slide into suicide against Hindus."

The muslims in modern day India are not responsible for any of the past. But those denying the past and wilfully ignoring the aspirations of some Islamic agenda are clearly living in denial. Some of these honourable men and women come from the stock of the JNU, the Congress and the Communist ideology which glorifies the Islamic atrocities as secular rule in India. It takes rare character and courage to be as outspoken and honest as Swamy is. Sure, tar him as a maverick, call him names as Seema Mustafa does, ignore his multi-religious family as the media does and peddle lies about the history of India as the JNU lot do and you have a concoction for a heady clash of religions sooner or later.

Rahul Kanwal of Headlines Today, a bright journalist who is a rising star had this to tweet:

Rahul Kanwal:

Strange Twitter logic. When we do story against Cong, we are hailed as patriots. When we expose BJP, we are called Cong agents & traitors.

August 3 – 22.30

Oh yeah? Who exactly called you agents and traitors? What Rahul forgets is that he tends to ridicule the BJP and Hindutva at every step of the way. Every political party has factions and each faction has their leader. That is why we have elections too. Is that logic lost on journalists? If Rahul Kanwal was sensible enough he would find an answer to his tweet in his own stupid tweet he made earlier:

Rahul Kanwal

How can hand picked nominee of tainted CM be expected to prosecute boss to whom he owes elevation & existence. #MoralHighGroundOnCorruption

August 3 – 16.26

There, that stone-throwing, calling someone a hand-picked nominee ignoring the fact that there was a secret ballot held to elect the leader of the Karnataka BJP is not the doing of the Twitterati but Kanwal’s own way of casting aspersions. The election by secret ballot of a CM is one of the finest things to have happened in Indian democracy and a practice that should become more frequent and common and yet media brokers like Kanwal ridicule that process and then wonder why the twitterati are against him or his channel. No, they aren’t against you but the severe bias with which you report events and colour news items.This same bias colours every aspect of the Hindu-Muslim reporting that the media indulges in. Hindus are fair game, muslims are victims. That's the media line.Those who die are the aggressors!

Forget temples that Swamy talks about, I am not even willing to accept all the crap about even the Taj Mahal. If you go through the writings and investigation by Stephen Knapp there are lies that have been peddled through the centuries. Would the secularists dare and be open to a detailed investigation of the Taj Mahal? When Swamy talks about temples being destroyed, let’s start with the Taj Mahal itself. The rest can wait. Knapp’s site has sufficient evidence and photographs to warrant a detailed investigation. You may want to go through his site and many others who claim it to be a Shiva temple.

One needs go through the roads less travelled across this country through Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and many other states to notice the many small Islamic townships that have come up. Many of them resplendent in their riches and well-built houses and shops. You have to wonder in amazement where all that money and wealth comes from to set up such mini Islamic colonies. The radicalisation of those willing muslims who may wish to overthrow democracy and our way of life is not unique to India. Take a look at this little poster and the related news item:

Daily Mail: "Islamic extremists have launched a poster campaign across the UK proclaiming areas where Sharia law enforcement zones have been set up. Communities have been bombarded with the posters, which read: ‘You are entering a Sharia-controlled zone – Islamic rules enforced.’

The bright yellow messages daubed on bus stops and street lamps have already been seen across certain boroughs in London and order that in the ‘zone’ there should be ‘no gambling’, ‘no music or concerts’, ‘no porn or prostitution’, ‘no drugs or smoking’ and ‘no alcohol’. Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has claimed responsibility for the scheme, saying he plans to flood specific Muslim and non-Muslim communities around the UK and ‘put the seeds down for an Islamic Emirate in the long term". The media in UK suggests it’s the work of sick minds but those living there have already wound up their shops and many others have exited the area and moved to other places where they aren’t threatened by these Islamists.

I have read news reports which mention Hindu homes were marked with yellow paint for slaughter in the erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Swamy sort of warns you not to wait for such a day to arrive in India. Subramanian Swamy, I think, only alludes to the fact that there might be many stray muslims and muslim organisations in India who wish to emulate or secretly dream the dream that Anjem Choudary has. Are all muslims involved in that dream? Certainly not, but there are no muslim voices against those who nurture that dream. Their voices only come up when provoked by writers like Seema Mustafa to invoke stupid laws which should not exist in the first place.

For those petitioners in the US who want Harvard University to get rid of Swamy I have to say that they must constitute the greatest gathering of useful idiots who neither know the law nor the idea of freedom. The US supreme court once dismissed even a suit by religious leader Jerry Falwell who was featured in a silly ad by Larry Flynt (Of Hustler magazine) which was outrageous and even allowed a Nazi march through a predominantly Jewish area in Chicago. That is the kind of freedom of speech that democracies need.

The stupid hate speech laws should be removed. You don’t need freedom to say nice things. Real freedom of thought cannot be stopped by laws. You can stop speech but you CANNOT stop thought. And I wish our politicians would wake up and alter such laws. Whether you agree with Swamy or not, give him the space to utter whatever he wants. Let’s not forget that joker from Samajwadi party who announced a prize for the head of the Danish cartoonist who made the Mohammad cartoons. That man still roams free despite encouraging murder in public. Swamy hasn’t incited or encouraged any violence whatsoever. Those who can’t stand his writings are free to write against him. If not, they can shut themselves in their bathrooms and weep.

The best part of the whole drama is that Subramanian Swamy loves a court battle. Anyone dragging him to court would only be stupid enough to oblige him and when they do, there will be more worms crawling out of the secular can. These fools should realise that the ‘Get Swamy’ campaign will not work.

Fai Accompli For Mediacrooks

Throughout the evening on July 19 most Indian news channels were live with the British Parliament hearings of the NOTW-Murdoch phone hacking scandal. Some even had expert panellists to comment on the proceedings. The NOTW scandal isn’t about just phone hacking but also about bribing police officials, nepotism in recruitment and the connection of journalists with top politicians of the UK. Our media celebrities then went on a discourse on media ethics. If anything, the corrupt media in India is far worse than the one in Britain. Out there someone did expose the corrupt practices but here in India the media follows the Rajdeep Sardesai ethic of “Hammam Mein Sab Nange Hain”!

So enamoured with the hearings was one media celebrity that she sent out this tweet:

BDUTT barkha dutt

Could India ever hope for such a transparent and civilised inquisition as the one unfolding in UK right now. That would be the day.

July 19

Yes indeed! That would be the day! But prior to that NDTV needs to hold a mirror to itself. This is the channel whose most prominent media celebrity, Barkha Dutt, was in the midst of the Nira Radia scam and is accused of power-brokering. NDTV’s muddled financial dealings were also exposed by The Sunday Guardian. NDTV is also the channel whose head, Prannoy Roy, is accused of being let of by CBI. NDTV is also the channel whose journalist, Sunetra Choudhury, is on leave from 13^th July. Sunetra Choudhury had to write an article in the DNA newspaper about a top UPA politician insulting her modesty with sexual innuendos. Yeah, this is the NDTV that wouldn’t stand up for its own journalist and put that politician in the dock. Barkha Dutt should have been fired long back and NDTV should have shut down by now. A prominent financial news journalist wonders how the loss making NDTV continues to receive funding. “Transparency and civilised inquisition”, Indeed!

As a wag puts it:  “Act like Rebekah Brooks and talk like Mother Theresa”!

It doesn’t stop there. As if in a divine turn of events the Cash-for-votes scam has surfaced again due to court intervention. Some key players have been arrested and all roads seem to be leading to Amar Singh. He is, of course, the media’s once favourite politician who sang songs on NDTV. The sting operation tapes which CNN-IBN had were not aired in July 2008 before the parliament voted on the no-confidence motion. There was tall talk of ethics by Rajdeep Sardesai then. Dirty politics and politicians would have been exposed and the course of the nation could have been altered. Now, Rajdeep of the ‘Hammam...’ fame claims credit for the sting and expose. There was no expose because the tapes were not aired but were suppressed for reasons best known to Rajdeep Sardesai. He is the guy on July 19 during the UK parliament hearings who stated “Indian media doesn’t have such tabloid culture”! No, Indian media has worse. Many of our media celebrities are pawns of politicians and practically political players themselves. The media exists to curb abuse of power but in India the major players have themselves joined the party.

Corruption and Corrupt politicians exist and thrive because of corrupt media. The media silence on Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Robert Vadhera, Sahara group, Paid news, Reliance group and many such issues get successfully covered up due to a compliant media. For these celebrities to talk about ethics following the UK hearings is a terrible joke. If anything people like Rajdeep Sardesai and Rahul Kanwal have actually cut off people who even want to talk about the corruption by Sonia Gandhi and the Gandhi family. Besides these channels are too busy doing the Bollywood nonsense with every week’s new releases and their actors and directors. Let’s also not forget they are also into kitchens, couches, nights out, saas-bahu and so on. Real news and real reporting is like a part-time lover.

As if all that wasn’t enough out comes the news of the arrest of Ghulam Nabi Fai of Kashmir American Council. He’s the guy who had many sympathisers of Kashmir Azaadi from India at various conferences and meetings. Journalists, politicians, humanitarians have been involved with him. Among names associated with him at some time and in some way or the other that are coming out are Kuldip Nayar, Rajinder Sachar, Arundhati Roy, Dileep Padgaonkar and the list may be longer. Turns out for over two decades Fai’s organisation was being funded by the ISI of Pakistan.

Indian media is not all corrupt. But the ones that are corrupt are not just hand-in-glove with corrupt politicians but may even turn out to be unwittingly assisting anti-national elements like Ghulam Nabi Fai.

Shall we say – Fai Accompli, mediacrooks?

Maria Susairaj & The Media Crocs

On July 2, the media had its O.J. Simpson moment with Maria Susairaj.

It would have been another boring day full of Lokpal stalemate and Team Anna’s audience with the Queen herself but for small mercies (no pun intended). Maria Susairaj walked out of jail after three years having served her time for ‘destruction of evidence’ in the Neeraj Grover murder case. Anyone can understand the outrage and anger of the Grover family and even of the general public. But our media did exactly what was expected of them: create great drama and then blame Maria for all the publicity. Behind all the self-righteous outrage the media reporters could hardly hide their glee over the chance of displaying their histrionics and their moral superiority over courts of this land. Here is a tweet from the usual Rahul Kanwal, on July 2, that says it all:

Rahul Kanwal:

“Media also needs to be careful. Maria is finally getting all the publicity she could have dreamt of. Feel very bad for Neeraj's parents”

Hmmm! It wasn’t just Rahul Kanwal’s channel but also Arnab Goswami of Times Now who provided the most extraordinary nonsense in the coverage of Maria’s release. Kanwal’s tweet is a perfect reflection of the media – first behave stupidly, then sermonise. That’s behaving like vultures and then shedding crocodile tears. Whether you’re good, bad or evil the vulture doesn’t really care as long as it gets to have a sumptuous meal of you. That's the media for you!

Let’s start with the release of Maria. Times Now ran a headline “Killer Walks Free”. So that headline tells you who’s the best judge of a crime. That headline is not so much against Maria but against the judge who passed the sentence. Put aside emotions for a moment. No matter how much one is enraged by the event, Maria is not a killer unless she had put a knife into the deceased or participated in that act. Yes, she could be an ‘accomplice’ or as the court has ruled, ‘destroyed evidence'. She was convicted for the latter and sentenced accordingly to 3 years which was time she had already served and therefore released. The prosecution does not appear to have accused or proved Maria to have put a knife into Neeraj. But the media goes on a song and dance with ‘how can she be released’? Well, what are the police to do? Hold her against the orders of a court? Little does Times Now realise that the ‘killer walks free’ headline could well merit a defamatory case. And if Sharif Shaikh, Maria’s now famous lawyer, decides to walk that line it could hurt the Grover family even more. Such is the cavalier reporting by Times Now.

Times Now’s hyper reporters screamed that Maria was protected and given special treatment by the jail authorities and allowed to drive away without letting the media question her. Well, let me make it clear the media does not have any RIGHT to question Maria and Maria has the absolute RIGHT not to talk to the media at all. So Times Now continued to protest that the media was not allowed to question her. Reporters were hanging around the jail like vultures ready to swoop on Maria and shove and jostle her and maybe even heckle her but fortunately that did not happen. And that unfortunately is the media’s grouse.

Let me make another point amply clear. The frontline reporters and cameramen of the media are the most indecent lot you will see in a democracy.  Some of them are as indecent as regular goondas. No one taught these goondas that you cannot push and shove, no one taught them you cannot shove mics into someones face and body, no one taught them they should keep a safe distance from any person they wish to cover or question. In fact, this crowd of vultures do pose a physical threat. It can anger convicts like Salman Khan who once beat up a few reporters for similar behaviour. Even in regular press meets with a PM or a prominent public figure these assholes do not know how to behave and usually end up shouting questions all at once instead of one at a time.

So who exactly are Times Now and Headlines Today to demand that Maria should have spoken to the media on her release from jail? Why should she? She is under no obligation whatsoever to talk to ANYONE. And then her foolish lawyer, Sharif Shaikh, discloses her movement plan (church, evening presser etc.) so that the media can chase her and follow her to the church she visited. He had his 15 minutes of fame and is now likely to be in great demand too. And be careful how you read headlines like ‘Killer walks free’. Who the hell is the media to decide she is a killer? This is how the media plays on public opinion. Even if the general public believes Maria is a killer the media has no business to declare her one.

Then they complained that media was not allowed to question Maria on her release from jail. Well, when she did hold a press meet in the evening Times Now was quick to ridicule the exercise by asking ‘What’s the point’? Well, if TimesNow didn’t see a point in the press meet why is it they wanted to interact with Maria at the jail area in the first place? Wait, that’s not all they declared the press meet was all a ‘bizarre insensitive drama’! Drama or not the media was the one that wanted her to speak to them in the first place. And then the TimesNow reporter went on to do a psychological analysis of Maria on her calmness, how she was faking, that she was used to cameras, and that she had achieved her goal of ‘publicity’.

If all that was not enough there is a jerk called Ram Gopal Verma, whose movies have now been flopping with regularity, who crawls out to make a statement. The media can’t believe its luck. So there is more drama with insensitive comments about a movie with Maria by RGV and in the evening Headlines Today pits him against the family of Neeraj Grover for a discussion. So Rahul Kanwal, when you say “Media should be careful..” you’re speaking through your ass and your channel is the one that is not being careful.

Even if there wasn’t all this drama after her release Maria Susairaj had already become a celebrity-criminal. The question for the media is why aren’t they asking the same about others who have already been convicted? Why is there media silence on Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt? Both are convicted criminals and both should be in jail. But the media will not talk about them because indirectly they are a source of revenue for the channels and the press. All the song and dance and comedy and action from movies of Salman and Sanjay are an immense source of revenue for the mediacrooks. So why should they want to see these convicted celebrities in jail? Why in the world would they want to see Maria Susairaj in jail instead of seeing more movies or TV serials about her that means money to the channels?

The family of Neeraj Grover is rightfully feeling hurt and anger. Those friends of Neeraj Grover who disrupted the press meet of Maria Susairaj did him no favour. One protester even got close enough to pose a physical threat to Maria. This doesn’t do any good for the Grovers. The Grover family must understand that the media is neither interested in justice nor in what happens to Maria or Jerome. They wanted their fun and they had their day in the sun.  The Grovers can now start their long trudge towards the justice they seek.

Mark my words! In a few months or years these very channels will be falling over each other to do emotional and charming interviews with Maria Susairaj over some movie release or some Big Boss episode. She provides all the regular ingredients for our media - murder, sex, deception, intrigue and a grieving family. Vultures really don’t care who dies and crocs need to have their meal. You know what feeds them.

PM's Press Meet - 'Friendly Fire'

Here are two tweets from Rahul Kanwal of Headlines Today. He sounds upset in both. This is following the very private meeting the Prime Minister had with five editors from the print media.

Rahul Kanwal:

“Since you don't like message, shoot messenger! Wonder if that's new media strategy of govt. Even sympathisers seem to (be) turning against UPA”

“Boy Cong incredibly angry with media. 1st PM attacks press, then spokespersons launch scathing attack on air. Case of shooting d messenger?”

I believe it’s very unfair to call it a ‘press meet’. It looked like a luncheon meet of the ‘mob’ for a friendly discussion on the state of affairs of their turf. It’s strange you would think. A Prime Minister holds a press meet with five select editors from the print media and then needs to be defended by his own spokespersons. That is precisely what Manish Tiwari and Ambika Soni were doing on  June 29.

Some of the firm assertions of Manmohan Singh at this meet were “I am not a lame duck PM” and the media is an “accuser, prosecutor and judge”. I agree with the media part though. That is their general approach to all issues. Other than that, the PM generally blamed the opposition for the lame duck tag. These statements were made when most of the ‘chosen’ editors were ones who are known to be friendly to the Congress.

It is also strange that the PMO has decided MMS will now meet the media every week. This is in stark contrast to months of silence and is clearly an excess. I wonder who devised this strategy, the PM himself or his media advisor Harish Khare. Nobody wants the PM to meet the press every week. Every week would not only be an over-kill but just as boring. And how do they pick the editors for the meeting? Do they draw lots? Do they go by circulation or viewership? Do they go by friendliness of the media outlet? And in this day and age a closed-door meeting? Because MMS is camera-shy? Weird reasoning!

If I were one of the five editors chosen for this particular meet I would have declined. In any other sensible country the PMO would have journalists who are accredited by his office for regular meetings, like the White House has. It would have been appropriate for the PM to meet those journalists all together. After all, those journalists do get to travel with him on Air India One on his official travels.

After the press meet Kumar Ketkar of Divya Marathi and Alok Mehta of Nai Duniya were almost the spokespersons for the PM themselves. They were disseminating the utterances of MMS to the rest of the media. So the rest of the media was delivering what I would term as second-hand news. Is this what the PM wants this country’s media to be? Dealing in second-hand news? And then analyse second-hand news for the vast population?

An edition of Divya Marathi was recently launched by none other than P. Chidambaram. This is the Dainik Bhaskar group. The Divya Bhaskar edition in Gujarat is a severely anti-Modi newspaper. Then there is Nai Duniya’s Alok Mehta. This newspaper is circulated in parts of MP and published from Indore. Then there is Business Standard’s T.N. Ninnan which, of course, is a business paper as its name suggests with limited circulation. There is Raj Chengappa from the Tribune. The PM is a great fan of the Tribune himself.

So Rahul Kanwal has his own fraternity to blame for the nonsense that was the press meet. The PMO cannot and should not pick and choose journalists that it wants to meet. The five wise men who met the PM should have declined and asked that the PM meet all the journalists accredited by the PMO. Lame ducks shouldn’t get to choose their crutches.

Here’s another thing. When the PM meets a bunch of five journalists next time, would the issues remain the same? Would the questions remain the same? So each time the select journalists would get to address or hear the PM on a different set of questions and issues. By itself there is nothing wrong in that. But the very crooked idea of limiting the meet to five journalists is to restrict the agenda, the questions and the issues.

So Rahul Kanwal’s lament, while justified, should only reflect on the media itself. The media which normally acts like a mafia union should not accept press meets that pick journalists at the whims of the PMO for an audience. The first bunch of journalists who met the PM were from friendly media outlets. The media first willingly allows its own manipulation and then cries foul. The drama can only be called ‘friendly fire’!

As for the Congress, in keeping with its devious policies, it might as well run a ‘Malamal Weekly’ lottery to pick the winners from the media who will get to meet the PM in future.