Thank You..

It’s over two and a half years since this blog started. It is with a sense of happiness and satisfaction that I note this blog crossed One Million views on October 16.2012. For a small blog in some corner of the world I consider it a decent accomplishment. I would consider it an even greater accomplishment if it manages to push many more to write. I have, of course, been inspired by many wonderful writers on the net; writers whose names would make a very long list. They aren’t from the regular media. All of them had something in common which I learned: They weren’t just bold, but in writing, they were never afraid of being wrong, they took the opportunity to say what they believed or assessed to be right. In this post I will share a few personal notes.

Like many, I have observed news media for a long time, national and some international. It was a thrill to see TV news channels adopt a strong adversarial role with the govt in the late 90s. It was only in 1999 during the Kandahar episode that I felt something wasn’t really right. Then, it was in 2002 during and after the Gujarat riots that I sensed the channels had gone far beyond reporting. They were actually concocting lies and fake stories. Naturally, most of it was quite shocking and disturbing. Program after program reported over 2000 deaths, 3000 deaths, mass rapes, foetuses ripped apart with no authentic evidence for anything. By 2004 it was pretty much clear that these news channels were not in the news business but in politics. Some NGOs joined hands with the media too. People we thought were social activists were actually “paid political hacktivists”.

I had a TV in a small office from where my partner and I operated an online business. I was mostly alone in the office and hardly watched but had the sound on to catch any sensible news. Then we got to watch the Cash4Votes in 2008 and that too brought outrage but passed. That year the US presidential election was also interesting with the possibility of a black man becoming a president for the first time. So that got a lot of attention. It was soon after that election, on November 26, that late at night I caught some report on terrorist attacks in Mumbai. This went on and on and I watched till 4am next morning before quitting. At home next morning I thought it would all be over but when I got back to office I saw things had gotten worse. On the evening of November 27 I tried calling a TV channel at least 3 times to complain about their terrible coverage of the attacks but couldn’t get through. In the following months I watched the Chetanya Kunte–Barkha Dutt episode over “shoddy journalism” on the net and that was disgusting to say the least. It was evident that media celebs had a clear contempt for social media and bloggers.

In March 2009 I registered the website MediaCrooks.Com but still didn’t write for a long time. At first we wanted to focus on the ‘financial’ channels but then the stock markets had already crashed since October 2008 and there wasn’t much to write. There were many blogs and sites that wrote about politics, religion, history, ideology etc; most of them great ones. Thus the thought of writing about news channels and only about news channels, be it print or electronic. I had no idea what to write other than what would read like complaint letters to a newspaper. The other idea was to write “reviews” of programs but that would have sounded like movie critics. The first post was made on February 2010 and for about 9 months there was hardly any readership for the site. I recall the readership count till November 2010 was around 400 or thereabouts.

It was then on November 18, 2010 that Radiagate broke and when Open magazine crashed, this site carried all the tapes in a single file without interruption. Since then there has been steady increase in readership. MediaCrooks is intended to be a critique of media without meaning to be merely a serious academic exercise. Without sacrificing accuracy and facts it was always and still is meant to be fun-reading.

Among many stories that inspire, one is definitely the story of Bob Woodward (Of Watergate). People may or may not know but Woodward was sent to cover the hearing of the Watergate burglary not because he was a great journalist but because he was an average journalist. His supervising editor even referred to him as a “Schmuck” who could have been fired. Even his newspaper, Washington Post, had initially considered Watergate just an ordinary burglary which is why they sent a ‘schmuck’. The rest is history. Their meticulous research and inquiries should have inspired many of our real journalists. They didn’t use call-girls, prostitutes and spy-cameras for “sting” operations or entrapment. Does it sound a lot like our very own J. Gopikrishnan of 2G fame? I also rely on the P&G principle: “Facts count, Opinions don’t. What is right is more important than who is”. Even in medical situations an opinion is usually a ‘considered assessment’.

In the current context the media will have us believe that corruption fighters like Anna Hazare or Arvind Kejriwal have come up because politicians have become unaccountable or have decimated our institutions. Only partly true. This is an outrageous half-truth that is being spread. Their spurious argument is that these activists have taken the place of the Opposition in a democracy. This is as far from the truth as Russian is from Tamil. These activists have come up because our media has failed. Our media has stopped being a watchdog. Whatever IndiaToday unearthed about Khurshid may have been possible with all other scams too. Our media failed. Whatever other scams were unearthed by CAG could have been done by the media too. How many times have media used RTI to expose govt misdeeds? Why should a country even need specialist “RTI activists” as they call them? If a small journal like The Pioneer and J. Gopikrishnan could expose the 2G scam what does it say about other news media with greater muscle and influence?

Far from exposing, many in the news media have, in fact, been operating as defence lawyers for the criminals in the govt and politics. With most media celebs swarming around NCR like insects attracted to the honeypot, they fail to acknowledge most crimes have happened right under their own noses. Much of the news media is also now a “political party” that is part of the crime. The anti-corruption activists have replaced not politicians or Oppositions but the news media which is too busy with Bollywood, Saas-Bahu stories, silly Cricketainment and Tamasha in general. At a time like this investigative journalism should have peaked but in India it’s practically dead. That is why I consider a corrupt media the first and biggest threat to our democracy more than politicians.

Many posts on MediaCrooks have been based on readers’ comments. Many have come through emails that I receive. Where possible they have been acknowledged. There are many individuals who have recommended the blog through Twitter, Facebook, SocialMedia forum and even in private circles. Many SM sites have reproduced posts from here. There are professional online news sites that have used content from here. Even IAC has prominently featured some posts on their site. I would love to thank every individual and entity that helped to spread the blog and its message. Naming each of them would make a very long list and run into many posts long.

I would just like to thank all of you for reading and for supporting this site. It is more than I ever expected. I also hope many more such sites come up and many more write about issues that concern all of us in general.

 

Watergate - 40th Anniversary: Lessons For India

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Living Next Door To Alice

“A shoe-thrower; a swami who wants to raise a private army; a national debate over whether dancing is decorous and a government that went from supplication to abrupt scepticism all in the span of a week…… Oh yes, the circus has come to town. It has plenty of clowns, acrobatics, tight-rope walking, the juggling of balls, fire-eaters and indeed a few lions too. But what it's sorely missing is a Ring Master. It's stuff made for satire. Remember Alice's conversation with the Cheshire Cat? Lewis Caroll wrote in 19th century England, but in the Blunder-land that is today's India, his words would be just as apt. "What sort of people live about here?" Alice had asked the Cat. "In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad…..but I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat:  "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

If you think I wrote all that, I’d be flattered. But I do not possess such writing flair. Do I even sound like a sweet-smelling, flowery-language, literary type to you? No, I didn’t write that. That was Barkha Dutt in her article  ‘The circus must end’.

Well if I were to write such crap the only Alice that would come to my mind would be from a song. But here is a line I would have used:  “We are all innocent in here…” from The Shawshank Redemption. Over the next few years you are likely to hear that line frequently from members inside the Tihar jail.

And then Barkha goes on to define civil society in LSE terms and even adds “And it has long been pointed out that it was the Congress that set the precedent of giving sweeping powers to voices outside of Parliament, with the creation of the National Advisory Council”. Oh yeah? I would like to know who pointed that out. I cannot recall one media shopkeeper even remotely discussing the NAC or pointing out that it consisted of ‘civil society’, and even some members of dubious background. The NAC coterie didn’t come up for discussion till the ‘civil society’ discussions started. And it’s not the regular media but stray bloggers, like yours truly, who raised the issue of the NAC. Some members from the NAC coterie have frequently appeared on EnditTV but no one has ever asked them about their legitimacy. Well, that is just some trivial detail that I wanted to point out to Barka Dutt.

Here is a quote from an article by M.V. Kamath (former chairman Prasar Bharati and ex-Journalist with the Times group) from March 2003. This is titled Prostitution of Journalism in India:

"The truly insidious thing about accepting bribes to carry news stories is that the reader doesn't know that he's being taken advantage of. When he reads that a newspaper regards a new car as being the best in its range, he has no reason to suspect that the paper has accepted money to make this judgement…….Proprietors who don't tell their readers that they take bribes to manufacture news stories are like thieves who pick your pocket...”

Send in the clowns!

Guess who said that! Well let me help you out. That was the famous Vir Sanghvi being quoted. I wonder where he is now. His statement is quite reflective of the double standard that pervades current journalistic practices. So when an ‘eminent’ media celebrity talks about ‘circus’, ‘ringmasters’ and even ‘lions’ all I can think of is “Send in the clowns” from the media. More than anyone else it is the media that has turned this into a circus by clowning around. For a start Barkha should understand that civil movements, public mobilisation and agitations are bound to be chaotic, disorganised and sometimes even unruly. They are not as well an organised force like the state machinery. One has to carefully read the words of some media celebrities these days (no, I wouldn’t dare call them journalists). Sanghvi’s statement I quoted is a classic example of sweet-smelling double-talk.

So where exactly did the media fail? The media failed in bringing out the truth and the underlying currents behind these agitations and movements. They failed in exposing the insincerity of the government in tackling corruption and black money. Time and time again when issues of corruption are discussed on TV channels the media has basically acted as a platform for the government defence. The fourth estate is supposed to be on the side of the people but instead they have delivered platforms for people like Digvijay Singh to spew venom on people and organisations.

In management there is a principle that is often accepted as a starting point to analyse failure: “The bottleneck is always at the top”. Yes indeed, figuratively and literally. Extraordinary levels of corruption do not come to pass without the participation of top management. Remember Satyam? Remember Enron? Remember Bear Stearns? Remember AIG? Well, it is no different in the government too. That is where the media has been an absolute failure. Failure apart, their silence has been very much like that of a co-conspirator.

The top management in the UPA has to be undoubtedly Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. There are many allegations against her of having stashed away black money in Switzerland. There are allegations of Quattrochi (of Bofors) being let off. Subramanian Swamy has sought sanction to prosecute Sonia Gandhi. Do you find any of this in our mass media? Like Barkha Dutt all the journalists do is to wax eloquently using Lewis Caroll language to talk about imaginary circuses and issues. Sonia Gandhi is a person who has not responded to any allegations and never spoken to the nation about these issues. She speaks to rural electorate seeking votes. She speaks in places where no questions will be asked. That doesn’t mean the media cannot or should not ask those questions. Zero tolerance for corruption is as sweet as Indira Gandhi’s Garibi Hatao slogan. That zero-tolerance is probably for not tolerating those who run a crusade against corruption and black money and beat them up in the middle of the night. And all Barkha manages to do in her article is to swing from one swinging bar to another like a well-dressed up acrobat. Do you feel entertained?

I guarantee you. The day the media honestly raises questions about Sonia Gandhi, the UPA will have to bow down to demands on action against the corrupt and all the skeletons will start tumbling down. Barkha talks about the blunder-land that is India. Well, she lives close to the epicentre of that blunder-land and given that she lives next door to Alice, she might want to start doing some real journalistic work for a change and start asking real questions to and about the people at the top. Till then “we are all innocent in here…”!

Congress Sues Subramanian Swamy For Defamation

On November 27, 2010 V. Sundaram, an ex-IAS officer and Janata Party member, wrote an article ‘Firangi Memahib - India's Intractable cancer, within and without’. The site www.haindavakeralam.com  that put up this article posted a question: ‘Why no defamation suit against Dr Swamy’? Well, their prayers have been answered. Finally someone from the Congress (I) has finally realised that the allegations made by Subramanian Swamy against Sonia Gandhi were quite serious. These allegations relate to the 2G scam and Swamy had alleged that Sonia Gandhi’s relatives had got a part of the loot. These were made in a purported letter to the Prime Minister on November 24, 2010. Read my post ‘2G Scandal: Swamy Accuses Sonia Gandhi Family Of Getting Loot’

There is no report suggesting the PM responded to that letter of Swamy. MaunMohan Singh as he is jokingly known. There was no response from Sonia Gandhi either. Such serious allegations would make any other person jump but not Ms.Gandhi. So why I should I not presume those charges hold some basis?

Now, a youth Congress leader from Ahmedabad has filed a case of defamation against Subramanian Swamy. TOI (January 8) reports that YC President Prakash Gurjar has filed a criminal complaint in a metropolitan court against Swamy for accusing Sonia Gandhi of being involved in the 2G spectrum scam. That’s inaccurate reporting. Swamy has actually accused Sonia Gandhi’s family of have gotten part of the loot. The petition seeks to prosecute Swamy under 153A,B and 500 of the IPC for making ‘defamatory’ statements and for ‘inciting communal feelings. Communal feelings? So now accusations of corruption also incite communal feelings? Anyway, never mind that. If you don’t know about IPC codes 153A,B and 500, never mind that either. 

Before I go further, let’s go back in time a bit. In October 2007 a group of NRIs released an ad in the New York Times.The full-page advertisement appeared in the New York Times on October 6, 2007, levelling several charges against Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul during the UPA chairperson’s visit to the UN. 

An organisation called Indian Overseas Congress (INOC) filed a 20-million dollar defamation suit against the advertisers. The INOC had earlier filed two separate cases relating to the advertisement, one in New Jersey and another in New York, seeking 100 million dollars in actual, compensatory, and punitive damages in addition to costs and disbursements, legal fees and other relief that the court might consider proper. The case was primarily dismissed because INOC had no locus-standi. Why? Clearly INOC was not the party against whom the ad was released. If at all, it should have been Sonia Gandhi herself who should have filed a case. But she didn’t. So whenever madam Sonia is accused of something there is someone else doing the dirty work. Read the related articles at Intellibrief and Thaindian.

Considering most Congress members don’t act unless they are probably instructed by Ms.G or Mr.G one has to wonder why this youth Congress leader has chosen to file a defamation case when the accusations are against Sonia Gandhi. If there is indeed an injured party it would have to be Sonia Gandhi. So why doesn’t she file a case or make any public statements about the allegations made by Subramanian Swamy? Wait! This is a YC leader filing the case. Is it possible that YC leader Rahul Gandhi has instructed this guy to file a case? And that too in Ahmedabad of all places? But as in the case of the NYT ad in the US, this guy doesn’t have a locus-standi in the case and the court should have immediately dismissed the petition.  Instead the court has set a hearing date of January 18.

Our courts, already bogged down with plenty of accumulated cases, keep admitting such frivolous petitions. One wonders if Sonia Gandhi has the guts to stand up for herself and defend herself or at least have the guts to file the defamation suit herself.

Most of all, Swamy has made the allegations in a letter to the PM and not as a general public document or statement. My prediction : Subramanian Swamy will win and rub more salt into the Congress wounds.

TV Pop-Up Ads: Fraudulent Invasion of Privacy

Some years back during the severe earthquake in northern Pakistan and POK while reporting on destroyed houses and sorrowing families there was a scroll ad running at the bottom of the TV screen: 'Purvankara homes, the best homes in Bangalore'. Then again you might see reporting on a terror attack and then you might have a commercial break and suddenly up comes the Cadbury ad saying 'Kuch Meetha Ho Jaye'. Insensitive stupidity is one thing, but outright greed and invasion of your time are altogether different things.

And mindless greed has been the main principle of our mainstream media. If newspapers have turned their front pages into ad pages, the TV channels have gone many steps ahead. It is one thing to have commercial breaks during programs which, although annoying to the viewer, is a genuinely fair way of doing business, but altogether another matter when they force you to watch content. A commercial break warns you and you can switch channels or attend to something else. Mind you, lately the media crooks have also employed the tactic of turning up the volume during ad breaks so that no matter where ever you are in the house you can still hear the loud sounds. But that wasn’t enough. For more than a year now TV channels, particularly sports channels, have been airing commercial ads during the program itself. You could be watching a game of cricket, a documentary, a news discussion and suddenly you will be invaded by a PIP (Picture-In-Picture) ad, a pop-up ad or small banner type ads that suddenly flash across your screen.

These pop-up ads are a fraudulent invasion of your privacy. The programs you are watching are not free. You pay for them. With these pop-up ads and flash banner ads the TV channels are FORCING you to watch content that you should not have to watch. In a commercial break you are aware of what is on your screen  but these pop-ups force you to watch the ads because they are flashed in your face in the middle of the program. This is a fraudulent practice and both the ASCI and the Ministry of I&B must ban this practice to protect consumer interests. The least priority on the media’s list is the viewer.

Sometimes these pop-up ads can take up as much as 25-40% of your screen. The biggest violators of this kind of invasion are sports channels. 

Pic1: Pop Up Ad

Pic 1 above is not an actual TV grab but used as a sample to demonstrate how pop-up ads take space on your screen during a program. Viewers have experienced these monstrous ads appearing on their screens frequently, forcing them to watch the ads when they shouldn't have to. This is not what you are paying for.

Pic 2 : Ten Sports                                             Pic 3: Ten Sports

Pics 2 & 3 above are from Ten Sports' live telecast of the India-South Africa test currently under way. In the pic on the left the Haywards logos appear suddenly on either side of the wicket/batsman as the bowler delivers the ball. Is this legitimate advertising or invasion of your time and privacy? In the pic on the right the Tissot brand is flashed as the bowler is on the way back. Mind you, Haywards happens to be an alcohol brand parading as a soft beverage. These are matches being watched by all age groups, including children. Such perverted advertising has to stop immediately.

TV channels must be free to make money during their commercial breaks. No one would grudge that. However, they should not be allowed to make money on your time. That’s the time you are paying for. Viewers should start sending complaints to the Ministry of I&B to ban this fraudulent and invasive practice. I have doubts if Ambika Soni is ignorant of these malpractices. In the US the increasing of sound volume during commercial breaks by TV channels is banned. Scrolling commercial ads, pop-up ads or button-banner ads that invade you during programs you paid to watch should also be banned.

Also Read: TV's new space invaders: Popup ads

Times Now's Twisted Tweets

A reader posted a comment on my previous post about Manmohan Singh & Caesar's wife about this incident involving Times Now. It is getting to be increasingly unbelievable that the headlines of my blog about crooks in the media lying and spreading falsehoods are being so frequently confirmed by the media.

The CNN-IBN fake tweets incident is still fresh in our minds, but here comes another one from Times Now that has twisted a tweet to flavour its political persuasions:

This has been reported in great detail by Swathi Pradeep at her blog which makes very interesting reading, and I reproduce some parts of it:

That's the tweet that Suresh sent to Times Now, and below is how Times Now reproduced it on its channel:

“Congress should not lose its focus by worrying about Modi”.

Evidently, Times Now makes a tweet criticising Congress to appear as if it's sent by a sympathetic adviser. This is shameful and Arnab Goswami goes around shooting circulars to his staff about ethics in journalism. After much protracted communication Times Now finally apologised to Suresh Nakhua.

Read Swathi Pradeep's full article at her blog here.

Parliament Blockade: NDTV's Dorab Sopariwala Gets It Wrong Again..

“Dorab is someone who studies elections on a daily basis and makes predictions based on them and for his efforts gets paid by NDTV 24/7 and NDTV 12/3 and a half. If Dorab says that the Congress party will win an election then I immediately prepare for a BJP victory. If Dorab says that the BJP will win then I prepare for a CONGRESS victory. In simple words, when Dorab says that something will happen I prepare for the EXACT OPPOSITE....that way I’m never wrong..... There is a word to describe people like Dorab and it’s a combination of two words which are ASS and HOLE.”  That is stock market wiz Rakesh Jhunjhunwala on his blog.  Here’s another piece, which clearly shows how NDTV makes a mockery of polls. 

Well, it’s not all poor Dorab Sopariwala’s fault. That NDTV is a Congress puppet must have a bearing on everything it peddles. Last night (December 2) on NDTV Dorab strongly castigated the Opposition for stalling parliament and stated that the “minority” in parliament cannot dictate the course of parliamentary transactions or actions of the government, and that it is the "majority” that must have the final say. Technically, he is correct.  What Dorab does forget, of course, is that in his profession of election observing and exit polls there is something called the “people’s mood”. This does not have some scientific measure but can be gauged with an ear to the ground. Dorab in this particular situation doesn’t seem to have his ear to the ground, like in most of NDTVs exit polls.

Let me digress a bit. Many in the USA are in favour of gun-control. But there is an underlying reason for this freedom under the 2^nd Amendment  to the US Constitution:  “The 2nd Amendment provides an interesting insight into the Founding Fathers' attitude toward government. The new nation had recently freed itself from a government controlled by others, not themselves. They saw themselves as a people, and government as a separate, sometimes despotic and oppressive entity. If they could not have arms, they would be helpless before this other entity; they would be like slaves. They also feared that despotic forces might usurp whatever government they established, and they would be at the mercy of those forces.....The most important reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, if necessary, at (as a) last resort to protect themselves from tyranny in government". This can be referenced anywhere but specifically here.

This season of scams is not a normal situation and therefore suggesting that parliament should function normally as if nothing disastrous has happened is inept to say the least. Dorab just doesn’t seem to appropriately measure the deep sense of anguish and betrayal inflicted upon the people of this nation by the ruling Congress and its allies. To hell with parliament for the moment. If parliament has to be suspended for a few months, so be it. To hell with all the bills that are pending, those can wait. This nation is at war! At war with the severest of corruption and plundering of the country. It’s the people’s emergency and people should not rest until the scamsters are in jail. There is going to be no transaction in parliament that is going to be worth over 1.76 lakh crores that has been stolen from the people. Once again NDTV’s Dorab doesn’t seem to have his ear to the ground.

Media morons cannot stop telling us how much it costs us everyday when parliament is disrupted. A few 100 crores now looks like small change when compared to the daylight looting and plundering of the nation. We are not worried about peanuts anymore. People first and foremost want to see the crooks brought to justice. In any case what does our parliament do? As much mental masturbation our media does.  Passing bills and laws that they neither respect nor implement or ones that are meant for appeasement of a section of the society or for corporate lobbyists. Enough of this nonsense.

There is a reason why Americans are allowed to carry guns. It is not for just protection against criminals and intruders. It is for protection against the tyranny of their own government. Of course, since 1791 US voters are far more sophisticated and Indian democracy is yet to reach that stage. A revolt by the Indian public in the current context would be very justified and is warranted.The Opposition is doing the right thing by staging this revolt as did Jayprakash Narayan against a tyrant called Indira Gandhi. Learn some history, Dorab. If the opposition cannot get the government to budge on the JPC they should now lead a people's revolt on the streets. Nothing short of a complete disclosure of the truth behind all the scams will do.

Constant and consistent looting of public money, ignoring concerns of ordinary people is nothing short of tyranny. To that end some days of parliament lost should be the least of anyone’s concern right now. Shut down parliament till the next budget session and sort out the whole scam mess and put people in jail, and get the people's money back. That is what people of India want to see. As for the media, some of their crooks need to serve time as well.  I may have picked out Dorab Sopariwala because of his strident position against the stalling of parliament, but this goes for all the mediacrooks who’ve been shedding crocodile tears over the economic loss arising out of this.

The worst joke has to be Congressmen sacrificing their “parliamentary allowance”. That is like tyrants dropping a coin in the ‘begging bowl’ of the people, after having looted 1.76 lakh crores of their money. Get after the scamsters, parliament can wait! A JPC is now an absolute must, and the opposition shouldn't budge.

Media Corruption: Indian Media Urgently Needs A Watchdog...

If there is one domain that seriously and urgently needs a watchdog like the CAG or the CVC it is the Indian media. It is easy to point fingers at politicians as the most corrupt but that is just half the truth. Politicians can be voted out, can be dismissed, can be prosecuted. What about the media though? Barkha Dutt, Vir Sanghvi and others from newspapers like Economic Times happily continue at their jobs and happily continue to peddle influenced opinions.

Any effort to seek accountability and responsibility from the media has faced the most vehement protests from them. All this under the guise of protecting “freedom of speech and freedom of the press”. The Press Council Of India and the Editors Guild are nothing more than coffee shop organisations with no binding guidelines whatsoever. In effect, the media has an extraordinary free run to mis-report, spread lies, and indulge in corruption without any liability. For an industry wielding such extraordinary powers, ability to influence policies and the course of a nation who exactly is the media responsible and accountable to? Nobody!

There is hardly a single newspaper or TV channel which has not claimed credit for exposing all the recent scams. This in itself is a blatant untruth. And they don’t stop at that. They even claim “exclusive” reportage of scams. The media IS the scam. It is agencies like the CAG or the CVC which still have some honest workers who have really exposed the corruption and not the media. The last pieces of investigative journalism in my memory have to be pieces like “Indira as Commerce”  by Arun Shourie or the “Bhagalpur Blindings” by the Indian Express. For comic relief, I can even offer a long list of plagiarised pieces passed off as editorials or reports. Laughable among them has to be the Times of India’s report on Aishwarya Rai on the Jerry Springer show or more recently Arun Poorie of India Today who blamed a plagiarised piece to “jet-lag”! The very integrity of mainstream media is “dubious”, to use kind words.

If there is a need for a JPC for the 2G spectrum scandal there is also an urgent need for a JPC to investigate the media, its funding and its collusion in the massive frauds perpetrated on the country. Here are excerpts from a report by the Global Financial Integrity (Read the full report here. Thanks to Vaidya who sent this in):

• From 1948 through 2008, India lost a total of US $213 billion in illicit financial flows (or illegal capital flight).  These illicit financial flows were generally the product of: tax evasion, corruption, bribery and kickbacks, and criminal activities.
• Adjusted Estimates: The present value of India’s total illicit financial flows (IFFs) is at least US $462 billion.
• Based on the last five years of the study, 2004-2008, India lost assets at a rate of US $19 billion per year.
• Total capital flight out of India represents approximately 16.6 percent of India’s GDP as of year-end 2008. In present value terms, India lost an equivalent of about 36 percent of its 2008 GDP which represents a staggering loss of capital.
• Some 68 percent of India’s aggregate illicit capital loss occurred after India’s economic reforms in 1991, indicating that deregulation and trade liberalization actually contributed to/accelerated the transfer of illicit money abroad.
• IFF Drivers: High Net-Worth Individuals (HNWIs) and private companies were found to be the primary drivers of illicit flows out of India’s private sector. 
• IFF Trends:  From 1948 through 2008 the Indian private sector shifted away from deposits into developed country banks and moved more of its money into offshore financial centers (OFCs).  The share of OFC deposits increased from 36.4 percent in 1995 to 54.2 percent in 2009.

There are high net-individuals in the media too. Much of the country’s corruption receives major support from such media crooks.

To borrow Rajdeep Sardesai’s words the Indian media has turned from “watchdogs to lapdogs”. Protestations of “freedom of press” cannot wash anymore. In a survey in TIME magazine in 2009 it was found most Americans turned to Jon Stewart of The Daily Show for credible news. What’s the surprise? The Jon Stewart show is actually a comedy show on a comedy channel. So much for mainstream media’s credibility in democracies.

Deep Throat of the infamous Watergate scandal advises Bob Woodward to “Follow the money”. It is probably time a body like the CAG or the CVC also followed the money and funding of the media houses. It is not just politicians, the Indian media urgently and desperately needs a watchdog. The media cannot be anymore given the luxury of having its own watchdog. Coffee shops like the PCI or the Editors’ Guild cannot be watchdogs.