Fai Accompli For Mediacrooks

Throughout the evening on July 19 most Indian news channels were live with the British Parliament hearings of the NOTW-Murdoch phone hacking scandal. Some even had expert panellists to comment on the proceedings. The NOTW scandal isn’t about just phone hacking but also about bribing police officials, nepotism in recruitment and the connection of journalists with top politicians of the UK. Our media celebrities then went on a discourse on media ethics. If anything, the corrupt media in India is far worse than the one in Britain. Out there someone did expose the corrupt practices but here in India the media follows the Rajdeep Sardesai ethic of “Hammam Mein Sab Nange Hain”!

So enamoured with the hearings was one media celebrity that she sent out this tweet:

BDUTT barkha dutt

Could India ever hope for such a transparent and civilised inquisition as the one unfolding in UK right now. That would be the day.

July 19

Yes indeed! That would be the day! But prior to that NDTV needs to hold a mirror to itself. This is the channel whose most prominent media celebrity, Barkha Dutt, was in the midst of the Nira Radia scam and is accused of power-brokering. NDTV’s muddled financial dealings were also exposed by The Sunday Guardian. NDTV is also the channel whose head, Prannoy Roy, is accused of being let of by CBI. NDTV is also the channel whose journalist, Sunetra Choudhury, is on leave from 13^th July. Sunetra Choudhury had to write an article in the DNA newspaper about a top UPA politician insulting her modesty with sexual innuendos. Yeah, this is the NDTV that wouldn’t stand up for its own journalist and put that politician in the dock. Barkha Dutt should have been fired long back and NDTV should have shut down by now. A prominent financial news journalist wonders how the loss making NDTV continues to receive funding. “Transparency and civilised inquisition”, Indeed!

As a wag puts it:  “Act like Rebekah Brooks and talk like Mother Theresa”!

It doesn’t stop there. As if in a divine turn of events the Cash-for-votes scam has surfaced again due to court intervention. Some key players have been arrested and all roads seem to be leading to Amar Singh. He is, of course, the media’s once favourite politician who sang songs on NDTV. The sting operation tapes which CNN-IBN had were not aired in July 2008 before the parliament voted on the no-confidence motion. There was tall talk of ethics by Rajdeep Sardesai then. Dirty politics and politicians would have been exposed and the course of the nation could have been altered. Now, Rajdeep of the ‘Hammam...’ fame claims credit for the sting and expose. There was no expose because the tapes were not aired but were suppressed for reasons best known to Rajdeep Sardesai. He is the guy on July 19 during the UK parliament hearings who stated “Indian media doesn’t have such tabloid culture”! No, Indian media has worse. Many of our media celebrities are pawns of politicians and practically political players themselves. The media exists to curb abuse of power but in India the major players have themselves joined the party.

Corruption and Corrupt politicians exist and thrive because of corrupt media. The media silence on Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Robert Vadhera, Sahara group, Paid news, Reliance group and many such issues get successfully covered up due to a compliant media. For these celebrities to talk about ethics following the UK hearings is a terrible joke. If anything people like Rajdeep Sardesai and Rahul Kanwal have actually cut off people who even want to talk about the corruption by Sonia Gandhi and the Gandhi family. Besides these channels are too busy doing the Bollywood nonsense with every week’s new releases and their actors and directors. Let’s also not forget they are also into kitchens, couches, nights out, saas-bahu and so on. Real news and real reporting is like a part-time lover.

As if all that wasn’t enough out comes the news of the arrest of Ghulam Nabi Fai of Kashmir American Council. He’s the guy who had many sympathisers of Kashmir Azaadi from India at various conferences and meetings. Journalists, politicians, humanitarians have been involved with him. Among names associated with him at some time and in some way or the other that are coming out are Kuldip Nayar, Rajinder Sachar, Arundhati Roy, Dileep Padgaonkar and the list may be longer. Turns out for over two decades Fai’s organisation was being funded by the ISI of Pakistan.

Indian media is not all corrupt. But the ones that are corrupt are not just hand-in-glove with corrupt politicians but may even turn out to be unwittingly assisting anti-national elements like Ghulam Nabi Fai.

Shall we say – Fai Accompli, mediacrooks?

Terror - Unintelligent Before, Unintelligent After

By now most people in the world are familiar with the story of the ‘News Of The World’ (NOTW). This tabloid is a grand example of sleazy journalism. Sex, celebrity scandals, phone hacking, sensationalism, rumour mongering – you name it and this tabloid would have it every day. The newspaper wound up July 10 following revelations that their associates had hacked into the voice mail of a murdered teenager. Their CEO and former editor, Rebekah Brooks, who has now been arrested had also admitted to bribing police officials for leaks. Following these events the media empire of Rupert Murdoch (whose group also owns Star TV) has been hit quite badly. While the misdeeds of NOTW are excessive there is no reason not to believe that a good chunk of the Indian media indulges in similar practices, perhaps to a lesser scale. A scoop, a sensational story are dreams of every journalist to achieve stardom. But that is about the NOTW and media corruption. In a grave turn of events the London chief of police, Sir Paul Stephenson, has resigned. Why? There are questions over his links to various journalists and the police bribery scandal. Ring any bells? Anyway, let's get back home.

So given the latest terror attacks in Mumbai how has our media really conducted itself during and after the incident? In a good departure from the past the government and investigating agencies had maintained they would not disclose any information till they have full details and investigations are complete. The news media also patted itself on the back for behaving more responsibly than in the past. They had now turned intelligent enough to have learned from past mistakes. P. Chidambaram stated there was no ‘intelligence’ on this particular attack so it was not an ‘intelligence’ failure. Alright, so we were unintelligent before. What about after? Well, this is where our media starts to replicate NOTW!  

PC and the government steadfastly refused to name Pakistan or any particular group till the investigations are over. So who is the first person our media runs to? You guessed it! Digvijay Singh, the Chief Congress Investigator, who possesses intelligence on every terror attack in the nation that nobody else does. He delights the media by suggesting RSS hand cannot be ruled out to vaguely imply a lot of things. If you know a dog to be infected by rabies would you deliberately feed it and risk your hand being bitten? Well, our media would! So they get a few bites out of DS and allow his ‘dance on the blood floor’. To hell with dead bodies, to hell with grieving families, to hell with the injured, to hell with those who will be disabled for life, to hell with general public sentiments – let’s have some fun and sensational crap from DS. That’s our responsible news media.

Alright, let’s sample a few headlines:

Sify- July 15: Mumbai blasts, first suspects spotted?

TOI-July 17: Police prepare suspects sketch……

TOI-July 16 – Indian Mujahideen duo in focus….

The Hindu-July 17: Police prepare sketch of suspect…

Deccan Chronicle – July 17: Nationwide hunt for IM suspects behind blasts…

India Today-July 17: Mumbai serial blasts: Terrorists rented rooms near targets

TOI – July 17: Mumbai blasts: Cops unmask suspected Opera House bomber

TOI – July 17: Terror chatter intercepted after Mumbai blasts?

I could go on and on and on. All the headlines and the reports in the media clearly indicate the involvement of the Indian Mujahideen. Well, strangely neither the central government nor the ATS have actually named IM. The last headline on ‘terror chatter’ is quite interesting. It has supposedly come from police sources in Delhi. So you see while the official line is no one will named before investigations are complete there are police sources who keep revealing bits and pieces to our media. That’s the strict policy not to disclose anything till investigations are done with. Are police sources in the payroll of our media?

Rakesh Maria, the ATS chief in Mumbai, in his press briefings keeps throwing crumbs to the media to keep them happy. Mind you, he has only given out general information and is doing a decent job in these meetings. His only mistake is taking questions from the hungry wolves. In such situations it is better to make press statements and not take questions. Why? Most questions are likely to be leading questions and invariably a slip or two will result which will then be twisted and sensationalised by the media. Our Police Chiefs are certainly not trained press spokespersons.

So, we didn’t have intelligence before the attacks. But after the attacks the media has more or less connected the dots except actually naming the criminals. And here is the best piece in the whole episode:

Hindustan Times: “ A police constable has been suspended ……for ignoring a 'tip-off' by a citizen over Mumbai serial blasts that killed 19 people and injured over 130, a senior officer said….According to the officer, one Abdulla Latif Rauf Shaikh from Kurla approached Mahatma Phule police station after the blasts claiming he had overheard four persons discussing about the terror plot two days before the incident…..However, constable Prabhakar Bagrao ignored him….”

So we were ‘unintelligent’ before and now we are ‘unintelligent’ after as well.