NDTV's Uttarakhand Deceptions

Everyone values information but not everyone values perception. Creating perceptions is the game in the media. Let me rehash an old story from the West to NDTV’s context. Now everyone knows NDTV is like the former USSR’s Pravda news agency except that NDTV is a willful mouthpiece and slave with an agenda. When Narendra Modi inaugurated the Sabarmati River front in Ahmedabad he took a boat ride. Strong winds blew off his cap which fell some 50 feet away from the boat on the water. An unperturbed Modi just got off the boat, walked on water, retrieved his cap and walked back to the boat. Yeah, I guess you know what the headline on NDTV was: “Sources: Narendra Modi can’t swim”. There used to be another story during the US-Russia cold war. There was a race in Moscow. The Russian came second but the American came in one before the end. That is how NDTV would report it except that NDTV won’t tell you that there were only 2 people in the race. So you will have to figure out who actually came first.

Politicians will say what they want and they cannot be restricted. But if news channels are merely going to repeat what they said like a box of parrots then they failing in their jobs. The job of a news channel also involves “fact-checking”. This is where all the Indian news channels fail miserably. Sometime back I had written about an interview of Digvijay Singh, a darling at NDTV, by Sunetra Choudhury. Diggy claimed in some context that the Congress had never attacked the family members of the BJP or other Opposition parties. This is a LIE and NDTV let it pass; which is why I had strongly recommended “NDTV needs a lie-detector”. Looks like they still haven’t got one!

So on the night of July 1 NDTV decided to debate something they called ‘Twitter wars’ over the Uttarakhand tragedy. Yep, the anchor was Nidhi ‘Larger picture’ Razdan. And like a true parrot Nidhi merely ran a “She said, he said” story without bothering to check on facts. Ever since the channel sacrificed their tagline “Experience truth first” they have stuck to their philosophy of narrating only part fiction. So what was the issue? Sushma Swaraj tweeted something about Congress incompetence over Uttarakhand, Manish Tiwari tweeted back that LOPs lecture on some CBI proposal but didn’t visit Uttarakhand, Sushma Swaraj tweeted back that they were advised by Home Minister Shinde, Manish Tiwari tweeted back asking why Rajnath and Modi didn’t follow that advice, then Ajay Maken tweeted, then someone else tweeted blah blah. The whole thing by itself is comic but trust stupid NDTV to make a debate out of it. After all, this is a channel which even debated “who is stricter” – Rahul Gandhi or Sonia Gandhi. Here, take a look:

There is absolutely nothing in it except that NDTV won’t state a few facts. First, it has been a practice with Congress and its crony channels to accuse others of “politicising” events or tragedies if their incompetence is criticised. The only two parties who most demonstrated scavenging on the Uttarakhand tragedy are Congress and TDP. These two parties came to a physical fight at Dehradun airport on who will ferry back the survivors. Of course, the most idiotic trip by anyone to Uttarakhand has to be that of Rahul Gandhi. Doesn’t matter!

The question now is did NDTV check what Manish Tiwari said last is correct? Is it true that Rajnath Singh and Narendra Modi did not heed Shinde’s advice? Let’s check:

1)According to reports Sushil Kumar Shinde gave out his advice of VIPs avoiding travel to Uttarkhand on Monday, June 24.

2) Rajnath Singh visited Uttarakhand for an aerial survey and some interaction at Dehradun on Thursday, June 20.

3) Narendra Modi visited Uttarakhand on Saturday,June 22.

4) In total disregard of Shinde’s advice on June 24 it was RahulG who choppered to Uttarakhand on June 25 and 26 with no real purpose to his trip. The Congress claimed it was a “common citizen” trip and not as a VVIP. We all know what RG did there. He was a total nuisance. So for ManishT & NDTV RahulG is above rules and law as has been all these years, isn’t it?

I know, it all seems very elementary now, doesn’t it? Shinde gave out an advice on June 24 while both Rajnath and Modi had made their trips prior to that date. So how would they follow Shinde’s advice? True to his usually bogus comments Manish Tiwari was blabbering nonsense. Well, one can’t stop the loveable Manish, that’s his nature. But I can say with authority that Nidhi Razdan missed the “larger picture” here, the picture of FACTS. That’s how NDTV does “shoddy journalism” and creates deception in their debates. Now, let’s try to look for some real facts beyond these silly political statements.

On the night of July 1 on his programme ‘Centrestage’ Rahul Kanwal on Headlines Today confronted the Uttarkhand Congress MLA with documents indicating there was abundant warnings on the cloubdburst, extreme rainfall and glacier melting. He went to the extent ot asking why the Uttarakhand govt shouldn’t be charged with murder. There were no convincing answers. I don’t know about murder but there is no reason why a number of PILs shouldn’t be filed in the Supreme Court for “gross negligence causing deaths and destruction” against that govt. You see, NDTV won’t discuss these issues but will discuss frivolous nonsense.

While the media indulged in the nonsense of the “Rambo act” of Narendra Modi there was someone who finally pulled their pants and skirts off. Meenakshi Lekhi commented on July 1 that “it was a thousand times better to be a Rambo than be a Dumbo or a Scambo”. She just misses a point all along. It is NDTV’s job to defend Dumbo and Scambo with any deceptions possible, even if it comes to a tragedy like Uttarakhand.

A Moment To Treasure

Sometimes you start something you never know what turns the story might take. On April 20 a few online friends were holding a Tweeple’s meet in Delhi. This was organised under a social project called “Ek Aur Prayas” (EAP) which takes activities of friends beyond Twitter to ground level actions to help the poor, needy and currently the drought hit in Maharashtra. The people behind the activity are @Jemin-P, @AnilKohli, @ASRaghunath, @SureshNakhua and some more.  The idea they share at these meetings is that members of the Social Media can go beyond Twitter or Facebook and help on the ground.

For the event I had offered my book “Social media as watchdog” for purchase by those interested but my friends gave me a pleasant surprise. They organised a formal launch of the book by prominent journalist Mr. Kanchan Gupta and lawyer Ms. Meenakshi Lekhi. Here is a great pic from the event with the two releasing my book.

Thanks to my friends who organised this and to Mr. Kanchan  Gupta and Ms. Meenakshi Lekhi. For a small writer in a small corner this is an unexpected honour. It’s a moment I will treasure all my life.

  

Hush Puppies

There was a time when media would have investigated these allegations, are we doing that now? asks Nidhi Razdan to a panellist about the allegations against Robert Vadra. This was on her show “Left, Right, Centre” on October 10 on NDTV. Then there is another ‘Johny-come-lately’ called Krishna Prasad, of Outlook magazine, who says “It’s easy for Narendra Modi to say 1800Crs. were spent on SoniaG’s health  and run away”..  Health? Run away? Modi has repeated the charge over and over and it still hasn’t been answered by either the govt or the media. What has been churned out is some nonsense about SoniaG’s medical treatment bills and Modi’s question was on her travel bills, not medical. So Prasad now enters the club of fiberals! And the only “running” that Modi is doing is for another term as CM.

So in a discussion on Kejriwal V Vadra a fiberal is allowed to bring in “Modi” and allowed his two-penny twisted thrill. In response to this, Nidhi turns to Meenakshi Lekhi and she starts off: “First I was going to make a different point.. but since KP has brought up Modi…” There! That hurts! Hussshhhh! Nidhi jumps and pleads “No, don’t bring in Modi please.. I beg, I beg you, please don’t bring in Modi”. Haha! I don’t blame Nidhi. You can bring up Modi as long as you want to throw mud on him, but hey, no defences please. For a channel that has hunted Modi for a decade and survived on “slandering” him, to borrow Prasad’s term in criticism of Kejriwal, it is indeed refreshing to see this changed approach. Modi seems to have worn them out and depreciated them.

Going back to the first line in this post.. “there was a time when media would have investigated.. are we doing that now?” from Nidhi, it is amazing that every media celeb keeps asking such questions to others. What are they seeking? Clean chits from some regular panellist? Why not show some honesty by putting out an editorial statement that says: ‘Yes we should have followed up on that ET report. We erred and we regret this lapse and apologise to our viewers and the public’. That would have been appreciated and sins forgiven. People don’t flog people who own up to mistakes. Hush!

By Manoj Kureel (NitiCentral)

For the record, the program started with Salman Khurshid and a mild mention of his Zakir Hussain Trust for Disabled scam. The Trust also has Khurshid’s wife as the Chief Officer. But since the scam broke on Aaj Tak’s channel no other channel seemed willing to pick it up. Doing an “ET” all over again? In contrast, every channel willingly replayed the umpires’ sting by IndiaTV over and over again. Why not! No major political stakes involved in the umpire scam. No damage to the Congress or the first family, is there? But if one goes through the India Today report and the story and list of forgeries and strange denials there seems to be a stronger case against Khurshid’s Trust than even with Robert Vadra. The investigation called “Operation Dhritarashtra” (funny title) doesn’t leave much room for doubt. Suddenly, media reported that the Khurshids have asked the Akhilesh Yadav govt to investigate already. Really? Is there any evidence, written or otherwise, that the Khurshids had asked for the investigation before or after the sting? And why should UP govt investigate? Aren’t the facts with the Khurshids themselves? Hush!

The Khurshids’ Trust story is one that is not being appropriately covered. Headlines Today alone carried the headline: “Minister’s Trust cheats disabled”. Why no debates on such a serious charge; that too a minister who is willing to “die for Sonia Gandhi”? There’s another one brewing and this one, again, is from the CAG. Although, the report is sent for Finance Ministry’s response the CAG has reported a scam of sorts in the Farmer Loan Waiver scheme. A massive scheme of 52000 crores! Let’s read some excerpts from the Times of India report:

The CAG has pointed out serious flaws in the implementation of the over Rs 52,000 crore farm debt-waiver scheme in a finding that can annoy the UPA government besides raising doubts whether it can continue to reap political dividends from the populist programme which turned out to be the gamechanger for the ruling coalition in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls…  Sources said the draft report has pointed out major deficiencies in identifying beneficiaries, expressing the fear that "undeserving farmers" may have cornered the bulk of the waiver at the cost of the deserving beneficiaries belonging to the "small and marginal" category. The findings are contrary to the government's repeated claims in Parliament that benefits accrued only to the eligible.

Debts of more than 3.7 crore farmers were written off by the government under this scheme that brought windfall gains to the Congress. Andhra Pradesh, which accounted for around Rs 11,000 crore of the total disbursal, elected 33 Congress MPs to the Lok Sabha. Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, where the scheme was also implemented, too, rewarded the party handsomely. The three states together elected 69 of the 207 MPs elected to Lok Sabha on Congress ticket…  Announced just ahead of the 2009 parliamentary polls, the scheme wrote off the loan liabilities of "eligible" farmers pending till then.

So the biggest beneficiaries appear to be Congress states and UP. All three states paid handsome returns to the Congress in the 2009. Now, we know that the TV channels will explain that this is a “draft” report. However, we have known them to report based on draft reports and even the Congress to wrongly claim that some previous CAG reports were not tabled in parliament even during session under the fake claim of “draft”, even final when report was submitted to the president. Hush!

Then, on the issue of Robert Vadra, media channels have been frequently getting Congress persons like Rajiv Shukla and Sandeep Dikshit to make illegal land allegations against Prashant Bhushan & family. They are also demanding an inquiry. Fine, so what stops them? They are the govt aren’t they? What stops them unleashing CBI or ED or IT on the Bhushans’ land purchases in HP? Even Shanti Bhushan has stated that he is open to any inquiry of any kind by any govt so why are the Congressmen being allowed to repeat the frivolous nonsense again and again instead of a govt inquiry? This is particular so on Times Now. NDTV even had a reporter cover the Bhushans’ land and property in camera. But do any of these channels even have one image of which airline, aircraft or private chartered plane that SoniaG or RahulG use for their foreign travels? Hush!

And even now people like Yogendra Yadav on CNN-IBN and Krishna Prasad are propagating lies about Modi’s “1880 crores” being about SoniaG’s medical treatment. In this case it’s not just these two people but all media channels that qualify to be called LIARS. Still, there is no valid clarification from media, CIC or PMO on the “travels and expenses” on those of Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi. Even Madhu Kishwar’s RTI query remains unanswered. Hush! In a previous post I talked about how ground reporters feel like stray dogs owing to the way their editors treat them. In TV studios the celebs and others feel slightly better like: Hush Puppies!

Hasta La Teesta... Baby!

In the famous action movie ‘DieHard’ John Mclane’s wife isn’t sure if he’s dead or alive after another round of battle with the terrorists. Karl, one of the terrorists, then walks into the hostage-holding area raving mad, screaming and smashing everything in sight. She then whispers to a colleague “he’s still alive”. To the puzzled colleague she whispers her reasoning “Only John can drive somebody that crazy”. That is true for many villains. Sooner or later they lose their cool when their best laid plans go wrong. Something like that happened on TimesNow on the night of February 9 with Teesta Setalvad. The discussion was on the closure report of the SIT probing Gujarat riots which has reportedly given a clean chit to Narendra Modi on allegations of his involvement in the 2002 riots. Naturally, this is something Teesta has been unable to stomach.

It took someone like Meenakshi Lekhi, a lawyer from BJP who frequently appears on TV panels, and is an equally feisty lady to drive Teesta crazy and up the wall when she said: “..She (Teesta) has been repeatedly been committing perjury before the courts…will send you those 340 petitions”. Teesta’s response? She rants “That’s a lie, no court has held me guilty of perjury..” and then she walks out of the show. Wait a minute! No court has held her guilty? That is surprising because all along she has held Modi guilty of murder, guilty for women raped and tortured, called him names along with others. If one were to go by the number of times Teesta has declared Modi guilty you would believe a thousand courts have held him guilty. Yet, it’s only Teesta who’s not guilty of perjury because no court has said so. The clip below shows her moment when Lekhi drives her crazy like Mclane did the terrorist in DieHard:

The whole idea that Modi is guilty even when there’s no FIR against him, even when no court has pronounced him guilty is a rule that is concocted by Teesta and others. In contrast the SIT has indicted Teesta on her fake affidavits and even her own colleagues have filed cases against her on her lies and coercive methods.  One hopes Obnoxious Arnab and other TV mullahs learn a lesson: Teesta is unfit to be on any panel discussing justice for anyone. Her washing machine for justice, also known as Citizens for Justice, is more like a Ponzi scheme that thrives on lies, lies and more lies. Needless to say, her campaign has been funded in the past by political parties like the Congress and the CPM according to the page about her on Wikipedia.

Teesta wasn’t alone though. The campaign of calumny was carried out by Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, their TV channels, Shabnam Hashmi, Harsh Mandar, Vir Sanghvi, Sanjiv Bhatt, Mallika Sarabhai and many more. Some of them are fortunate Modi hasn't prosecuted them for defamation in calling him a 'mass murderer' or 'common criminal'. In Indian media history this has to be the biggest campaign of lies ever carried out by a bunch of people. Some of them have already protested the SIT closure report and that Modi shouldn’t be given a clean chit. It is worth remembering that the SIT itself was an outcome of Teesta and others petitioning the Supreme Court. As someone pointed out; it is a travesty and mockery of justice when it doesn’t go their way.

Just in case we forget this same Teesta in a way justified the Godhra burning of 59 Hindus with this comment on the day of the incident:  "While I condemn today's gruesome attack, you cannot pick up an incident in isolation. Let us not forget the provocation. These people were not going for a benign assembly. They were indulging in blatant and unlawful mobilization to build a temple and deliberately provoke the Muslims in India." So because they Hindus were assembling for the temple the muslims were provoked and were justified in the burning of people. It is such sick logic that results in the kind of backlash that Godhra brought about.

In their enthusiasm to please their political masters some of these activists and media celebs had led the Jafri family up a garden path. They led the family to believe the only justice is the hanging of Modi. Everything the lie-mongers claimed has been negated by the SIT. The frivolous affidavits by Sanjiv Bhatt have also been reduced to toilet paper, to put it mildly. It might be worth noting that the complainants withdrew the name of Rahul Sharma from their petition. He is supposedly an anti-Modi cop. For long the conniving media have treated Teesta Setalvad as some super expert on the Gujarat riots. Where justice for the victims is concerned she has probably done the greatest disservice by making destroy-Modi her sole and personal ambition. The undeniable fact remains that the SIT didn’t find anything against Narendra Modi and some others to implicate them in the killing of Ehsan Jafri or other cases.

The media has lost the moral, political and legal battle against Modi on the Gujarat riots. What new campaign they may come up with next is left to their conscience. But one thing they must learn is bringing in spurious panelists with ulterior motives frequently to tarnish someone doesn’t pay. Teesta Setalvad is supposedly a lawyer. Imagine her walking out of a court of law when proceedings don’t suit her. Justice Arnab runs his TV channel like a mock court but walking out on a show because of intolerance of others' criticism is the final sign of a loser. The TV channels will do well not to bring her back on again ever. Her fame and game are up in flames! And in all probability Teesta, with all the cases against her, might see jail far before Modi, if he ever does at all. In this case, if not the real Arnie the Terminator, our own Obnoxious Arnie can well afford to say “Hasta la vista” to her or should the media be telling her “Hasta la Teesta… Baby!”