Like Rats Fighting A Plague

Media introspection! Self-introspection! This is what Rajdeep Sardesai screamed for the 2016th time on his show on October 25. Here’s what I wrote in the post “Confederation of Indian Agitators”. It was an attempt at a sarcastic look into some NGO operations: “In case you haven't heard, over the last decade or so there are many NGOs created whose job is to just channel funds. They are NGO “fund raisers”. Some are even supported by banks. They collect funds from Indians, NRIs and others and channel those funds to the NGOs of the choice of the donor. Their earnings come from commissions from the funds donated.”.

Last night on Karan (The Tool) Thapar’s show on CNN-IBN they were discussing the conviction of Rajat Gupta for insider trading. Most of our media members are in deep shock over the conviction of such a “good man”. The Social Genius even tweeted she had met him once and he spoke “perfect Bengali” (Mr President, take that warning!). The judge who convicted Gupta told him there are many good men in history who have committed bad deeds. Naturally, during the Tool’s show Ramalinga Raju and his good deeds came up for discussion. Sanjay Baru, former media advisor to PM, mentioned all of Raju’s good deeds. No, he wasn’t defending Raju in any way. None mentioned the difference that Raju is still being “tried” while Gupta’s trial is over and he’s been sentenced. In some part of the democratic world, crimes do get punished and fairly swiftly. In India we should trust Beni Prasad Verma who laughed that Salman Khurshid could even be involved in a scam of 76 lakhs. Yeah, even petty NGOs do better than that.

This here is the pic of the website of Quadriga Art. The site claims it’s a “global leader in direct marketing and creative services.  We offer nonprofit organizations, fundraising agencies and commercial brands innovative direct marketing campaign solutions that produce extraordinary results. For more than seventy years, Quadriga Art has helped value-driven clients raise money and create connections”. So you see, as the first para says, this fund-raising broker thing is becoming fairly common in India too. But here’s the surprise as Anderson Cooper reported in a series of NGO frauds that had some connection to Quadriga:

“But here's the problem: Not one dime has gone directly to help disabled veterans. Instead, CNN's Drew Griffin discovered the charity sends free stuff to veterans groups - stuff they say they didn't ask for and don't need. We're talking about thousands of bags of coconut M&Ms, bulk shipments of chef's aprons and military dress shoes. The veterans groups have had to sell the items to raise money so they could buy items vets actually do need. So, where did the nearly $56 million donated by Americans go? Griffin followed the money trail to a company called Quadriga Art, a company that specializes in fundraising. Quadriga Art and its subsidiaries have more than 500 charities on their client list, including DVNF. A source who had first-hand dealings with Quadriga tells us it’s the "financial equivalent of heroin addiction for charities".

Now, the list of NGO frauds that Cooper covered in his series on AC360 is too long to cover in a single post. Just search for “AC360 Charity fund frauds” and you will likely run into a coal mine. No, this coal isn’t in mother earth. What should trouble us is the number of NGOs in India who are similarly receiving a lot of funds but nobody knows where these funds are really going. The US Senate has launched an inquiry into the NGO fraud mess. In sharp contrast some of these Indian NGO operators are celebrated TV panellists, have received Padma Shri awards and some individuals are even on govt bodies. One such person is Binayak Sen who is a ‘convict’ but is on the Planning Commission. Mine is not to wonder if he is really guilty or not. But fact is he has been convicted and his conviction is under appeal. Even before he is cleared by courts the GOI puts him on the Planning Commission. I guess, considering his brilliance, Rajat Gupta too would be welcomed on the Planning Commission by the GOI.

Following the Thapar show Rajdeep Sardesai, the Monk, followed as usual. Following the Jindal-Zee extortion spat he had the same topic on his mind again: “Media introspection”. Following a series of introspections viewers will be convinced nothing will change. Rajdeep’s whole show can be summed up in one sentence of Justice Katju: “You want everybody to be regulated except yourself.. You are what? Lords and Gods”? Following another slap from Katju, Rajdeep will learn nothing. Following…. Never mind! If there was ever true and honest introspection, the news media would have wondered about many panellists they get on their shows that are dubious. Since we are on NGOs, let’s talk about Teesta Setalvad.

The most outrageous decoration ever has to be that of Teesta Setalvad. According to reports she is on ‘anticipatory bail’. Time and again the funding of her NGO, her fake affidavits and complaints from her own colleagues have been reported. In yet another damning report this is what The Pioneer carried today:

“The FCRA permission granted on November 21, 2007 to CJP by the Ministry of Home Affairs mentioned that “The bank account mentioned in your application should be used for receiving foreign contribution and no other amount should be credited to this account”. However, a local donation of Rs 10 Lakh, received from The Chatwal Groups by cheque no376284 dated 26/02/09, was deposited by CJP in this FCRA account… These were in clear violation of condition mentioned in the FCRA registration”. Huh? The Chatwal group? Oh, like Teesta got Padma Shri I recall somebody from The Chatwal Group was also awarded Padma Bhushan despite wide protests. Do read the full report in The Pioneer for the amazing transfer, handling and misuse of funds reported in Teesta’s NGO.

If newspapers are repeatedly carrying so many reports on wrong doings of Teesta how is it that she is such a favourite panellist with our TV channels? It doesn’t stop there. She not only gets a Padma award, she gets to be on Sonia Gandhi’s NAC. This is like a private club that drafts laws for the nation. Rajat Gupta must be regretting his misdeeds weren’t in India. He could have been making laws here. A convict on the Planning Commission, a tainted NGO operator in the NAC! What’s the message to ordinary citizens? Crime Pays? That’s not all Teesta is also on the govt’s Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE). This is a body under the HRD ministry that influences decisions on education in India. No wonder many people joke that we might as well have Ajmal Kasab teaching marketing tactics in business schools.

The serious question is about the Coalgate issue being totally buried in the media. If Zee had, as alleged, blackmailed Naveen Jindal to the tune of 100 crores for silence why are the other channels silent on Jindal and Coalgate? Why shouldn’t one suspect that they have already been silenced through some form or the other? There is another case of payments by a steel company ISPAT to VBS (suggesting Virbhadra Singh of Congress) which has been in the news. The reports are around a page long in most sites and newspapers, including The Hindu (October 22). Buried in the report is one sentence that Rajdeep and others aren’t talking about yet. It says: “Mittal diary for 2006-2010 show routine payoffs to…. Payments to journalists for stopping negative articles and photographs are also listed in these cash accounts”. Why isn’t the media or the BEA or the PCI asking for these names? Shouldn't this raise quite an alarm in the media? Nothing!

The charade of introspection and self-regulation is as big a scam as Coalgate. Last night on Rajdeep’s show he had N. Ram as a panellist to discuss this so called “media introspection”. None of the channels has so far even vaguely reported the land grab case of N. Ram. Nothing! All the NGO representatives and business celebrities who often feature on media panels somehow turn out to be connected to some scam or wrong-doing or the other. That the media is the first line of defence for the corrupt is increasingly coming across as true. Corruption and scams are a nation-wide plague. The more one scams the more the respectability. Scams less than crores seem to have even lost respectability. The day illegal dealings and scams in the media start being punished severely I believe corruption will start diminishing in other spheres too. In the meantime, imagine a battalion of rats trying to protect you from plague. 

Bark In The USA

This is the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series. Most of us love those movies, they’re fun. In ‘Goldfinger’, often rated the best Bond movie, M asks Bond: “What do you know about gold..?”. Bond says: “I know it when I see it!” That is actually a legendary line a US Supreme Court Judge Potter Stewart used in a case about pornography. True for Bias! “You know it when you see it”.

I know a few things that a journalism course might teach. I estimate, though, that they don't run some chapters on how to deal with the "Truth". So Barkha Dutt in the USA, on a “sabbatical” as she says, looked at TV channels like Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and wants to educate Indians on “bias”. So she writes “A Rashomon effect” and doubts over the singularity of ‘Truth’. She borrows the concept from Akiro Kurusawa’s movie. Fair enough. That is about perception of observers of the same event, somewhat like the tricky but gripping movie “Usual Suspects”. In contrast, if one were to use a Hercule Poirot story or movie as example it will be easy to understand how he uses a process of elimination, with even 5 or more suspects in some cases, to arrive at the ‘Truth’ about the real criminal. What creates bias on TV, which BD talks about, is really not about different perceptions but that the “usual suspects” are used to peddle “perceptions”. This is when “bias” slowly morphs into “agenda”. This is the serious mistake that BD and many sermonisers make. Let’s go through some of her write.

As a journalist you train yourself to treat both accolades and abuse with the same level of levity; you tell yourself over and over again to not take yourself seriously and you even learn, eventually, to laugh at yourself. You understand that being in the public gaze inevitably comes with being viewed through a coloured prism — whether rose-tinted or jaundiced. And you develop the ability to lightly shrug off the distortions of a persona foisted on you by others.

Read that opening paragraph carefully. Read again please. Did you? Alright, in the very opening you are declared a prejudiced, jaundiced abuser if you’re not one showering accolades on BD. Smart, eh? Since when is “abuse” the antonym of “accolades”? ‘Bouquet and brickbats’ is a common phrase but ‘Accolades and abuse’? And then the “persona” is foisted by others? It has nothing to do with what the individual herself has done? The opposite of accolades could be censure, rebuke, denunciation, reprimand, criticism but it’s highly unlikely that you will find “abuse” as an antonym. Talk about “perceptions”. Hey, how about: “If you’re not with me, you’re an abuser"?

Towards the end of her article she talks about the Socratic ideal of the unexamined life. There, in that one sentence above is my assessment of BD’s examination. Now if she wants to call it abuse she is welcome to it. Let’s take up some channels BD mentions. BD has simply Coleridged herself, that’s all. Did you ask, what the hell is Coleridged? I don’t know, but I said that cuz it sounds very “intelligent” and “intellectual”. No? Look, if you disagree, you’re abusing me!

Let’s take FoxNews. It’s a known Conservative or, as BD would like to call, a Right-wing news channel. It is not driven by a single personality like NDTV, TimesNow or CNN-IBN but Bill O’Reilly of the channel is a popular and controversial media celebrity. Hard-hitting, opinionated and sometimes even humorous and enjoyable, Bill is the typical arch-enemy of the Left-Liberal channels in the US. Bill is often accused of going after people whose thoughts or actions run against his or FoxNews’ “fair and balanced” agenda. In a recent case his rants against abortion specialist Dr. George Tiller was perceived to be part of the cause for the doctor being shot dead in 2009. That is the “perception” although it may not be the reason at all. Politifact does state:“We found at least 42 instances of O'Reilly mentioning Tiller by name, going back to 2005. In 24 instances, we found that O'Reilly referred to Tiller specifically as a "baby killer”.  

Tiller the baby-killer, rhymes well doesn’t it? Now, compare that with how systematically and consistently channels like NDTV and CNN-IBN have allowed tags like “mass-murderer’, pogrom, genocide. That is not bias, that is “agenda”. Bill O’Reilly makes no secret about his anti-abortion bias. In case of the Indian channels they cloak their bias with intelligent and intellectual debates. They specifically call individuals who have an interest in the agenda and then claim tag lines like “Experience Truth First” as NDTV used to. Singularity of truth? Oh yeah! Narendra Modi is still alive. For all we know, the hate-campaign unleashed by some of our media channels could very well have had him killed. A hate-campaign based on lies, untruths and engineered “perceptions”. The truth might free Barkha but it might piss her off too. Quite often our media celebs tar the truth as “abuse”.

CNN, a lot more centrist, is going down the ratings charts as BD correctly observes. This is more because CNN makes a “fake” attempt at “fair and balanced” debates on issues that do not require debates at all. Let’s take the current Robert Vadra and Salman Khurshid cases. Do these require TV debates? There can be the Rashomon tactic of movie making or the Hercule Poirot method that channels can adopt. Obviously, the Poirot method requires “little grey cells” (as Poirot himself would say) whereas the Rashomon one requires just creative scripting. Both Vadra and Khurshid cases are ones where documents can be scrutinised and investigated and may be one or two legal experts can comment. Instead, getting political spokesmen is the idea of deliberately clouding issues and engineering “perceptions”. Which is the reason CNN’s pretences of bipartisanship fail. Documents, facts, truth do not require a debate all the time unless you are conducting a “show” as all our channels do. Do they?

Let’s turn to MSNBC that BD mentions, a prominent leftist channel. It has celebrities like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. Oh wait! Olbermann? Yeah, the same guy who was suspended from the channel because he made an undeclared political donation to three political candidates. That broke in the same month as Radiagate – November 2010. Haha! Regardless of what the bias, indiscretions aren’t tolerated by MSNBC. Fareed Zakaria was suspended too. But hey, even after suspicions of “lobbying” and “power-brokering” in ministry formation, BD merrily continues on NDTV without any censure or investigation. Now that’s at least one major difference between the “biased” US channels and the “biased” Indian channels. Let’s read some more by her:

But if there’s one accusation that can still get a rise out of you — triggering annoyance, exasperation or weariness at different times — it is the charge of Bias. So whether it’s from the online armies of ideologues and their weapons of mass fabrication; or more sincere feedback from people who may demand to know why your views on a certain issue have altered — in India, the debate around Media Bias remains volatile, but essentially shallow and infuriating…..

Yet, wearing your political bias on your lapel microphone seems to be the new mantra of successful television in the US. I wouldn’t be surprised if the vitiated political environment in India and the constant pressure for a more provocative and opinionated media, sees a similar trend for us. Whether that’s a good thing or bad- ah well, that would probably depend on your ‘Bias’

So the online armies have their “weapons of mass fabrication” and BD alone has the truth. Ah well, she has the truth, you have the fiction. Like I said there is something worse than bias; it’s called “manipulation”. We know it when we see it. It is precisely for this reason that a few months ago I monitored every minute, every second of a program by BD on NDTV. Instead of merely peddling an opinion, as BD does, I decided to check with statistics and timeshares. In the post titled “NDTV–Evolving The Gandhi” I found that the entire discussion, just before the last UP elections, was manipulated in terms of timeshare in favour of the Congress party. BD herself was more or less the spokesperson for the party. Even her “acting” was bad. That is not a one-off episode. Just before the 2009 general elections BD did an interview with Priyanka Vadra (or Gandhi at election times) which can be best described as “emotional rescue”. Perception or truth? We know it when we see it!

The comparison with the US model is mindless. If they wear their bias on their lapel mics, the Indian counterparts wear it on their mics and even their sleeves. The US has only two main political parties across the board. In India there are more than 60 big and small parties, all vying for power and for the loot. A vertical division of media in the US by bias is not the same as the devious manipulation by news channels as we see in India. The right-wing or conservative channels in the US too came up only in response to the biased, manipulative left-liberal channels. Fox News came up only as recently as 1990s and has been very popular with the conservatives. If the leftist Indian media doesn’t stop their manipulative ways then right-wing news channels will come up here too, and that wouldn’t be bad either.

The problem with Indian news channels is far worse than mere bias. The media celebs rarely touch upon the epidemic of “paid-media” and other media crimes. Recently, a channel has even been accused of blackmail with a sting operation. Now who is to say which channels are not guilty of such crimes? As for Barkha, there is no real need to justify bias. A prominent panellist recently told me: “When I want the Congress viewpoint on issues I just turn to NDTV, it’s a lot easier”. You see, she might feel Coleridged. It’s a reference to the “Albatross around the neck” she carries; that of Radiagate. It’s from a poem by Samuel Coleridge. As an English-literature expert I’m sure BD is unlikely to have missed that. That’s probably the reason for her frequent anguish over accusations of bias or her persuasions and “imaginary abuse”. What would be considered a “bite” by Barkha in India is just another Bark in the USA.

“A second-class mind dealing with….” is a quote from famous British Political Scientist Harold Laski.

Stenographers & Stray Dogs

Whenever a political turn or event happens who do our reporters run to most? You guessed it – Digvijaya Singh. And what does he offer them? Nothing but filthy utterances against others and mindless statements that aren’t even fact-checked. His own party is on record stating that his statements are not “authorised”. Yet, DS with no political position or responsibility and clearly over-the-hill, is the Guru for most TV editors. The reporters seek his comments like Stenographers and faithfully relay it. By evening, on many occasions, based on his silly utterances, you will find DS doing a full-fledged interview with Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai or Rahul Kanwal. It’s a well-planned and organised routine. Did I just say ‘stenographers’? My apologies, someone else has a different take about stenographers. We will get to that.

Let’s call this paragraph Chapter- C for reference: Can you figure out who this guy is? “He was overjoyed… He did his mandatory piece to the camera and rushed to office. Once his script was done, he waited for a call from his Editor. No call came. For hours, video editors sat with the material. He was not allowed inside the editing bay. "I sat in a corner of the office like an outcast though I was the key person in the investigation," he recalls. And then, all hell broke loose. All he could hear was two words as an explanation for the volte-face: ‘inconclusive evidence’. The editor, who had not talked to him so far, asked if he needed police protection. For what, he asked? "I felt like a stray dog," he says and then resigned from the channel and took a bus home”. Sounds like an errand boy, doesn’t he? But he’s a reporter. His channel made him feel like a stray dog as he says. The man could well hold the key to one of the most infamous episodes in India’s political and media history but his story was shut out because his channel and his boss wanted to suppress the story.

Meet Amber Lyon, she has a similar story. She’s not a journalist covering India and the story may not have a direct relevance but her channel, CNN, does have a stake in India. Let me just quote the story (edited excerpts) from LibertyBlitzkrieg:

The Amber Lyon story is just the latest in a series of articles that expose the total Joseph Goebbels like censorship rampant in mainstream media today… This is precisely why alternative media sites are taking off.  They provide the only outlets left for genuine journalism… Back in March 2011, CNN sent a four person team to Bahrain to cover the Arab Spring.  Once there, the crew was the subject of extreme intimidation amongst other things, but they were able to record some fantastic footage.  As Glenn Greenwald of the UK’s Guardian writes in his blockbuster:

In the segment, Lyon interviewed activists as they explicitly described their torture at the hands of government forces, while family members recounted their relatives’ abrupt disappearances…She spoke with government officials justifying the imprisonment of activists. And the segment featured harrowing video footage of regime forces shooting unarmed demonstrators, along with the mass arrests of peaceful protesters.… Despite these accolades, and despite the dangers their own journalists and their sources endured to produce it, CNN International (CNNi) never broadcast the documentary. Even in the face of numerous inquiries and complaints from their own employees inside CNN, it continued to refuse to broadcast the program or even provide any explanation for the decision. To date, this documentary has never aired on CNNi…. In March 2012, Lyon was laid off from CNN as part of an unrelated move by the network to outsource its investigative documentaries. “At this point,” Lyon said, “I look at those payments as dirty money to stay silent. I got into journalism to expose, not help conceal, wrongdoing, and I’m not willing to keep quiet about this any longer, even if it means I’ll lose those payments.”

The ‘dirty money’ Lyon is referring to is the ‘severance package’ she got from CNN for getting rid of her. And just like the reporter in Chapter-C she too must have felt like a stray dog. Naturally, most editors have turned their ground reporters into stenographers who take a dictation and transmit the sound-bites. Reporting that is fine but there is no follow up from the studio staff or anchors to “verify the correctness and accuracy” of those sound-bites. Anything that is sympathetic to the ruling party passes without any challenge. But hey, that’s an insult to even stenographers as Glenn Greenwald brilliantly explains in his article "Inept Stenographers":

Journalists' excuses for their bad behavior -- it's necessary to get quotes -- are both fictitious and irrelevant…. A common criticism of establishment journalists entails comparing them to stenographers, on the ground that most of them do little more than mindlessly write down and uncritically repeat what government officials say. But stenography is a noble and important profession: they’re the court-licensed officers who, with astonishing speed and accuracy, transcribe the statements of all witnesses, lawyers and judges in judicial proceedings. If establishment journalists were to replicate actual stenography, it would be an improvement on most of the work they produce….  “And that explains why establishment journalists provide this service to these political officials: because they serve them as spokespeople, not report on them adversarially”.

Think of the journalists who are embedded with a political party. You can easily identify them on TV. They even interpret body language of ministers or even Sonia Gandhi for you. You can also easily replace any party spokesperson with these journalists. They have become the spokespeople. I agree with Greenwald, Stenographers are far nobler. Crony media bosses treat some of their own as stray dogs as the reporter in Chapter-C feels. Then there are stray dogs elsewhere too. You will suddenly find them spinning strange theories. Sometimes it will be in support of the ‘cronies’ who can’t tolerate any criticism. Sometimes they will suddenly unleash a campaign for Priyanka Vadra as PM candidate. Oh do remember, at times like these they will refer to her as ‘Priyanka Gandhi’ for effects.  NYTimes itself admitted that MSM news is nothing but censored propaganda. If that can happen in a true ‘free speech’ society, imagine what it would be in India.

Gallup, the respected research company, published a poll on reliability of TV and newspapers in July 2012. They carried out a survey to find out confidence of Americans in the media. Not surprisingly, the confidence in TV news has fallen from 46% in the early 1990s to a low of 21% in 2012. Newspapers didn’t fare any better. From a peak of 51% around 1978 the confidence has fallen to 25% in 2012. This kind of decline would be true for India too except that there is no one measuring it. There is no one acting as watchdog over our MSM either. This gives them the license to run their propaganda and lies unhindered. Now that’s where opportunity lies for people to open up alternatives. Nope, not for more news but for the Truth.

So what about the guy in Chapter-C? One has to wonder how much he was Censored. That "feel like a stray dog” is Sidhartha Gautam of CNN-IBN who quit immediately after the Cash4Votes sting that he was ordered to conduct. That Editor is none other than Rajdeep Sardesai. Why did Gautam quit? Was there a severance package like with Amber Lyon of CNN, IBN’s partner? Gautam, according to his new employers, gave a “rehearsed” testimony to the parliamentary committee on C4V. (IndiaToday August 5, 2011). The 2nd para that I called Chapter-C is also about Gautam from an India Today article of April 6, 2011. Stenographers are noble. Treating ground level reporters as stray dogs is the tactic for some editors to run their well-oiled propaganda machinery. With the ruling party in trouble again, another C4V is not too farfetched.

They Wish People 'Happy Death', In Advance

Since the morning of July 18, 2012 activities at the residence of actor Rajesh Khanna indicated there may be bad news. Parts of his house in Mumbai were being covered with white sheets and truck loads of chairs were being delivered. Given his illness it was fair to assume he must have died. Some news channels were already running programmes on the life and times of RK and he was indeed confirmed dead in the afternoon of July 18. It’s no big secret that when a public figure falls seriously ill or is hospitalised with a serious condition, the news media quickly put together an obituary just in case.. They leave a few blanks to be filled in when the final bad news is confirmed. However, in the age of 24X7 news some seem to be in a hurry to wish death to people who haven’t died yet.

In the past some deaths have been announced by confusion or accident. If not for the wrong news of Alfred Nobel’s death calling him “Merchant of death” or “Dynamite man” (For having invented the dynamite) there wouldn’t have been a Nobel Prize at all. Alfred Nobel didn’t want to be remembered as the ‘Dynamite man’ so he instituted the Nobel Prize and that became his legacy. But his case can be forgiven as an honest mistake by newspapers. Not so CNN who had a page open to public that had obituaries of many living people. CNN was just ‘well-prepared’ in case these people were to die without notice. (Read the last segment on this Wikipedia page).

That’s not all, Dick Cheney, who had just become Vice President in 2001, had an obituary for a life from 1941-2001. I quote from the Wiki page: The CNN page had advanced obituaries written for Fidel Castro, Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela, Bob Hope, Gerald Ford, Pope John Paul II, and Ronald Reagan. Some of these obituaries contained fragments taken from others, particularly from Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's obituary, which had apparently been used as a template. Dick Cheney for example was described as the 'UK's favourite grandmother', the site noted the Pope's 'love of racing', and described Castro as 'lifeguard, athlete, movie star' (a reference to Ronald Reagan). The number of people declared dead prematurely run into hundreds. Even Paul McCartney, at the height of Beatlemania in 1966, was reported dead.

We could dismiss all this as being ‘well prepared’ for an uncertain certainty. But lately, the Indian media has overtaken their western counterparts. They are not just keeping obituaries ready but once a serious illness or hospitalisation is reported, they are declaring people dead well before they actually die.

Here’s the image of a news item on the internet from Manorama-Online. They declared wrestler and actor Dara Singh dead three days ahead of his actual death. Dara Singh was declared dead by ManoramaOnline on Monday July 9, 2012 when he was still alive. He actually died on July 12, three days later. Well, you can’t complain about our enthusiastic news media being ahead of time. Even though many observers pointed out this serious mistake to Manorama they neither retracted their news page nor apologise for the premature pronouncement. The page was finally quietly pulled many days later without a word. But I keep saying in this day and age it’s difficult to hide bloopers. (Image from @surnell).

In case you didn’t know, Jayprakash Narayan, the socialist leader who led the revolution against the Indira Gandhi govt in the 70s was declared dead prematurely. "Jayaprakash Narayan: while hospitalized in March 1979, the politician's death was erroneously announced by India's prime minister, causing a brief wave of national mourning, including the suspension of parliament and regular radio broadcasting, and closure of schools and shops. The mistake arose when the director of the Intelligence Bureau saw a body looking like Narayan being carried from hospital. Narayan died in October, 1979”. (This is from the same Wiki page link I have provided earlier in this post. Look under ‘N’). That’s a govt declaring a well-known leader dead and declaring mourning 7 months in advance.

The latest victim to be killed by the media is none other than Union Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. Deshmukh has been hospitalised with kidney and liver problems and is in a critical condition at the time of writing this. Yes, it does look like survival may be difficult unless he gets transplants that work or some miracle. But he’s still alive. Er.. Not according to DNA newspaper though! On the evening of August 7 at 18.55 DNA declared Deshmukh dead. (Image from @Equateall). Naturally, many people on the internet circulated this news. Even online news magazine FirstPost tweeted the death of Deshmukh based on the DNA report without verifying. 

I was surprised, because none of the news channels, who are usually in a race to break news, were even reporting this in their scrolls. And then I checked other sources on the net and on all TV channels and had to conclude this was another ‘Wish-you-happy-death’ report. Many on twitter pointed this out to DNA but typically they did not apologise for this mistake but pulled their page within minutes.

What can one say! Next time you hear a report about some public figure, some celebrity or even a private individual passing away, make sure you check twice with alternate sources. In this age of competition among news outlets to even break news about deaths it almost sounds like they are wishing people a happy death, in advance. 

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