Katju & The Crooks

This is a scene from the movie ‘The American President’ where a presidential aide blasts him for not stepping up and talking to the media as often as his opponent does criticising him. I have quoted this before on this blog but worth recalling: (Quotes, where they appear are in blue)

Presidential aide Lewis Rothschild (Michael J. Fox): “You have a deeper love of this country than any man I've ever known. And I want to know what it says to you that in the past seven weeks, 59% of Americans have begun to question your patriotism. They don't have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand”.

The President (Michael Douglas): “Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference”.

Along comes a spider and he is starting to scare the little Muffets in the Indian news media. Retired judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Markandeya Katju has stated “90% of Indians are mentally backward and need to be uplifted” by the media. That’s right. Where the news media’s magnitude of nonsense is concerned a majority of the Indian population drinks the sand because they don’t know the difference. Fed on a daily diet of ‘rashi and kundli’, mindless Cricket discussions, divisive debates, hollering anchors and reporters, senseless Bollywood crap, Saas and the city, Saas, Bahu aur Betiyaan, ‘Bhoot-Pret’, spurious opinion polls, fashion shows, Kareena adoring her wax statue and utter nonsense like replaying worst moments from BigBoss they do not have a choice. Most Indians are struggling to make ends meet and can’t be faulted for the kind of trash they absorb from the news media. If these were recognised as entertainment channels there would be no problem but they are supposed to be ‘news channels'.

Justice Markandeya Katju (MK) is now the Chairman of the Press Council of India (PCI) and he is ringing some discomforting alarm bells. He wants to clean up the news media, implement punitive measures for infringements and improve the quality of media functioning. He is pitted against an extraordinary gang which is as thick-skinned as any political group.

Written over a year ago, the post ‘India’s Worst Journalists’ continues to remain among the most popular posts on this blog. Some of the so called journalists in the list like Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Sagarika Ghose, Arnab Goswami among others can share the credit for destroying the credibility of TV news. In recent times the excessive promotion of a Shahrukh Khan movie or excessive space to Modi-haters or Kashmiri separatists is the trend. Some of these media celebs have also been decorated with Padma Shris. I guess that reward is for their excessive mental masturbation on mundane, trivial issues and keeping the real issues in the closet and from the public. That most of these media outlets and journalists are politically inclined toward the Congress is also not a big secret anymore.

Any decently educated and discerning person would hold the mainstream media in utter contempt. Justice Katju does too and that isn’t surprising at all. But before that let’s pick on that coffee shop called ‘Editors Guild’ (EG). For those who came in late, the EG club is nothing but the usual kitty party that rich ladies host with friends to kill time and money except that the EG kills reputations and truth. This is the same EG, when Rajdeep Sardesai was its head, which also sought to bury the Radiagate conspiracy that involved Barkha Dutt and some other journalists. Most of the EG members are your friendly regular crooks. So why would the crooks want policing? Aha! There you are! So when members of this EG appeared before the standing committee of the parliament for the Lokpal bill they were unanimous – Media should not be under Lokpal.

Outlook reports: “Representatives of the Guild led by its President T N Ninan appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice and Personnel here and said since media was a "private body" it should not be brought under the ambit of the anti-corruption watchdog”. A private body? Hmm! Let’s see, they get to peddle opinions to the masses, they get government quota on housing, they get political ads, they get govt ads some of which are mandatory and they exercise powers like many private businesses don’t. In short, they want all the luxuries of government money and accountability to none. Sounds pretty much like NGOs who also don’t want to be under the Lokpal. Funnier still is that Committee Chairman, Abhishek Singhvi, records that the Guild members have stated their views "clearly and provocatively".

Here are some more scathing observations by MK (All of this in an interview with Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN): 

Indian media is, very often, playing an anti-people role. Let me give you that in three respects. Number one, it often diverts the attention of the people from the real problems which are basically economic. 80 per cent of the people are living in horrible poverty, unemployment, facing price rise, healthcare etc. You divert attention from those problems and instead you project filmstars and fashion parades and cricket as if they are the problems of the people.....

I think it is even worse. I think it is deliberate action of the media to divide the people on religious lines and that is totally against the national interest.....

Yes, the general rut is very low and I have a poor opinion of most media people. Frankly, I don't think they have much knowledge of economic theory or political science or literature or philosophy. I don't think they have studied all this.....

See very often I find those debates totally frivolous. First of all there is no discipline. If there are four people on the panel, all speaking at the same time, is this the way disciplined people should behave? When you speak, I will never interrupt you. But why should you interrupt me when I am speaking?

The majority, I'm sorry to say, are of a very poor intellectual level, media people, I doubt whether they have any idea of economic theory or political science, philosophy, literature, I have grave doubts whether they are well read in all this, which they should be.....

MK is not saying anything new. Such thoughts on the news media have already been voiced over and over again by many in the social media, including on this blog. In response to MK’s statements Karan Thapar points to the National Broadcasters Association (NBA) as a self-regulating body for TV channels. Unlike the PCI, the NBA is not a statutory body and therefore is really not accountable to anyone just as the TV channels are not. MK wants the electronic media also to be under the PCI and for it to be renamed as ‘Media Council’. MK would need to substantially revamp the PCI too. It is the same body that buried its own ‘paid news’ report because most of the members are crooks themselves.

Some of the credit for the collapse of credibility of news channels has to go to some media celebrities like Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Arnab Goswami, Shekhar Gupta, Vir Sangvi, Sagarika Ghose and more. They are responsible for vitiating the atmosphere so much that any sensible discussion of national issues is simply impossible. And they know the kind of panellists they need to pick who can kick and scream and talk over each other. Of the many great people available in this country you can trust the news media to pick on the most uncouth and uncivilised characters as their panellists. They don’t want a decent debate, they want the drama and the spin. Some of the people that adorn the TV screens actually need to be in prison for some of the worst offences. Some of the channels need to be shut down.

How Justice Katju deals with the crooks, only time will tell. But there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that the new chief of PCI is finally one who is with the people and the country.

Sanjiv Bhatt Needs A Bonfire, Candles Not Enough

On Tuesday night (Oct 11) it seems gas balloons burst on being singed by candle flames outside Sanjeev Bhatt’s house. It scared the small crowd there, Bhatt’s father-in-law fell down and rumours of a blast had a short life. Hard to fathom what the candle light activists were doing with balloons. I suppose gas balloons are symbolic of the gas bags that have pronounced Bhatt completely innocent of any crime and a victim of a witch-hunt.  Never mind. All the candles in the world are unlikely to end Sanjiv Bhatt’s troubles soon.

So who are these gas bags? All the usual suspects, of course! There is Teesta Setalvad, Shabnam Hashmi, Mallika Sarabhai, the leaders of the pack. All three are established and exposed liars. One can sympathise with Mrs.Shweta Bhatt (Sanjiv’s wife) and understand her dismay on these events. But instead of taking saner counsels to work for her legally she has allowed gas bags to holler and shriek mindlessly in defence of her husband. The three angels on her side have acquired so much disrepute that anything they now utter is suspect.

Shweta stated that her husband was not a criminal and does not have a history of offences. That Bhatt was being treated like a ‘terrorist’ in custody. That his life is in danger. She writes to P. Chidambaram and complains about the threats. None of these seem a natural response but more a tutored act that has all the ingredients of a drama that the media so loves. The story of Sanjiv Bhatt is not that of a ‘whistle-blower’ as the media so dearly likes to call him. It is an extraordinary case of how and why an IPS officer chose to reveal information and file affidavits against Narendra Modi, nine years after the Gujarat riots of 2002.

The one lesson that is lost on many activists is that whatever the media crooks hype usually turns out to be a huge propaganda of untruths. The SC order on September 12 sending the Zakia Jaffrey case to the lower court stunned many of these media mullas who had hoped the SC would rap Modi. It didn’t happen. Latest information also suggests that neither the SC nor the SIT had considered Sanjiv Bhatt’s affidavit in the SC. This only means that his affidavit does not contain reliable evidence against Modi. The motive of Sanjiv Bhatt to come out of the blue and file that affidavit incriminating Modi in the riots must remain under serious question. It doesn’t help that some Congress politicians have been revealed to have lent him support in his misadventure.

This document herechronicles the extraordinary history of offences by Sanjiv Bhatt. He is not the whistle blower or the angel that media has tried to portray him as. But he suits the huge anti-Modi industry propelled by the three stooges (Teesta, Shabnam, Mallika) and comedy channels like NDTV, CNN-IBN and TimesNow. It would also appear that much prior to his affidavit in the SC, Bhatt would probably have been extensively communicating with these activists. Since the exposure of fake affidavits of Teesta Setalvad the media didn’t really have much to shout about against Modi. The Bhatt affidavit gave the campaign a new lease of life for the anti-Modi propaganda.

It is not just Sanjiv Bhatt but the law will sooner or later catch up with Teesta Setalvad. Here’s more from DeshGujarat: Public prosecutor S.V.Raju says “.. Bhatt’s allegation against Modi was simply to divert the attention from the main offense he had committed. Raju also said that adding involving the names of Modi and late Haren Pandya in affidavits was to attract media attention….Bhatt had suppressed the fact that he had approached the Supreme Court for bail on the very next day of his arrest on October 1. The bail plea was later withdrawn from the SC registry on the same day and Bhatt’s lawyer Syed placed the fact on record only after filing bail application in local court here on October 3”.

And if that is not enough a case of murder has been registered against Sanjiv Bhatt for a custodial death in 1990 in Jamnagar (Guj).  The Jamnagar court will soon file a charge-sheet against Bhatt and other accused policemen in the case. Still, the defence for Bhatt continues to pour from none other than Team Anna. This Team Anna is slowly turning out to be a political tool for unknown elements. Suddenly, its member Shanti Bhushan announces Modi is the most communal person and he is willing to defend Sanjiv Bhatt as a lawyer. Bhushan goes on to add “Bhatt was being persecuted only because he had filed an affidavit against Modi”. No sir, he is not being persecuted, he is ACTUALLY being prosecuted. And as a lawyer, this moron should let the law prevail instead of  making political statements about the Congress or the BJP or Modi.

As for the media the best comment yet comes from Rajeev Srinivasan in an article at Firstpost. He describes how this cottage industry of hate and manufacturing consent operates: “Then there are the various characters who keep popping up like jack-in-the-boxes. The Fiction-Writers Posing As Journalists. The Activist Accused By Witnesses Of Tutoring Them To File False Affidavits. The Angry Dancer. The Police Officer 1.0. The Police Officer 2.0. That Police Officer 1.0, who was once the media’s favourite, has trashed Police Officer 2.0, its current favourite, does not seem to bother the media at all”.

Sanjiv Bhatt has spent 12 days in jail and is still fighting for bail. Whether he gets bail or not a long legal battle awaits him. Candles will not be enough, he may well need a bonfire.

Media's Complete Loss Of Decency

The three-day  Sadbhavana Missionof Narendra Modi ended on September 19 with a rousing speech that sought to set new directions for governance, equality and national policies. The mainstream media had no option to be there. After all, no matter how much hatred they continue to heap on him, Modi simply stands tall where leadership and governance are concerned. It also helps that he is a great orator. But make no mistake, the MSM wasn’t there to just cover the event. It was there to see if any more muck can be raised against Modi and to remind him that in the ‘supreme court of the media’ he has already been declared guilty of crimes. Much of the transactions at the Sadbhavana event were live and will also be available to read in newspapers, magazines and online pages for quite some time. So let’s try and understand the orchestration to disrupt the event by the media and other charlatans. Mine is not to discuss the merits/de-merits of the event or its political impact but to understand the orchestrated campaign of hate from some in the media and some activists.

Here’s a tweet from @shammybawejafrom September 16 (She is Harinder Baweja, Editor Investigations of Headlines Today):  “Off to Guj for Modis sadhbhavna. Remorse and legal justice needed for 1984 and 2002. Fast track justice, not cong bjp fast wars”.

Well, one would have thought like others she too would land up at the Gujarat University grounds but where does she land up? Naroda Patiya, a site of mob violence and killing in the 2002 riots. Hmmm, so what was cooking? In the morning of September 17 Mallika Sarabhai, another crusader for justice, suddenly summons a presser and accuses Narendra Modi of having bribed her lawyers to scuttle her PIL on the post-Godhra riots. The crusader-come-lately, Sanjiv Bhatt, backs up her allegations as being true. Then later she too lands up at Naroda Patiya. A small group of people, riot victims, are organised to protest and march for justice by Mukul Sinha, a lawyer. So, by strange co-incidence, Mallika, Mukul and Baweja all turn up at Naroda Patiya. Headlines Today was the only channel telecasting live from the site. The protestors were also carrying printed pamphlets that must have been organised overnight. Ordinarily, there would be nothing wrong in such protests except for the timing. Mallika could have made her allegations and led these protests many times over in the last few months but she did not. But the objective was simple – to rekindle and continue the hate-NaMo campaign during the Sadbhavana event.

And that was trigger enough for NDTV, CNN-IBN, Headlines Today and others to start their chorus of abuse without even verifying the accusations made by Mallika. So let’s deal with the the lies of Mallika Sarabhai. This report based on comments by her own lawyers should be enough to nail her filthy lies.

From TOI: “Lawyers who appeared for…Mallika Sarabhai in the SCourt in 2002 for her PIL on the post-Godhra riots denied her allegation that bribes were paid to her advocates by the Narendra Modi government to derail the petition…….Advocate Mahesh Agrawala, the counsel who filed the writ petition number 221 of 2002 in the SC with Sarabhai as the petitioner, said it was "totally false that any money was ever paid to us by anyone to do anything or not do something relating to the petition. No money was ever paid to us and we did the case free of cost. Moreover, her case was argued on April 15, 2002, by senior advocate P Chidambaram before a bench headed by the CJI and comprising Justices Shivraj V Patil and H K Sema. The court had admitted the petition, issued notices to the Centre and Gujarat government and allowed early listing,"…….Agrawala said, "She got the relief she wanted on the very first day of hearing. It is unfortunate that after nine years, she is making the allegation about payment of money, which is patently false."

So the TV channels had a blast with the lies of Mallika Sarabhai. And if lies are on the menu can Teesta Setalvad be left out? Naturally, this washing machine of justice was back on TV all through the last three days hurling abuses and spreading untruths once again. Acts for which she was awarded with a Padmashri, of course. And where else to go but on the channel that has been the worldwide platform for the lies against Narendra Modi and about the Gujarat riots, NDTV. It is widely believed that the only channel that Narendra Modi refused an interview to is NDTV. Barkha Dutt herself laments that the CM would not entertain her. There’s a good reason too. Anyone who knows well enough that NDTV and, in particular, Barkha Dutt has carried out a systematic campaign of calumny about Gujarat and Modi wouldn’t trust that channel to be honest or relate to facts.

Long before the Gujarat riots Teesta Setalvad was funded by the Congress, CPM, CPI and others to campaign and carry out ads against the BJP during the 1999 election campaign. She had asked for and received funds from these political parties for her campaign. And she did advertise and campaign against the BJP in her magazine ‘Communal Combat’. Therefore, the lie that Teesta is a ‘social’ or ‘rights’ activist is one of the greatest lies peddled by the media. She is clearly a political activist and her political persuasion and motivation is cunningly suppressed by NDTV and other channels.

Teesta’s campaign against the BJP in 1999 failed as the BJP+NDA returned to power. Naturally, the investments that the Congress made in her had to be recovered somehow. Come the unfortunate Gujarat riots and Teesta had to deliver her pound of flesh. She creates the CJP in April 2002 after the riots have calmed. What followed was the most extraordinary campaign of untruths, fake affidavits, rumour mongering – all gleefully accepted and churned out by the media crooks. How much money has poured into her CJP is not public knowledge. Even the SC had pulled her up for trying to internationalise Modi as a criminal by writing to the UN.

In my post “SC exposes the media’s clean shit” I have detailed the lies that Suzy Roy deliberately peddled about the riots. In case of Teesta her lies were exposed by the SIT itself. All the ‘copy-cat’ affidavits she engineered for the riot victims now stand thoroughly exposed. Her own former colleagues have also nailed her lies. Imagine, this washing machine of justice has twice sought anticipatory bail, something more common among politicians. Her organisation, Citizens for Justice and Peace, parades as an NGO while clearly being a political organisation. However, this campaign of lies did pay off in some way, coupled with many other reasons. The NDA lost power in 2004 and the Congress+UPA came to power. Rewarding Barkha Dutt, Teesta Setalvad (and also Rajdeep Sardesai) immediately would be a dead give-away. So a few years later all three were awarded the Padmashri. But every time Narendra Modi is in the news, these washing machines unfailingly get back into action.

Reading motives or even words where there were none, the MSM uniformly talked about NaMo’s PM ambitions. They sought an apology from him when their attempts to nail him legally haven’t produced anything so far. Interpreted Nitish Kumar’s absence from the Sadbhavana event as a snub and for that reason the event is not supported by all. They even employed fake tweets or manipulated them to heap further abuse. During the event CNBC-TV18 even carried a full interview with Teesta in its programme “Beautiful People”. Hahhaaa, that’s an irony and, mind you, I am not talking about her looks.

The Sadbhavana event can be criticised on many other fronts but that wasn’t the case. The entire narrative was built on continuing the hate-Modi campaign. Every media celeb that talked to Modi had not one question to ask about the development model of Modi. Not one had any question of how Gujarat coped with the historic problem of water shortages. Not one talked about the girl-child education campaign in Gujarat. Not one talked about how Gujarat grew without frivolous subsidies. Not one talked about how Gujarat got around to building such great roads and highways. Not one talked about how Gujarat manages to provide uninterrupted power supply. Not one talked about reasons why industrialists are thrilled to set up businesses in Gujarat. Nothing! Whether Modi gained by the event or not, time will tell. But one outcome has been clearly established. The media’s complete loss of decency, respect for facts and truth, and further erosion in their already low credibility. Modi was giving interviews to all and sundry and if Barkha Dutt feels snubbed by not getting her chance that should tell her how low her image and credibility has sunk. An interview with Modi would have given her some redemption, but I doubt that is ever going to happen.

For all the campaigns against Modi the same crooks are yet to even find what is wrong with Sonia Gandhi, her illness, her treatment, her whereabouts. NDTV has even comically reported her return to India at least 4 or 5 times. And I doubt they still know where Sonia is. Never mind that. But this mainstream media is hurtling towards greater decimation. The social network is already delivering it a severe blow. The online netizens have become a watchdog over the media in absence of an independent body. And if that isn’t enough, there is Wikileaks exposing all the information that the media may have covered up or suppressed.

The future of Narendra Modi doesn’t exactly concern me enormously as much as it concerns the media crooks. They live in fear that his rise to the top may completely destroy whatever is left of their credibility. Whatever else, but there is one thing that these crooks can learn from NaMo. In all this campaign of calumny he has conducted himself in a dignified manner and never shot back at any of his detractors. They called the Sadbhavana event a political stunt or gimmick. NaMo is a politician and the event IS political – what is so wrong about it? That is what politicians are supposed to do – mobilise political views and directions. Modi has successfully done that in at least one thing – ‘vote bank politics will not pay in the future’. The media even tried to make a big issue of Modi not wearing the muslim skull cap offered to him by a visitor. Here is the best response I found on Twitter to that by @Pari500: “…and Maulana says 'refusal of the cap is an insult to Islam', really? Now we know the honour of islam rests SOLELY on Modi's head!”

Here is an interesting observation by The Economist: “The biggest shift is that journalism is no longer the exclusive preserve of journalists. Ordinary people are playing a more active role in the news system, along with a host of technology firms, news start-ups and not-for-profit groups. Social media are certainly not a fad, and their impact is only just beginning to be felt. “It’s everywhere and it’s going to be even more everywhere,” says Arianna Huffington. Successful media organisations will be the ones that accept this new reality. They need to reorient themselves towards serving readers rather than advertisers, embrace social features and collaboration, get off political and moral high horses and stop trying to erect barriers around journalism to protect their position. The digital future of news has much in common with its chaotic, ink-stained past.”

If ever Bill Gates made a business error, the biggest one has to be his refusal or failure to see the potential of the Internet when it came about. Since that failure, his company has only been playing catch up. Google now reports that India will add 200Mn more net users by 2014. That’s a good sign for the nation but a serious warning for the MSM. If they don’t see the writing on the wall the social network will grow to a level that will make them obsolete where news and debates are concerned. The loss of credibility has already come about.. the best they can do is to attempt restoration of some decency and respect for facts and truth.

The Rating Game

Another weekend and we have another Friday blogbuster from RajdeepSardesai. This time it’s about the plight of Irom Sharmila and her 11-year old fast against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). This time, his lament is why Anna Hazare got all the attention and Sharmila didn’t. I usually help Rajdeep rehash his articles, because he's a favourite of mine, but this time I will let it pass. Though there are many holes in his latest article I am for anything that can help Sharmila end her fast and fight for her cause in a different manner. Right now, it’s the battle of TRPs that the media is engaged in with advertisers that is not on front pages or on our screens.

Okay, this was a headline on a news channel today morning (either Headlines Today or CNN-IBN) ‘Kareena Kapoor with all three Khans in a row’. Would any bright intellectual ever explain to me what exactly that is supposed to mean? Why in heavens are news channels more and more like ZoomTV or ImagineTV? It appears the only thing that drives news channels is a terror strike, an Anna type movement or fierce political battles. Their main programming is made up of cricket, Bollywood, cheap thrills, cars and gadgets, Hindu-bashing and if after all that, they find some time, there is news. And they'd even like to think they are the ones mostly making it. On most channels there are no serious documentaries or any serious investigations. The now extinct ‘News of the world’ and that dead dodo ‘Illustrated Weekly’ would be proud of our news channels any day. Kushwant Singh would applaud what our news channels have become. Mindless banter by the fair and lovely manly crowd of Kanwal, Rajdeep, Arnab and the extinct Prannoy! Oh, that includes the ladies too! This is where Rajdeep Sardesai came in lately. TRPs!

Television Audience Measurement (TAM) releases TRPs every week. Now, Rajdeep leads the chorus that wants them to release the ratings monthly and not weekly while advertisers want it weekly, as it currently is. Wait, advertisers even ask: why not every day? The ratings for TV channels are given in time bands from morning till prime time. In case you haven’t looked at the ratings, I recommend you just take a casual look. Mind you, the TAM ratings aren’t released publicly but only to members, who in turn use it to claim superiority in one segment or the other. You might get to see those TRPs as they get slightly dated and not before. As ordinary viewers you and I are not normally concerned about these ratings but for TV channels and advertisers these are their Bibles and Korans. They swear, live and die by it, after they have paid for it.

The recent Anna Hazare movement had TimesNow taking up the cause against govt so strongly that it had other channels playing catch-up. TimesNow took pole position like Demi Moore in Striptease, sort of! Now, Rajdeep and others contend that the weekly ratings negatively affect content on TV. Oh yeah? So if your news content is bad you throw up a Kareena Kapoor and a Khan because the ratings are bad? Yes, indeed! That is pretty much the strategy of all news channels. Saas Bahu, Bhoot Pret, Cuckoo on the couch, Flashback Bollywood, Total Recall – all these are supposed to be worthy of news channels?

“Have you noticed how news channels are getting more and more breathless in their coverage of the news? How anchors tend to shout rather than speak? How every bit of news, no matter how mundane, is deemed worthy of a Breaking News headline? And how sensation is increasingly replacing the sort of thing that used to be regarded as news?” That’s not me. That is one time Radiagate hero Vir Sanghvi writing on his website Counterpoint. I am tempted to ask Vir Sanghvi what he did when he used to be on TV. At best I could call his shows gentle massaging while you snoozed. And I am being kind really. But let it be!

Let’s hear some more from Vir Sanghvi: Currently, the news channels and the advertising industry are locked in a fierce battle over ratings. The news channels say that the current system in which ratings are declared every week is bad. It should be replaced by a system where such ratings are announced only once a month. Nonsense, say advertisers. We are in the business of spending the money our clients give us wisely. We need information that is accurate and up-to-date. In an ideal world, we would like ratings that are instantaneous. At the very least we would prefer the current system of weekly ratings that allows us to judge how well a show is doing. Why should we have to wait a month to find this out?

Let me not bore you with Vir Sanghvi. The larger principle is pretty clear. In the recent discussions about a CAG report damning Air India, every channel had conducted an inquisition on Praful Patel with severe questioning. Not one, I repeat not one channel dared mention the other report on the Reliancescam relating to the KG Basin scam. Why would they? Just as ordinary citizens that they accuse of politician-bashing,  the news channels derive the same TRPs by politician-bashing. After all why would they bite the hand that feeds them? Right? And then, would an interview or screwing some lame executive from Reliance get them the same TRP? In both cases, Praful Patel and Reliance, the end result would have been denial, denial, denial! Given that end result in mind who would the channels pimp with? That’s simply a business decision and not a ‘news’ decision’! That’s the rating game.

Reliance, of course, is a stake holder in some of the news channels. Reliance is also a major advertiser on all the channels in India. So the crimes of Reliance can pass, but Praful Patel, like other politicians, is fair game for our news channels. Anna Hazare knew that pretty well. So, when Rajdeep Sardesai wonders why Irom Sharmila doesn’t get the same media attention he makes the same mistake most journalistic cub idiots make. Corruption is more identifiable with politicians than with the army. That is why the rating game prevents news channels from the issues of Irom Sharmila. The news channels are as corrupt as the political class. Try and figure this – IndiaTV for all the ridicule that is heaped on it for its ‘Bhooth preth, Karma, Punar Jamn’ stories could still be business-wise the most profitable one. If your game is getting eyeballs, real news and truth is not about catching the criminals by their balls. I doubt anyone would pay to see Rajdeep Sardesai in the nude on TV, but hey, make no mistake, if Poonam Pandey makes that announcement - that would break a lot of eyeballs wouldn't it?

So it’s neither about truth nor about news, it is just about the rating game. Our news channels just want to ensure that they remain sexy and attractive for their paymasters. Where do we, the viewers, come in? Go figure!

Right-Wing Fantasy Journalists

Tavleen Singh is a prominent journalist and sometimes also appears on TV discussion panels. Here are excerpts (in blue) from an article “The enemies within” in the Afternoon Despatch & Courier (July 28, 2011). The excerpts are produced in a rearranged order and not in the same way as they appear in her article: 

A TELEVISION show may seem like an odd place to make a profound political discovery but this is what happened to me last week. I agreed to appear on Nidhi Razdan’s show, left, right and centre……. So on Monday of last week she decided that the two most compelling subjects were the corruption charges that currently surround the chief minister of Karnataka and, more puzzlingly, the lessons India can learn from the massacre in Norway.  Her guests in the NDTV studio in Delhi included Nirmala Sitaraman, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s spokeswoman, Shoma Chaudhury, editor of Tehelka and a British journalist of bleeding hearted liberal disposition. I was in a studio in Mumbai listening to the discussion on an earphone and participating when Nidhi gave me the chance to intervene

It was when we got to the second topic of the day that I found myself horrified by the discussion that went on in the NDTV studio in Delhi. Nidhi led it by saying that Anders Behring Breivik represented right wing terrorism and that this was something we needed to deal with in India as well. By this she meant Hindutva terrorism and within minutes she had everyone, including the spokesperson of the BJP, agreeing that all terrorism was bad and that it should not be linked to any religion.

One has come to expect NDTV to be a mouthpiece for the Congress and the Left. Nidhi Razdan does not attempt to camouflage anything. That Shoma Chaudhury or the foreign journalists that NDTV usually invites follow NDTV’s line of discourse is also not surprising. The surprise is always the unusual eloquence with which journalists who claim to be right-thinking also try to camouflage the truth. Tavleen Singh here has attempted a clarification in writing which she could not get the chance to do on TV. But try and recall all the BJP spokespersons, the Swapan Dasguptas, the Kanchan Guptas and their likes and you will find them doing the same thing. On one hand they will claim to be critical of the left and the media delusions but when they do appear on TV, they become the very spokespersons they criticise. Seriously, terror has no religion? Whether it’s a BJP spokesperson, or Swapan Dasgupta or Kanchan Gupta or any other so called right-thinking journalist, you will find them all agreeing. What exactly is the reason for such doublespeak? Let’s read a bit more from Tavleen Singh:

In the cause of the jihad against India these groups have killed hundreds of innocent Indians in temples, bazaars, hotels and even hospitals. Does this compare with the two or three terrorist incidents we have seen that involved Hindu terrorists? Yet, not only do our leftist intellectuals make this comparison but so do important politicians. The Home Minister said last week that he thought the BJP was targeting him in the 2G spectrum scam only because he was investigating acts of terrorism that involved leading members of the RSS. As for Rahul Gandhi’s mentor, Digvijay Singh, he has hinted on more than one occasion that he believes that it was the RSS who organized the attack on Mumbai.

Shoma of Tehelka then went into a passionate dirge about ‘innocent’ Muslim boys rotting in Indian jails and about how only when it came to jihadi acts of violence was an act of terror linked to religion. The consensus among Nidhi’s panelists was that Hindutva terrorism was  more of a threat to India than Islamist terrorism with the British journalist pointed out that someone as clever and informed as Rahul Gandhi had informed the American ambassador, as reported by Wikileaks, that he was more worried about majority communalism in India than about any threats from across the border.

In vain did I try pointing out that the reason why jihadi terrorism was linked to Islam was because it was the terrorists who called themselves holy warriors for Islam. In vain did I try reminding my fellow panelists that the jihadi groups committing acts of violence in India were created by the ISI and that this meant that they had the might of the Pakistani army behind them. Nidhi’s panelists, led by the very verbose Shoma, were convinced that ‘saffron’ terror as it has come to be known was the biggest threat to India. While listening to them I realized, more than ever before, that India’s biggest enemies are Indian opinion makers and our leftist intellectuals.

I have already stated many times over that the biggest threat to Indian democracy is from the media crooks. But Tavleen Singh has got it only half right. The opinion makers are not just leftist intellectuals but also the right wing or centre-right intellectuals and journalists. Except for routinely condemning statements made by Rahul Gandhi or Digvijay Singh I have yet to come across a single journalist who has clearly stood up and asked the government to acknowledge Islamic or Jihadi terror. The reason? Most of these journalists are now freelancers who have to depend on the likes of NDTV and CNN-IBN for survival. You cannot be foolish enough to bite the hand that feeds you. The US government does not talk about China’s human rights anymore and you can guess why. One will recall that it was a college student that had the courage to ask Barack Obama about Jihadi terror. And he managed to give a vague, twisted reply.

After I appeared on Nidhi’s show I received a small floodgate of tweets from twitterers who had seen the show asking if I knew where Tehelka got its funding from. I do not and nor do I care to speculate but what I will say is that most of Tehelka’s investigative journalism seems designed to prove that India is as failed a state as Pakistan and that Indian democracy is mostly a sham. It is a viewpoint that is beginning to get on my last nerve.

It is now being revealed that NDTV, CNN-IBN and HT got lucrative media contracts from the CWG organisers. So it’s natural that they were initially low key on the scams related to CWG when reporting it. Who was the one making the loudest noise about CWG? TimesNow, of course! And why? If the Times group had got the media contracts they had bid for it appears unlikely they would have gone after the CWG scams with the same vigour as they did in July-August last year and continued ever since. They would have been too busy then promoting a rosy picture about the games and the CWG organising committee. Are the right-thinking journalists any different?

There are a few stray journalists who care to state things as they are or as they see it. When it comes to confronting the central government with the truth about terrorism I doubt there are too many journalists, left right or centre, who want to take the risk. The main job of these journalists still is to be largely politically correct. In the recent case of TimesNow’s Arnab Goswami kicking and screaming over cops being targeted by Narendra Modi, not one journalist has managed to find the courage to stand up and write or talk about the deluge of nonsense that Arnab is attempting to spread. The only clarification to come was from Jaynarayan Vyas of the Gujarat government itself.

In principle all terrorism is bad. It does not take an Einstein to discover that. The question here is to acknowledge and respond to the biggest terror threat that confronts us. The government and the media would have you believe it is Hindu communalism. Unfortunately, there are only a few, like Subramanian Swamy, to confront it.

It is also in this context that a one-man party like Subramanian Swamy is leading an extraordinary fight against corruption and against Islamic terror. And he is not really a journalist. Those journalists who pretend to stand up for fairness and straight talk are the most misleading ones. You know the government stooges, the leftists when you see them in print or on TV but the really misleading ones are the right wing fantasy journalists. They are the ones giving credence to the chorus of ‘terrorism has no religion’. This ends up with polls like the ones CNN-IBN is currently doing to merely reiterate that falsehood.