Sanjay Pinto Mourns Social Networks

When the opening line of an article reads: “I'm all for free speech and against attempts to gag dissent” it’s a clear warning about what is going to follow. All the ‘Ifs and buts’ and then sound reasoning why there should be regulation and some form of censorship will start pouring. Surprisingly, in the MSM it doesn’t come from religious heads or bigots. It usually comes from news reporters and editors. The name Sanjay Pinto didn’t seem very familiar till I looked it up. Aha, this guy is from the same stable that holds the social networks in utter contempt – NDTV. Funnily enough, Pinto appears prominently in their section called ‘NDTV Social’. After all, it was originally his colleague and frustrated star Barkha Dutt, the epitome of decency and uprightness that first waged a war against bloggers and lost. Something about the social network bothers Barkha, Nidhi Razdan, Sonia Singh and now Sanjay Pinto. I am tempted to ask ‘Sanjay Pinto ko gussa kyon aata hai’ after reading his piece titled “The Social Network — Unknown abusers” in The Hindu. So let’s see what Pinto had to say.

Pinto writes: “The tenor of anonymous tweets would make even the most liberal crusaders for free speech think twice about demanding the decriminalisation of defamation. There is intolerance for ‘the other view', vulgarity and vituperation in 140 characters. There is mob psychology at play. And there is uncontrolled, apparently unmonitored rudeness on what is meant to be a wonderful platform to “find out what's happening about people and organisations you care about.” Mob Psychology? Hahaha, welcome to ‘The Family’! Of all the people on Twitter Pinto seems to be reading tweets only from the rude and vulgar ones, especially the ‘anonymous’ types. You should really be reading the feedback page of NDTV or any other channel where you can read comments from people who watch the channel are displayed. Oh, now don’t ask me where that feedback page is, because you’re not going to find it anywhere. For NDTV and Sanjay Pinto it is hard to even listen to and absorb genuine feedback or criticism so why should this guy be even bothered with rude and vulgar tweets. And where do these supposed journalists even get the right to deliver moral sermons?

The problem with these moralists is that it’s the identity that counts and not what is being said. If Shekhar Kapur were to tweet Barkha Dutt and say “Your program sucks” then that would be okay, but if an anonymous person were to say the same thing, he would be a troll. After all didn't NDTV misuse a tweet by Amitabh Bachchan to imply he rubbished Virat Kohli? (And later apologised) Still, look up Barkha’s TL on her Twitter account and you will find endless tweets of ‘Thanks’, ‘Thank you’ and so on. You are unlikely to find any response to criticism. When Prasanna Vishwanathan (@prasannavishy), a popular tweeter and respected web journalist himself, once pointed out a critical article to Barkha, she barked back: “Why don’t you and your friends go rant in your own corner”. Sagarika Ghose once responded to the same person with the remark: “You’re a gutter-snipe”. Now, I can tell you with a good deal of certitude that @prasannavishy is neither anonymous nor a troll and you will agree if you go through his tweets. Sanjay Pinto probably doesn’t read tweets from his own ‘mob’ who may be non-anonymous but are quite frequently as rude and vulgar as the ones he laments about.

And no, I really haven’t forgotten the anonymous part. Pinto seems to be unaware that if there is some serious trouble then even anonymous accounts and fake IDs can be traced and located. That, though, is not the problem here. You see, this Pinto and his mob sort of believe only those who reveal their identity have any right to comment or tweet. By this stupid logic we should also know who voted for whom in a ‘secret ballot’. Okay, that might sound silly but here’s a brilliant note on why anonymity is as much a valued possession as an identity. Tweeter @RealityCheckInd wrote this piece “Thank you from Google India” during the height of Kapil Sibal’s nonsense about pre-screening.  I recommend Sanjay Pinto and all the other morons in the MSM read the piece before breast-beating about anonymous users of the social network. And Pinto forgets, it was CNN-IBN that was begging Bachchan to promote one of their programs or articles on Twitter because of his celebrity following. Naturally, of what use are anonymous idiots!

Pinto goes on: Fake profiles, especially for public figures, have become such a nuisance that genuine users are inconvenienced. For instance, the twitter ID ‘Rajdeep Sardesai' is taken. The original Rajdeep has had to create one in true Olympic-list style with ‘Sardesai Rajdeep'. Here, the nature of the tweets, scoops or programming information, are usually enough to distinguish a real celebrity from an impostor. Really? What is it about CNN-IBN’s Rajdeep Sardesai that makes him the ‘Original Rajdeep’. LOL! Did he invent the name? The @RajdeepSardesai account clearly and sarcastically mentions he is not to be confused with the RS of the Cash4Votes infamy. And by what logic does Pinto imply that the @rajdeepsardesai account is an impostor? I can guarantee there might be at least a 1000 Sanjay Pintos in India. Which is probably why even his Twitter account has an underscore to it (@sanjay_pinto). If you go through the TL of @RS you won’t find any tweet or message that remotely resembles those of the IBN Rajdeep and nor does it claim to be even a parody account. But these are the childish concerns that seem to occupy the idle minds of journos like Sanjay Pinto.

Pinto also talks about defamation. As far as I can see there are really no serious cases of defamation on the social network. People on the network aren’t stupid enough to fall for lies and frivolous comments by others, whether anonymous or identified. And defamation happens only when people seriously believe some falsehood about a person as being true. Hypothetically, if I were to call Sanjay Pinto a part-time bar dancer not only are people unlikely to believe me but I would be receiving a lot of brickbats and very scathing criticism from readers of this blog. The problem with the Pintos, Barkhas and his clan is that they do not believe that common citizens have the brains to sift the grain from the chaff.

Here is what really bothers Pinto as he writes: "In most newsrooms, Twitter is slowly overtaking even news wires as a source of information. When this medium is going to occupy such an important role in our lives, users must be entitled to higher standards of reliability and safety. For starters, let the social-media moguls work to ensure better safeguards against misuse. And let users start reading the terms of service before clicking on the ‘I Agree' button”. That is true, the MSM is really rattled that some media other than their own has now the power to influence opinions and events. If morals and righteousness were the issues Pinto would be asking Barkha, Sagarika and many others of his ‘mob’ to resign from their jobs for the immense damage they have caused to journalism. But no, like the ones named Pinto believes they are ‘God’s lonely messengers’ and their turf shouldn’t be invaded.

Friend @WordofThefree who brought Pinto’s POS to my notice also tweeted that there are Block buttons, Spam buttons, Report buttons. I believe instead of sermons, Sanjay Pinto should first learn to use those buttons. If defamation is an issue, far more cases can be piled up against the MSM media mafia than on those on Twitter or any other social media. Pinto would also do well to read my previous post and realise the MSM channels abuse Twitter far more than any other group.

Tweet-Crimes & The Real Watchdogs

After Radiagate rattled the media and the nation CNN-IBN ran a programme on lobbying and whether it should be legalised. Supporting the legalisation of lobbying were quite a few tweets that did not seem genuine. Fake tweets have been employed some channels to further their agenda quite frequently and consistently. Take for instance a Twitter handle called @campuscola. Tweets from this account frequently appear on TimesNow but if you look closely almost all of Campuscola’s tweets are to just one programme: Arnab Goswami’s  NewsHour on TimesNow. Naturally, it makes one wonder why anyone would be so obsessed with the NewsHour. But unlike fake Twitter accounts there are many others who have actually become the real watchdog over the mainstream media.

If TV news is instant and a hit and run operation it no more escapes the scrutiny of the social network just as instantly. And to suit their bias, slant and agenda news channels are now famous for twisting and manipulating tweets hoping nobody will notice. But the exact opposite is happening. Every goof up, every deception and every abuse of tweets are instantly spotted by tweeters and relayed over the twitterworld.

Blogger @Scamsutra has painstakingly listed how fake tweets are milked by news channels to further their agenda. His detailed post ‘Milking fake tweets’ around May 2011 has a long list of tweet-crimes by our news channels. He’s not the only one, Anil Kohli (@anilkohli54) started a post in December 2010 on his blog site which he updates frequently with incidents of tweet-abuse by news channels. Apart from tweet-abuse Kohli also lists misuse of videos and tweets manipulated by news channels and you can read the whole lot in his continuing post titled: ‘Twitter a case of Fatal attraction….’

In November 2011 when Sagarika Ghose and CNN-IBN carried out a fraud on its viewers through wilful deception involving a ‘Look-live’ interview of Sri Sri Ravishankar as a LIVE programme, tweeters were quick to expose the channel again. For that sorry episode the channel not only apologised publicly but Sagarika apologised to Sri Sri personally as well. However, I still strongly believe that for such a farce Sagarika should have been sacked from the channel. They don’t seem to learn though. The latest in the continuing episode of tweet-crimes comes from Arnab Goswami’s TimesNow. Arnab was doing his best to rubbish articles on Narendra Modi by TIME magazine and the Brookings Institute. In support of this enthusiastic Modi-bashing TimesNow went on to brazenly manipulate a tweet by me to appear as if it supported the channel’s theories and agenda. The ‘Sack Sagarika’ episode has now forced all channels to prominently display on screen whether the programme is Live or Recorded. This is the power of social network in action.

The abridged and manipulated tweet as used by TimesNow and my original tweet are captured in the pic to the left. This pic was created by another observant Twitter user @Surnell. The original pic of the abridged tweet was captured by another sharp tweeter @DilipSanchora. It is somewhat hard to believe that a channel like TimesNow has operators who can’t seem to understand simple tweets and in their enthusiasm to quote tweets in support of their programme end up twisting up, manipulating and completely altering the meaning of a statement. Are they really that dumb? Quite possible! Are they indulging in wilful tweet-crimes to support their agenda? Quite possible!

All it took was one stern email to TimesNow’s legal cell and within a week they caved in. On March 26 the channel scrolled an apology that ran throughout the duration of its NewsHour programme. The scrolled apology couldn’t be captured on video but this is what the apology read (partly shown in the 2^nd pic provided by @Equateall):

“On March 19, 2012 a tweet by @mediacrooks was abridged by us ….  the error is regretted and an apology offered”.

That is one part. The better part is that the Press Council of India (PCI) or the National Broadcasters Association (NBA) need not be the only bodies for taking up illegitimate and illegal behaviour by news channels or even other TV channels. Tweeters have become the watchdogs, observers, investigators and evidence providers and do a far better job than PCI or NBA would ever do in keeping TV-crimes in check. I have mentioned a few of the people on Twitter but I am sure there are many more. 

The media celebs who form a huge mafia and once touted their power of peddling anything and being able to influence viewers no longer hold such complete power. The media mafia is as much under scrutiny on Twitter as they imagine they are scrutinising others. This time around, TimesNow has been allowed to get away with an apology but the damage could have been far worse. Hopefully, MSM’s tweet-crimes will stop as with their other crimes.

Saving Shekar's Indian Express

The post ‘India’s Worst Journalists’ of August 2010 still remains a popular one on this site. That says a lot of what people generally think of our media celebs.Here’s what I wrote then about Shekhar Gupta, the Editor of Indian Express:"He is the chief of a fast-sinking newspaper and bides his free time (of which he has a lot) in a mundane program called "Walk the talk" on NDTV. Voters found a lot of similarities to BBC's 'Simpson's World' but lacking in any substance. Much of the interviews or discussions on this program is a platform to scratch the back of the interviewee. If you are looking for any serious questions or answers this is certainly not a program for you. In fact, some voters have very strongly suggested that the title of the program should  be called  'Time Pass”.

Ramnath Goenka must surely be having sleepless eternity where ever he is with the current state of affairs at the IE. A newspaper that was strongly anti-establishment, stood for courage in reporting and exposed many a misdeed has now been reduced to a doormat and mouthpiece for the Congress. One should read the series ‘Indira as Commerce’ by Arun Shourie which unseated A.R. Antulay as CM of Maharashtra or the IE stories of the Bhagalpur blindings which still stand as India’s best investigative reporting. All that is past. Today there are two IEs. One is Indian Express and the other is the New Indian Express. NIE has a decent circulation of around 2 million, mostly in the South while IE is negligibly sold mostly in the North and West with negligible circulation.

Kingfisher Airlines has been in the news for quite some time now with its financial mess. There was news about SBI willing to bail out Kingfisher but it backed off owing to protests by its own unions. So KFA is currently stranded with its wings clipped. If the Govt. were to step in and bail out KFA, that too is sure to generate a lot of heat and protests. I don’t have financial information about Shekhar Gupta’s IE but I have little doubt that it is being regularly bailed out and on oxygen supplied by the Govt. Of India (GOI). And since such generous doles to a newspaper are not clearly visible to the public, both the GOI and IE can get away with it. And the bank that bails out ‘friendly’ newspapers? Yes, it’s the Directorate of Advertising & Visual Publicity (DAVP). It falls under the I&B ministry, currently headed by Ms.Ambika Soni.

FullPage Min of Agri Ad

I get at least 3 newspapers of which IE happens to be one. I usually only browse through them as most of the articles and news reports are already on the net before the paper hits you. Let’s take the main paper of IE for Sunday, March 25. What caught my attention was a piece titled “Reinventing Rahul” by Lord Hairstyle Icon. In a cursory glance I found mention of Bollywood and Joy Mukherjee here and there and quit reading further. One of my wiser choices. But what was difficult to escape noticing were three whopping colour ads. Heavy, expensive ads going by the sizes. Not sure, but I am quite certain that this in all-edition ad for the IE.

The IE edition of March 25 has a quarter page of matrimonials, five tender notices from various govt. bodies filling up another quarter page. That’s it! No other real ads of any substance. Let’s get to the colour part of the ads. There are three in-house ‘filler’ ads of IE itself . After that, all that IE had were three whopping colour ads by none other than the GOI. 

HalfPage Customs Ad

So what’s wrong with that? Well, none of the GOI ads aren’t about anything specific but a general awareness drive for ESIC, Ministry of Agriculture and Customs & Excise. Take a lot at the pics. If you were a commercial organisation valuing the money you spend on ads, would you really be advertising in the IE? With half-page and full-page ads? I seriously doubt that. But that’s not a problem for the GOI as it spends our money as doles for the friendliest of newspapers. I didn’t find the same ads in the TOI, which has a much larger circulation. So naturally, I wonder why this special love and affection by the GOI for Indian Express. Many in the business, even Aditya Sinha of DNA, will tell you how the DAVP works as a ‘Carrot and Stick’ organisation.

HalfPage ESIC Ad

It is for good reason that most media organisations have a special cell or people dedicated to managing and massaging the DAVP and State Information Departments. I have every reason to believe that in the competitive world of newspapers and TV it is hard to survive without GOI doles and bail-outs. This won’t be visible to the public eye therefore not as much outrage as a Kingfisher bail out. It is our hard earned money being spent mindlessly. All that a media outlet has to do is to surrender their soul to the Congress and their credibility to the devil. Staying alive is important. The GOI may be saving many other friendly newspapers and TV channels with our money. Saving Indian Express is one thing! Why should it be with wanton use of our money? The best part? One doesn't have to return these bail-outs, not even interest payments. It's free!

Sexed-Up Media Mafia, Caught With Pants Down

The term ‘sexed-up’ for the media came to prominence in 2003. In May 2003 Andrew Gilligan, a BBC journalist, reported allegations that a dossier published by the British Govt of Tony Blair had "sexed up" the military capabilities of Iraq in order to bolster the argument for going to war with the country. Following the scandal Gilligan had to quit his job and there was greater tragedy to follow. Gilligan's source was biological weapons expert David Kelly. Kelly was found dead, having apparently committed suicide, shortly after being identified as the source for the story. That was serious business but where our Indian media is concerned ‘sexing up’ their reports is a fairly routine affair. This becomes even more pronounced on a bad day for their masters, the Congress, and if they could get something to tar the BJP with. Business as usual!

So on March 21, a day when the Congress was wiped out in the by-polls in Andhra Pradesh,  the media mafia found a thrilling story in the form of two BJP MLAs in the Gujarat assembly being caught watching porn pictures. That’s it! From Rajdeep Sardesai’s CNN-IBN to every scumbag’s Aaj Tak and the filthier cousins of NDTV, TimesNow, Headlines Today all went to town with the story from noon till night. TimesNow, of course, is quickly acquiring the status of ‘liars to the nation’ in an effort to beat other English channels for TRP.

All the channels played the video of the MLAs with their Ipads with grainy pictures and the Ipad images blurred. Not one channel bothered to stop and verify if there was really evidence of the MLAs actually watching obscene material on their Ipads. Truth is: The channels did have the evidence to the contrary but they chose to stick with the lies. The videos, without the blurring, can be watched here and here. One posted by Deshgujarat and the second one by Congress leader in Gujarat, Arjun Modhvadia. In what is visible one MLA is actually scrolling pages from left to right. Hardly looks like keenly watching anything in particular at all.

The channels played the video, grabbed by a journalist called Janak Purohit of Gujarat Samachar (A local daily from Ahmedabad) who claimed to have reported the incident to the Speaker of the Gujarat assembly. So today, after the Forensic Laboratory cleared the Ipads of having any obscene content and thus clearing the MLAs, the channels are playing the same videos again. This time the video images weren’t blurred and it was quite obvious that there was no evidence of any dirty pictures being watched. So why did the channels blur the images earlier? Simple! Spread the lies, cause as much damage to BJP and through that to Narendra Modi, and then later claim no evidence. The old rule: Stick the convict badge, then worry about the crime and evidence.

Interestingly, Rajdeep Sardesai, the father of the media mafia’s conscience, tweeted about the incident (at different times) and here are some:

@sardesairajdeep

I think it's a tad unfair to pronounce the Gujarat MLAs guilty of watching porn without any corroborative evidence. (22.10 March 21)

@sardesairajdeep

Shoot and scoot journalism will be the bane of our profession. We pass judgements too easily, often without fact checking. (22.16 March 21)

@sardesairajdeep

@dineshdasa1 Well, I said it 2 days ago, the BJP MLAs alleged to have watched porn were not given fair hearing in media. (17.20 March 23)

All that after a lot of damage was attempted. Read the last tweet above: “..not given fair hearing in media”. Haha! This moron actually believes media has the right to conduct a hearing? This is the same disease that Arnab Goswami, Barkha Dutt, Rahul Kanwal and others suffer from. They have indeed come to believe that their sexed up channels are some form of court where hearings are conducted and verdicts dispensed instantly like a toilet roll dispenser.

There is an online news site called OneIndia.com. On this issue this site had a quick double take. Here’s how the site reported the incident at first: ‘Gujarat porngate brought to you by BJP again’ (March 21) : “Once bitten, twice shy (not) that's how the proverb should run for the Bharatiya Janata party. It appears the saffron party has not appeased the gods, clearly as the 'moral' fabric of the upright political outfit is being shredded by its own members over and over again”. Now, a day later on March 22, the same site somehow discovered extra-ordinary wisdom and intelligence to report: ‘Porngate’ exposes faction ridden Gujarat Congress’. The second report implies that one faction of the Congress sexed up the fake porngate incident to draw attention away from a by-poll win by another faction of the Congress.

After Radiagate and Barkha Dutt’s brokering for Congress, this is what Rajdeep Sardesai had to say: “Conversation between source and journo is legitimate. if quid pro quo is shown, expose it. else, dont destroy hard earned reputations”. This, when it was clearly evident what Barkha was up to and the man was defending the indefensible. Yet, when it comes to others the question of facts does not bother him one bit, especially if it concerns BJP or its members. To his credit, Rajdeep does express the flaws of the media when his conscience strikes. But all the anchors must wonder how and what they would feel if such a terrible report about them had been aired. That they were watching porn while at work. They must wonder what their families, friends and colleagues would think.

Our sexed up media owe a sincere apology to the two MLAs to whom they have caused immense distress and damage. I wouldn’t be surprised if the MLAs sued that scumbag called Janak Purohit and even some news channels for the fake report. This is not the first time the media mafia has done a ‘whack job’ on BJP members. The BS Yedurappa case is still not very old nor is the Shehla Masood case. The recent death of IPS officer Narendra Singh in MP which the media attributes to a mining mafia is another case where reports were turned in without full facts.

Till now some journalistic bimbos were compared with Rakhee Sawant … not too long before these bimbos are equated with Poonam Pandey for sexing up reports. Hard to believe that a noble profession like journalism is now being completely run by a mafia of pimps of the Congress who try everything to sex up their reports and still fail to launch. This time they were caught with their pants down and skirts up!