The Two Faces of Media

Lately, I've been pretty appalled by the two-faced nature of media (print, television, even radio) not just in India, but around the world. You hear the media's version of the story, which is often far, far from the factual sequence of actions. Take the pink chaddi campaign for instance. There are two sides to the coin, but the completely pseudo-secular Indian media took its own 180º take on it.

So, my sources for news used to be (notice the past tense) mainly:

• Times of India
• The Hindu
• The New York Times
• Wall Street Journal
• CNN
• BBC
  

I'd stopped reading the BBC website a long time ago, because most of the information on there is unreliable. You see, a couple of years ago, I didn't know any better. I assumed, like most people, that the media is credible, and that its the best source of correct information.

I have come to know better. These days, I may click on the above websites a total of a couple of times a month, if at all. There are in fact, several factually correct, reliable and informative sources online, which I am happily discovering. Some of them are blogs (long live blogging!) and others are non-mainstream websites.

When a newspaper can give expensive valuable word count to radicalized elements like Arundhati Roy, who not only do not project a mainstream Indian view, but actually defend terrorist activities on Indian soil and after each incident, find ways to justify terrorism and loose treatment to terrorists/murders, then I lose all respect for that news source, and that newspaper quickly loses my business.

Lately, I've been engrossed in a whole new genre of blogs which I've been discovering one by one (links to the right), with a wealth of information. For example, Indians who are really interested in knowing about the security situation of India should read ex-RAW Chief Vikram Sood's Perspectives or ex-Indian Police Officer KPS Gill's website SATP.org (instead of listening to the lunatic Barkha Dutts on NDTV).

Barkha Dutt deserves a whole post dedicated to her non-existent professionalism, and shoddy journalism, which resulted in the loss of a woman's life in the 26/11 Massacre. But several more knowledgeable bloggers have already ripped her journalistic incapabilities to pieces - so I will leave her alone for now.

I have no doubt that false-news reporting media are close to extinction. But we need to accelerate the process and put them out of their misery sooner rather than later.

Long live the bloggers of the world!