Sreenivasan Jain Vs Niti Central

In case you haven’t already read the previous post ‘NDTV & Tehelka – Faking Limits’ I recommend you do. This is because this post concerns the programmes aired by NDTV on June 27 on the Ishrat Jehan encounter case. The entire 90 minutes (30 in the afternoon and 60 at night) of the programming rests on some CBI papers of “Black beard-White beard” that NDTV claimed proved Narendra Modi and Amit Shah had advance information of the encounter. I just call it the “Beard story”.

The MSM is now getting frequently rattled by articles scrutinising their shows like a surgeon. Sreenivasan Jain of NDTV is upset. Very very upset! He was the one who aired the “beard” stories. In response to his show Kartikeya Tanna at NitiCentral criticised some of the points raised by Jain. A critical part of Tanna’s article (which was also mentioned in my previous post) reads as under:

Journalistic incompetence or predetermined mind?

Firstly, in the report (at 5:25), he (Jain) actually says that the High Court has already established the Ishrat encounter as fake. One wonders what is left for the CBI and the courts to do! In fact, only around two weeks ago, when the CBI obsessed over the LeT links of the dead, the High Cpurt told it to focus on whether the encounter was fake. Whether this is pure journalistic incompetence or a predetermined mind, I would let readers decide.

That’s right if the High Court had already established Ishrat’s encounter was “fake” there’s not much left to do for the CBI and the courts except for the guilty to be sentenced. This claim that the court had already established the encounter was fake is damaging to Jain’s case and he makes it the principal point of a lengthy rebuttal to Niti Central. Here’s a pic as an excerpt from that rebuttal:

Aha, why am I posting an image instead of just quoting Jain? Well, you see pages have this nasty habit of disappearing from NDTV’s website or contents get altered. So what you see in the pic was what it was at 9.13pm on June 29. Jain’s claim that HC had accepted it as a fake encounter appeared at 5.25 in the video posted at NDTV website per Tanna (which Jain refers to as 5.30). So Jain uses “perhaps” and says he heard the discussion at the counter indicated by Tanna but couldn’t find it there. Amazing! The link that Tanna provides in his article for the 5.25 reference and which Jain now refers to both lead to this LINK of the report. Voila! The video is a report by anchor Kajori Sen (who wasn't anchoring the original show) and shows Jain reporting on the case. There’s just one problem with the video as this image shows:

Note carefully, in the above pic of the video the timestamp is June 27, 19.03 and the length is only 3.30 mins. Now why in the world would Tanna be stupid enough to point at a counter at 5.25 when the video itself only 3.30? And Jain in his rebuttal points to this same video and claims he has heard it and finds he hasn’t claimed HC had accepted the “fake” stuff. Mystery! Well Jain may have the “original” video which has simply DISAPPEARD from the NDTV website. That original “Beard story” was a full length half hour programme on June 27 around 3.30pm of around 25 minutes. That video has conveniently disappeared from NDTV’s site and replaced by this video of 3.30mins. Now even the link provided in the Niti Central article naturally leads to this wrong video.

So what was in the video of the Beard-story that aired at around 3.30pm on June 27? Well, I had watched it and I guarantee that Tanna has correctly quoted Jain claiming HC accepting the encounter was fake. On the left is a tweet that Jain sent at 3.29pm on June 27 just claiming his “breaking news” on the Beard-story. So what happened in that afternoon show of June 27? Well, since the video has disappeared I reproduce below few facts from it from my memory. And I assure you, this cannot be disputed by NDTV. So here it goes:

1) Around 3.30pm on June 27 Sreenivasan Jain broke the Beard-story about Modi and Shah being aware of the encounter prior to the incident. This because NDTV “accessed” some CBI papers. 2) Jain was reporting from the studio and had his reporter Rohit Bhan joining in from Ahmedabad. 3) I recall a female reporter from Mumbai adding sound-bites but I am not sure so we will let this one pass. 4) The two main participants on Jain’s show in the afternoon were Jaynarayan Vyas of the BJP and Vrinda Grover, the lawyer for Ishrat’s family.

5) From the beginning of the show Jain was kicking and screaming at Vyas about the new evidence and Vyas fumbled for answers at this sudden badgering. It was at this point that Vyas offered a reason that the matter was still before the High Court.. and Srinivasan instantly responded by saying the High Court had already accepted the encounter was fake. This is what happened at 5.25 in the programme as mentioned by Tanna. As for Vrinda Grover she was just screaming angrily she’s not a Congress agent and the case is not manipulated by Congress and this shouldn’t be made a Congress-BJP fight. For good measure she also screamed that there is a whole lot of anti-Muslim sentiment that led to such “fake” encounters. There was nothing more of substance in that show.

That is the crux of the problem that makes the rebuttal of Jain hollow and unacceptable. Because the video of the afternoon show has been conveniently removed by NDTV. I do not know Kartikeya Tanna or anyone at Niti Central. But having read Tanna’s past articles I can vouch that he places great value on facts, avoids distortion and writes his stuff in a very measured tone.

In this case Jain is wrong and he should put up the full video of his afternoon shown on June 27 which will conclusively establish Tanna is absolutely right in his observation. Period! Now then, after posting his rebuttal at 9.13 pm on June 29, Jain grandly claims in a tweet at 9.21pm “Chapter closed”. Well dear Sreenivasan, chapter is not closed unless you reload the original video from the afternoon of June 27 for the public to see the truth. NDTV dropped its original tagline “Experience truth first” a long time back and Jain should figure out why. Having watched that afternoon show myself I stand by Kartikeya Tanna’s article and his observations. Based on the above, in ‘Sreenivasan Jain V Niti Central’ you decide.

NDTV & Tehelka - Faking Limits

A political witch-hunt is usually to destroy someone’s political career. But in India the single biggest hunt is not just to destroy someone politically but to also protect the misdeeds and failures of some. When it comes to such a hunt both NDTV and Tehelka are like a tag-team. It’s not a secret that both these outlets are Congress doormats. Instead of the usual explanation let’s also go through a pictorial of this by NDTV & Tehelka.

Here’s a pic from WeAreTheBest. One of the first things that the Congress govt did on returning to power in May 2004 is to restore the broken-down Tehelka. Well, after all this propaganda magazine had helped targeting the Congress opponents. Since then Tehelka has been repaying the debt by helping Congress in targeting all its opponents.

Tehelka is famous for using prostitutes as decoys in their sting operations. I guess that practice turned their journalism itself into prostitution. So on June 7, in another instalment of Modi-hunting in the Ishrat case, they put some CBI papers they claim to have accessed and a conversation between some officers to refer to “Black beard” and “White beard” being in the know. This is like a “he said, she said” kind of story that I doubt any sensible investigating unit would use as “evidence”. But then CBI doesn’t have a reputation like that. If indeed CBI papers are being leaked then obviously you know who would be behind it. Post this particular article Tehelka the “Seeta” has a chat with Rana Ayyub the “Geeta”. They are like twin sisters chatting with each other.

The person who operates the Tehelka Twitter handle must be either an idiot or Tehelka itself is an absolute idiot. The Rana article appeared in Tehelka so the moron operating the handle interviews her about it. That’s why I call it the “Seeta Aur Geeta” type interview where both the handles are cooking in the same kitchen. Then even more stupidly the Tehelka handle tells Rana in the bottom tweet to read “more” of her own article. Priceless! This Rana even went on to indict the whole CMO of Narendra Modi in the Ishrat case in another tweet. However, she may have realised one shouldn’t fake it beyond limits so deleted the tweet on the left. So officially that statement doesn’t exist. This seems to be a practice with Tehelka (Sometimes also referred to on Twitter as “TheHalka”). Earlier they interviewed their own editor Shoma Chaudhury on her article in Tehelka.

So it is evident that Tehelka itself doesn’t read articles appearing in the magazine so I assume only folks at NDTV read it since they use the masala from it to produce their own “exclusive and explosive” exposes. If you don’t observe carefully, whenever these Congress doormats have to talk about corruption or misdeeds they will use “UPA” not “Congress”. When good things happen they will talk about “Sonia” and “Congress”. It’s a very well-rehearsed arrangement. So, per practice, NDTV uses the Tehelka article of June 7, and Sreenivasan Jain makes loud noises about NDTV getting their hands on CBI documents of “Black beard-White beard” stuff. I don’t know why they have to use stealth and get those documents when Tehelka gives it all to them free. Isn’t that stupid? Because there was nothing in the NDTV nonsense on June 27 that wasn’t there in the Tehelka nonsense of June 7! So Sreenivasan Jain calls 1 from BJP, 1 from the IB and 4 from the Congress+others hunting Modi to debate it. The IB guy was there to only to defend the IB guy and the organisation but the other 4 were designed as “prosecution” to sentence Modi with Jaynarayan Vyas as the defending lawyer. Why bother? NDTV has already sentenced Modi long back and is only awaiting confirmation from some court. Take a look at this image from Sreenivasan’s witch-hunt:

The question as the headline is one of the most mischievous practices of our criminal media. While posed as a question the perception attempted is that Modi knew of the encounter and is therefore guilty. Of course Modi is guilty! He is guilty of knowing even about 9/11 and had advance information from the US on the Osama raid too. Everyone knows all this, except the morons at NDTV and Tehelka. Kartikeya Tanna quite nicely nails the lie of Jain who grandly claimed that the High Court had already pronounced the Ishrat case a “fake encounter” in the article CBI forging ‘facts’ in Ishrat case? at Niti Central. If the HC already ruled it was a fake encounter it doesn’t to occur to “black-beard” Srinivasan that CBI wouldn’t be investigating the case right now and he wouldn’t have had to do his bogus show at all. But well, this is NDTV so they just forgot to put out the “disclosure” that they use inaccurate information in their Cookery shows.

Is that all? Well, just about it except that while these two media outlets fake it to the limit they forgot another thing. The Tehelka article appeared on June 7, NDTV claimed they got CBI papers on June 27. And on June 28 even Headlines Today ran a “me too” show claiming they got CBI papers too. Damn! Looks like these CBI papers are flying all over the place or are being sold cheaply at Chandni Chowk. It must be brought to notice of these very people that on June 14 (much after the Tehelka stuff on June 7) it was reported widely that a senior CBI official himself stated there was “no evidence against Modi” yet.

I hope NDTV and Headlines Today have managed to cover up the goof-ups of Rahul Gandhi in Uttarakhand. The local people had actually protested his disaster tour. Having screamed about Modi let’s hope like these channels the people too will forget the incompetence of Congress in handling the disaster and the aftermath. The relief trucks grandly flagged off by SoniaG are also stranded and rotting. Let’s hope people will forget all this and that RahulG once again proved himself a miserable failure. The Courts will decide on the Ishrat case but there is a reason propagandists like NDTV, Tehelka and Headlines Today suddenly scream a lot about the case.

Rajdeep's Disaster Games

For three days – June 15-17 – the media slept over the Uttarakhand disaster. At best, a couple of channels reported a flood and nothing more. It wasn’t until June 18 that they got down to realising the seriousness of the disaster and their total neglect of the state. They were still busy with the political bout of BJP-JDU break up. A few days later Rahul Kanwal made a token appearance in Uttarakhand. On June 24 Barkha Dutt was reportedly rushing to the state. Her travel partner Nitin Gokhale was already tweeting difficulties they were facing during travel (how unfortunate!). Arnab Goswami was busy trying to get his motley crew to agree that it was a man-made disaster. And Rajdeep Sardesai? Well, as usual Rajdeep was carping and crying about Narendra Modi. One can understand Manish Tiwari being upset with Modi doing some relief work or helping the victims in UK but why would a media moron be so upset? Think about that.

In the meantime the Congress at the Centre suddenly realised Modi was running away with all the laurels for doing a “Rambo act” as ManishT called it. After 10 days they decided maybe the GOI should send some relief trucks with food, blankets and stuff to Uttarakhand. Remember, the disaster started unfolding on June 15, so the Congress waited a whole 10 days to do something. This after Sonia and Manmohan Singh had a luxury aerial tour of the state a week ago. Ah well, the only Emergency the Congress seems to know or like is the kind they would like to impose on the country, the IndiraG types. What else can explain the wait for 10 days to even send relief trucks? One reason being circulated was that the little Baby Gandhi was abroad so they wanted to wait for him. And then SoniaG “flags off” the trucks. Someone rightly asked “What the hell was that? Some mountaineering expedition”? The stupidity of the ceremony seems to be lost on both the Congress and the media.

Flagging apart, the trucks were decked with the Congress party flags. What for? The trucks weren’t a gift from the party. They were surely stuff provided with GOI funds or your money. I guess it’s the old Congress tradition of look what your “mai baap” gave you. They just forgot to label the trucks the “The Rajiv Gandhi Relief Convoy” I suppose. Amidst all this, the only problem Rajdeep Sardesai has with an article that lauded Modi’s efforts in helping Gujarati pilgrims stranded in Uttarakhand a ride back home. For starters, the article appeared in Times Of India which screamed Modi helped 15000 people. Rajdeep’s growing contempt for the Times Group stems from his rivalry with Arnab Goswami’s Times Now so he calls it a “plant”. Aha! Rajdeep should know all about “plants” after all many “alleged” news items and reports on CNN-IBN can also be safely called plants. The disgusting exchange between two Modi-haters can be seen in this tweet below:

Now, the fact of the matter is that Modi sent 4 IAS cadre officers to UK a few days after the disaster and its scale became evident. It is also widely known that a good population of those stranded and in need of relief were Gujarati tourists. It is therefore understandable and even demanded of the Gujarat CM that he act swiftly to help the Gujaratis stranded there. This is something the CMs of each state should have done. If Indians were to be stranded from a stampede in Mecca who would we expect the GOI to save first? Whether Modi helped 15000 or 1500 is even immaterial. The fact that he got down to the place and organised the transportation for stranded Gujaratis is what every other state should have done. The sheer incompetence, negligence and ineptness of the UK CM Vijay Bahuguna demanded that others take action.

The guy in the tweet who asks why Modi saved Gujaratis has a serious problem. There is nothing to suggest he saved only Gujaratis but that’s what the media reported. There were people from other states in the buses that Modi organised. In a relief effort you do better when you’re clear who your target group is. Never mind! But if Modi had saved others the same moron would have then tweeted that Modi ignored Gujaratis and gave priority to others and is therefore selfishly eyeing a national role even in a disaster. Did he save 15000? Who put that number out? Modi never made any claims of any number but it’s the CM of UK and the media who made such a guesstimate. Authentic reports state 6000 returned home consequent to the organised action by Modi as narrated in this DeshGujarat report.

Rediff too carries a detailed report on the relief work undertaken by Modi. The 15000 figure conjured up by TOI neither came from Modi nor from any Gujarat govt official. It hardly matters whether the number was 15000 or not. What does matter is that people were not only saved but the exercise also eased the burden on the inept Uttarakhand govt and also reduced the burden on the Army. The Congress did nothing. And what did Rajdeep do? Nothing either! All that Rajdeep Sardesai managed was to promote collection of funds for UK through his favourite charity Uday Foundation. Not just CNN-IBN, even NDTV was promoting this foundation which had no base or operation in UK. It is a fact that Indian govts never act fast in emergencies. The well-organised act of Modi clearly needs recognition not derision by the likes of Rajdeep who act as brokers for Charities. For all his tall talk Rajdeep couldn’t get past his studio during the relief work.

ABPNews, NDTV - Floody Frauds

Let’s face it, we all make mistakes. Even the best of experts make mistakes. It’s just that some mistakes can be honest and not be so harmful and some are deliberate and fraudulent. Some mistakes can be hilarious and some can be very damaging or offensive to others. Watch this video (1.42 mins) from BBC 24Hours where the anchor interviews Guy Kewney an IT expert over the Apple (Beatles Music Co.) V Apple Computers case. (Do watch the video before you proceed further):

Guy answered all the questions the anchor raised without batting an eyelid. The ‘Guy’ in the video is remarkable for his composure considering he wasn’t the ‘Guy’ the BBC wanted. The real Guy Kewney is the one in the pic on the left. The Guy that the anchor interviewed was a taxi-driver who was hanging around in the BBC reception area waiting for an interview for a job at the station. His name is Guy Goma who became more famous after the goof-up. What is hilarious is that Goma not only carried himself brilliantly during the interview but even as a taxi-driver he gave some very convincing answers. That tells you how even ordinary folks are up to speed on issues. But that doesn’t say much for the BBC or the anchor does it? Poor lady didn’t even know what Guy Kewney looked like. Considering Kewney was an IT journalist till his death in 2010 one would have expected an anchor to know about or at least have seen a pic of Kewney. That’s the ‘expertise’ and ‘general knowledge’ of anchors. The best part? The anchor thought she had an “expert” as her guest, while Goma thought this was an interview for the job he was seeking.

In Goma’s case all ended well and everybody had a good laugh and no one suffered any damage. Life would be boring without such genuinely honest mistakes. But what about the viciously deliberate frauds that TV channels perpetrate on viewers? Take a look at the pics below: 

These are screen shots of a semi-porn video aired by TV9 and SuvarnaTV in Karnataka. These channels and others never stop lecturing people about vulgar displays by and of women and porn and so on. Yet such cheap titillation is passed off as news item. There can hardly be any doubt that the material is offensive and in poor taste. What does one do with such airings? The man who sent these images (@Surnell) protested to the Broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCC) with an email attaching these pics. The BCCC then directed him to address the complaint to News Broadcasters’ Association since these were “news channels”. Yeah… that’s the NBA which I often refer to as the Union of Snakes. By the time @Surnell gets anywhere with his complaints he will find the NBA is like any other govt body.

Let’s talk about Anderson Cooper of CNN. Cooper rose to prominence for his reporting from conflict zones as a freelancer. Today, he is the superstar of CNN and probably a superstar among TV anchors in the US. Cooper’s rise in CNN was quite quick and his most promoted show is AC360. Still, despite being a famous studio anchor every time there’s a natural calamity or disaster, Cooper returns to report from the ground. He has mostly been in all hurricanes, tornadoes and floods as the following images would tell you:

Our big media celebs are too lazy to get their asses off their studio seats and get to the ground. For 3 days when the Uttarakhand flood was causing damage they were in their studios gossiping on the BJP-JDU break-up endlessly and beyond reasonable limits. Yes, for 3 days – June 15, 16, 17 – celebrities like Rajdeep, Arnab, Barkha, Sagarika, Kanwal and their siblings in other news channels didn’t have time for Uttarakhand. When they finally found time they sent some junior reporters to cover the tragedy. CNN-IBN sent Priyali Sur to one spot just to show they were “on ground zero” before they could send others to cover the severe damage caused by the floods. In such a situation there isn’t any doubt that reporting isn’t easy and no reporter should be put in harm’s way. But in the absence of visuals some channels just resorted to fraudulent reporting. Take a look at this image flashed by NDTV on June 18 (Via @unurag):

NDTV just picked up a video from Youtube from June 2010 and used it to report the Uttarakhand floods of June 2013. They were just 3 years late it seems. I have mentioned in the past the fall of TV journalism owes a great debt to NDTV and its “alleged” journalists. Twisting news, unverifiable sources for headlines, spin-doctoring – you name it, NDTV has got it. But this kind of bogus videos/images being used is an outright fraud on the viewers. One person actually tweeted me that he wanted to sue NDTV because he was alarmed by the image. As far as I know NDTV hasn’t even apologised for this serious lapse. They probably had a good laugh at having fooled the people for a while. Well, NDTV isn’t alone! Here’s another one from a lazy news channel called ABPNews (Formerly StarNews, the fountain that spawned Prannoy Roy, Barkha, Rajdeep and Arnab):

 The ABP folks picked up a video of a bus falling off a cliff in Bolivia (Via @_SiddharthRao). Bolivia? The only thing I know about Bolivia is it’s the country which shot dead Che Guevara. ABP must have thought nobody would think of Bolivia to detect their fraud. That’s not all! The fraudsters even scroll their logo across the video to show it was some “exclusive” stuff they were providing the viewers. How clever! Both NDTV and ABP doesn’t seem to learn that Social Media is a watchdog over them and they can’t get away with such frauds anymore.

How sick can these channels get? Even in a time of tragedy they resort to gimmickry and fraud in their rush to cover up their failures of not having original shots of the flood fury in Uttarakhand. They want to bedazzle you with BS! The Twitter friend who was alarmed and annoyed at these bogus pics really wanted to sue these channels. There are air-passengers associations, rail-passengers associations so maybe it’s time for a ‘news-viewers’ association that will indeed take on these news channels for bogus news and images. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be sued and penalised for their floody frauds.