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.

  

Narendra Modi 'Hangs' In Style

There is a reason why history always remembers the ‘Firsts’. Ask anybody who the second man to set foot on the moon was and you’re likely to draw a blank. But everybody knows Neil Armstrong. Ask anyone which the second team on Mt. Everest was, not easy. But most would know Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Second Prime Minister of India? Chances are most would not remember Gulzarilal Nanda but would know the first was Jawaharlal Nehru. It is in that context that Narendra Modi achieved history in Indian politics with a first. He became the first top rung political leader to interact LIVE on social media directly with citizens and answered questions on a variety of issues. It is a historic first because it signals the crucial role Internet and social media (SM) are likely to play in politics, electioneering, propaganda and a platform for citizens to reach their leaders directly. The middlemen in the mainstream media (MSM), the spin doctors, the brokers, the opinion-swinging editorialists will increasingly become irrelevant. It is the equivalent of a P&G getting rid of wholesalers and distributors and directly reaching the customer through retail shelves and online shopping. (Watch the event on Youtube)

According to reports over 4 million from across India and abroad watched the show. Narendra Modi’s audience had a good time. Even the Modi-haters from the media and politics who may have watched will agree that social media is here as a powerful medium and despising it can only be at a severe cost. #ModiHangout trended all day on August 31 on Twitter, even well into September 1 long after the show was over. What Modi said or did not say will be in print and online media although TV channels may skip the news. And why is it news? This is the first time ever in India that a top political leader has harnessed social media to directly interact with citizens. This was not one of those private durbars that we know our netas to hold. This wasn’t one of those off-camera meetings that Rahul Gandhi holds with college students.The unsaid message from Modi to MSM was like some property ads: "Brokers Excuse".

Everything Narendra Modi said in the Google+ Hangout, hosted by actor Ajay Devgn, was positive and contained a good number of encouraging messages. The MSM will now get busy poking holes into the show over what he did not say. I had joked in a tweet about the likely headlines on TV and in newspapers:"Modi reaches out but fails to apologise". Some didn’t wait, Headlines Today held a discussion even before the Youtubecast and of all possible morons in the world we had Vinod ‘Smirk’ Sharma, Congress batter and editor of Hindustan Trolls, complaining that Modi didn’t take “Live” questions. Talk about 'Pre-Judging'! If Modi were to land on the moon this same Smirk would probably say “But Oh, it wasn’t a full-moon day, he could have chosen a better date”. The crime of ‘pre-judging’ an event or adversaries is a crime that is bound to invite a price. It is all the more ironic that the Smirk criticises Modi when his own Gods like Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi neither have the skill nor the courage to even speak to their own cronies in the MSM, let alone directly with citizens other than choreographed rallies and written speeches.There can hardly be any doubt that the Modi Hangout must have dented prime time TV viewership.

On Twitter Rajdeep Sardesai was expectedly leading the band of MSM cronies of Congress in snide remarks about the Hangout. Firstpost has summarised Modi’s answers and statements during the Hangout with timelines and garnished it with some fair cheeky comments. To me the most notable comments were about Secularism and American visas. If the trend of SM Live-interaction continues then it’s not long before the fake secularism practiced by the Congress and minority-appeasing parties and propagated by MSM will be thoroughly exposed in the farthest corners of India. Such a criminal comment representing fake secularism and condoning intended terrorism by ‘The Hindu’ newspaper, was indeed exposed by the Twitterati.
    

The MSM has been receiving warnings frequently to embrace social media and learn to interact and deal with it more sensibly and productively. So far they have they have treated it as a passing fad. SM is not a fad; it’s a trend with an undeniable permanence and growth potential. Take a look at the text in the box. It’s a ‘clarification’ from the predominantly anti-Hindu newspaper called ‘The Hindu’. It first suggested that a terrorist threat to writers was justified because of  their “anti-minority” views (Read Here). By the evening of the same day, August 31, it’s rabid editor, S.Varadarajan known for his communist leanings, withdrew the foolish note in the article. Why? Simply because he was pointed out the truth by those on Twitter of his justifying terrorism. Such an apology would not have come without an active social media.  

Whatever else may happen in future elections or in politics Narendra Modi has certainly set a new road map for social communication and direct interaction and political campaigning with citizens. That Modi has stayed the course, developed his state and is now being projected a future PM is remarkable because of the number of political and media adversaries he has. Adversaries even from his own party! If the MSM blacked him out (and demonised him when they did not) he found the one truthful place for communication: Social Media. The Barkhas, Rajdeeps, Smirks, Shekhars, Prannoys would be wise to read the writing on the SM wall. Brokers in media will definitely lose more ground to social media. Their loss will not be mourned by anyone. 

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How Indian MSM Blacked-out Sibal's Grand Scheme

It is hard to imagine that almost a whole generation of kids in Kashmir may have grown up without watching a movie in a cinema theatre. That is what religious extremism brings about. The Kashmiri Hurriyat separatist leader, Syed Geelani, even considers it “immoral” to watch movies. No wonder kids in the valley find stone-pelting such a thrilling and rewarding experience. Geelani is not the only one who believes censorship and bans make for a healthy society. The latest one to join the moral brigade is union minister Kapil Sibal. Much has been already said and written about Sibal’s move to censor social networks so I won’t add to it. It was enough for the hashtag #IdiotKapilSibal trend for nearly two days on Twitter. Not surprisingly, Sibal’s stupidity was exposed on the same day that an Islamic cleric residing in Europe said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, in order to avoid any “sexual thoughts.”

Sibal’s anger is understandable, if you were Sonia Gandhi's protector. The mainstream media (MSM) in India have for long resisted any form of regulation but they have successfully managed ‘self-censorship’. The social networks refuse to self-censor themselves. And at the centre of this all is Sonia Gandhi. The MSM won’t publish anything remotely critical about SoniaG or question any of her actions. The secrecy of SG’s illness and surgery or whatever it was can only be protected by a servantile MSM as that in India.

Two previous posts on this blog detail the manner in which our MSM suppresses any mention of Sonia Gandhi: “Why Is Indian Media Scared Of Sonia Gandhi?” and “Rajdeep Sardesai : "No Wild Allegations Against Gandhis, Please...." Far from talking about or questioning Sonia Gandhi, our MSM actually protects her against such acts. To speak about SG is a sin! To question her, to ridicule her, to paint funny ugly pictures of her is blasphemy for Kapil Sibal.

What most of us totally missed in the whole episode was that Sibal was meeting the heads of Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft etc. over the last six weeks or so. Yet there was no mention of these meetings anywhere in the Indian media or the transactions. Most of these internet giants are huge advertisers and would have thought our media would have spoken up for them. None! Even the last meeting by Sibal with these networks was not reported by the Indian media. Yes indeed, they blacked out the news! It took the New York Times to report the meeting and demands of Kapil Sibal.

Once the NYT broke the news the Indian MSM had no option but to relay the story and then all the editors and anchors of our spineless news media start moralising and sermonising about freedom of speech. This is once the Twitterati collectively put Sibal on their lap and spanked him. This is a senior minister we are talking about. One can rest assured that many journalists hang around his office for bits and pieces of sound-bites and yet none reported the meeting with the network heads. One prominent Congress friendly channel even had an exclusive interview with the Indian head of Google during the same period and yet remained silent about Sibal’s grand plan.

NYT reports about the first meeting six weeks ago: “At the meeting, Mr. Sibal showed attendees a Facebook page that maligned the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi.  “This is unacceptable,” he told attendees, the executive said, and he asked them to find a way to monitor what is posted on their sites”. But once this news got out both Kapil Sibal and the Indian media weren’t talking about the SG factor. It was all about SG and objectionable content that create communal tensions. Trust Sibal and the Congress to give it all a communal twist and colour.

I doubt Sibal can ever stop freedom on the internet. He might well take a warning from the kids in Kashmir. If the youth and all the people who vent their anger in various forms on the net are stopped they might be out on the streets and pelting stones too. Far from creating tensions the net allows people to let off steam and keep violence off the streets. As for dirty pictures or obscene content there are enough laws in the country to prosecute offenders.

At the time of writing, Google has already received an IT notice. More might follow. Ironically, and I say this with deep sympathy and not out of sarcasm, Kapil Sibal was hit on his eye in the parliament on the next day the news about his censorship plans broke. His eye was injured accidentally by the sharp edge of a folder flipped by a colleague. So at least for a while Sibal will not see evil comfortably on the net. But the manner in which Indian MSM suppresses any news concerning the deceptive and nefarious plans of the Congress does stand exposed again. Maybe 100% FDI in media should also be considered along with other reforms.