The Beast's Accomplices

There are three kinds of sting operations: 1) An authorised Law Enforcement agency like the Police or CBI conducts a sting to make inroads into a crime already committed to force evidence. 2) Lure innocent people into believing or playing roles to con someone or commit a major crime. You know like that Special26 movie about the jewellery shop robbery in 1987 where the conman recruited people as CBI agents to rob the outlet. 3) Fabricate a crime with some political or other motive and then try to fit people into it. Catch them unawares by appealing to their baser instincts and tempt them into a crime.

 

The recent sting on the AAP Party falls into the third category. Try to appeal to baser instincts of people (and it is normal for a large number of people who can succumb to temptation) and then claim they are guilty. Tehelka’s history is full of the third category. In other words, these are not even stings but more of entrapments. Tarun Tejpal (TT) couldn’t help molesting and raping a young colleague twice at a public event (Remember NDTV, please insert alleged everywhere). Imagine what crimes he would have succumbed to if offered inducements with call girls or prostitutes. Take a look at the pic below:

Not hard to recognise the man in the middle, is it? In 2009 Tiger Woods was hospitalised and the media was trying to find out why. Then came news that there was an accident and he suffered some serious injuries. People were worried. Then came news that the injuries were out of his wife beating him up. Then came news that the beating was because of his adultery and affair with another woman. That should have explained. It didn’t stop there. Then came news of three more women. Then another three! By the time the shock could be absorbed it turns out Woods had rounded up a complete “cricket team” of girlfriends with whom he had affairs. He even added a 12th woman to complete the bench; there were 12 women in all. But even the high-octane-libido-Woods wasn’t accused of raping or forcing any woman into sex with him. Tejpal’s daughter claims to have told “V” (his victim) that her dad had done this before. So I wonder how many will tumble out of his closet and speak up with the same courage as V.

Are we to believe that people around Tiger Woods and many of his media chroniclers didn’t know about his sexcapades? I don’t thinks so. Are we to believe all the friends of TT in the media didn’t know about his sexcapades? I don’t think so in his case either. Every major media celeb in NDTV, CNN-IBN, TimesNow, India Today, TOI Group, Mid-day, FirstPost and all the cronies in and around Delhi and Mumbai would have known about his history sheet. They remained quiet. They were all silent accomplices. Chances are they are still accomplices to some other crooks like TT. In particular, would Shoma Chaudhury be unaware? Facts tell us she would be. After all, Tehelka was a small family and not a giant like TOI. Shoma now comes across the scumbagini who’s the biggest accomplice in terms of attempts to cover up of the whole episode. This is the same Shoma who is quoted in Wiki (Pic from DailyMail):  

Chaudhary criticises the current state of the Indian media. Speaking on a panel on investigative journalism at the 16th World Editors Forum, she remarked on the state of journalism in India as "pathetic" as it had become "a corporate rather than a political act". She was critical of the "focus on advertisement revenue" rather than public interest, adding that "journalism has thus been undervalued, and this needs to change”. On another occasion she was quoted as saying: “India's political, corporate and media establishment sounds like a mobile cocktail party, gliding, champagne glasses in hand, in and out of each other’s drawing rooms, television studios, boardrooms and award ceremonies like actors in an elaborate charade”.

That last quote seems to pretty much describe Tehelka itself. Surprising see doesn’t see Tehelka’s ugly face in the mirror. “Drunken banter” said Tejpal to his victim. Mobile cocktail party? That’s what most media houses in Delhi are and they are part of the Scotch-circuit of Delhi and Mumbai. The cocktails by themselves shouldn’t bother us but it’s the kind of ‘Hammam’ and incestuous club it has created that has destroyed the credibility of MSM. There isn’t one single media house that is clean. All of them protect each other’s crimes. All of them protect each other’s rapes, molestations, corruptions and frauds. There is a reason I fondly call them a “mafia”. The earlier tagline for this blog was “Crooks & Liars in the Indian media are the greatest danger to our democracy”. It’s not the middle and junior, it’s the top rung that is usually corrupt and dangerous. The bottle-neck is always at the top. It is only when it’s too late that some speak out. Most of the media houses are scavenging on the death of Tehelka and are guilty of gross negligence all this while. They’re like a “mafia wife”. But there are some who acted out of courage, some whose voices never reached you earlier, spoke out. Here are two former employees of Tehelka (Video: 6.00 mins):

 

Revati Lal resigned after the murky handling and cover up attempts by Shoma. It’s a courageous decision. Prithi Sen not only confirms the misdeeds but seems to have been a victim herself and was effectively told ‘put up or shut up’. Prithi must have just decided to leave. Surprisingly, Prithi was on the lesser viewed NewsX channel and not on the other real mafia channels (unless I’ve missed something). Prithi makes a very important point about TT’s fraudulent claim of “consensual sex” as he blames the victim and calls her a liar. She rightly points out that even if, hypothetically, the girl had made the advances it should have been the job of TT to discourage her and ask her to behave. V’s letter to Shoma after the horrible incidents are in the public domain and her account of the sequence of events don’t leave much doubt about who the criminal here is. Tejpal and Shoma don’t seem to realise that they have not only destroyed themselves but the lives and careers of others. Employees had invested their trust, their time and their careers in the hands of TT and Shoma. Tehelka is dead! The innocent ones will have to seek careers elsewhere. I hope they find better ones at better places.

That brings us to the other accomplices to the crimes of Tehelka and the two bosses. These are the ones who claim to have known TT for long and even as a “dear friend”. Here’s the Category5Moron with her story:

Those were Sagarika’s initial tweets after the rape incident became public. Do you really believe she didn’t know what had happened? Seriously, she cries for TT and claims he’s a loving, generous friend and being in the media and ‘gossip-circuit’ heard nothing? Never mind! 

What are first reactions? It wasn’t of any shock or outrage that you would expect from her had such an incident happened in some other event. All that comes out is that she is more sorrowful for Tejpal than for the victim. A bit later (bottom left tweet) she manages to applaud the victim for her courage. Oh and “many of us have suffered, were scared to speak” in the past? Who is us? Has Sagarika suffered? If so, is she referring to her past employers at Outlook or some other outlet? What stops her from speaking now? Inconsolable in her tears, she manages to demonstrate she’s a Royal Bimbo by connecting the “snooping” incident to the rape incident. How moronic can you get? So somehow curse “Modi Bhakts” because her dear friend turned out to be a rapist. She doesn’t fool me by pretending she didn’t know TT’s history. Does she fool you? Here’s Sonia Singh of NDTV:

I haven’t seen Sonia Singh blabbering too much on any topic even if she’s accused of bias being a Congi’s wife. That should never matter in anyone’s consideration of what she says or does. But she goofs up here. I disagree with her contention that publishing the notes of the victim in a paper is the reason why women are scared to come out. Far from that I think the more women speak out and publish the more the fear will dissipate. What Sonia should wonder about is something else. If I recall correctly, she was elevated as the Head of the Ethics Committee of NDTV when the Sunetra Chaudhury incident happened. What did NDTV do? Maybe NDTV did something and got an apology or compensation and settled the issue. We don’t know.

Has Sonia ever asked why when NDTV has a website Sunetra had to write about her humiliation in another newspaper (DNA)? Isn’t that odd? Sunetra also wrote that despite the incident she had to attend a presser of the culprit which quite scared her. It is just that Sunetra didn’t name the crook while in V’s case the name was out on Social Media already. Had it not been for SM TT’s latest would have been buried too. Other than that I don’t see any difference between Sunetra publishing or V’s letter being published. This doesn’t occur to Sonia or others who are making similar comments. I have mentioned in the previous post that maybe if the Sunetra incident had been blown up it could have prevented TT and maybe other crimes. NDTV, therefore, is a moral accomplice to these crimes.

That then brings us to other accomplices who are suddenly discovering Tehelka. All this past decade none in the media asked a simple question: How did Tehelka get so rich? How is it that despite consistent losses TT got so rich? How did he get to buy prized real estate in Goa? How is it that Tehelka was able to get funds for events like THINK and KINK. Nothing of Tehelka’s sales or ad revenues would point to such massive funds. I say KINK because TT is reported to have famously told delegates: They were in Goa “so they could eat, drink, be merry and sleep with whomever you want". Does Goa lend itself to that reputation or is it TT’s personal lifestyle? The fund-grabbing for 2011 included arm-twisting of the then Goa CM Digambar Kamat based on a little help from friend Ahmed Patel. Yeah; the guy who monitors Sonia Gandhi’s happiness and unhappiness meter!

Anant Media is the owner of Tehelka. Here’s what ET reports: For the fiscal ended March 31, 2012, Anant media posted a loss of 10.5 crore, down from a loss of 16 crore the previous year. Royal Building and Infrastructure, the Alchemist group company, extended an unsecured loan of Rs19 crore to Anant Media during the fiscal ended 31 March 2012. KD Singh has been in the news for his brush with the law on two occasions in the recent past. In 2011, he was intercepted at New Delhi airport carrying an unspecified but large amount of cash. He was boarding a flight to Assam, where assembly polls were due and Trinamool Congress was contesting…airport officials allowed him to travel after he identified himself as an employee of the Alchemist group… SEBI barred Alchemist Holdings from accepting deposits from the public. It held that Alchemist Holdings and Alchemist Infra Realty Ltd had together raised more than 1,400 crore in illicit schemes… In 2012, the government had ordered a probe by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office into Alchemist group companies.

So a majority of the investment is from realty companies. They even extend an unsecured loan of 19 crores against accumulated losses of 26 crores in the previous two years to Tehelka. Sound business sense, eh? Of course, we don’t know what the accumulated losses were before that. How does a small rag, tag and bobtail outfit like Tehelka make such losses? Where does the money go? An investigation into the personal finances and assets of TT and Shoma should answer that. A thorough investigation into the personal assets and finances of many media celebs would reveal a lot. This was the company that was broke and had to be resurrected with the intervention of Sonia Gandhi. Hindustan Times narrates a similar story.

Mumbai Mirror goes further into the murky dealings of TT. This includes the sacking of a man who was about to expose a major mining scam in Goa. It seems TT fired him to bargain funds for THINK2011. The Grand Hyatt, where KINK2013 and the rape happened, is reportedly owned by a beneficiary of the suppressed scams. It goes further about TT: “He was also getting a seedy reputation for talking loosely about the sex lives of people he knew and for brushing aside sexual harassment complaints. One of his former colleagues, who quit journalism after an incident in which the Tejpal-Chaudhury duo played a questionable role, remembers the indifference with which he treated her sexual harassment complaint against a colleague who had circulated pictures of her exposed midriff all around the office”. All this corruption and ‘poison-power’ flows from only one fountain: The Congotri of corruption. History hangs on tiny chances. Ask TT to tell you about it someday.

They were all accomplices. One way or another they covered up the crimes and excesses of the beast. After all, which media house doesn’t have similar stories? That Tehelka will die isn’t of much consequence to me. It’s the kind of the third-rate journalism and dishonourable practices it employed that should really die. Excessive corruption, illicit wealth and the wine of ‘69 drives many of our media celebs. I’m naturally reminded of some lines from a song that describes this culture pretty well.

Her mind is Tiffany twisted/ She got the Mercedes bends/ She got a lot of pretty pretty boys/ She calls friends… Mirrors on the ceiling/ Pink champagne on ice/ And she said, “We are all just prisoners here of our own device”/ And in their master’s chambers/ They had gathered for the feast/ They stab it with their steely knives/ But they just can’t kill the beast…

Assam & Azad Maidan - How MSM Sibalises Riots

Here’s what Kapil Sibal said last year: “People have been asking why we can't just prosecute individuals who post hate-speech instead of blocking sites but there are three reasons why that's not workable … each time material of this kind becomes the subject of legal proceedings in open court, you will have protests, mobs, perhaps violence — even if the media is responsible, and doesn't report the details.” Someone else lent strong support to Sibal in his attempt to censor the internet with this: “I've had to deal with stone-throwing mobs on the streets because of some moron in the United States.. Each time, people could have got killed. For me, this isn't an airy-fairy ideological issue, it's a real problem.” This is none other than Omar Abdullah, CM of J&K. Relax Mr.CM, there might be morons in the US but it’s the morons at Azad Maidan (AM) that indulged in unprovoked stone throwing and violence on August 11, 2012. So how do we use the AM story? Let’s check with the MSM.

Till August 11 there was hardly any incident where material from the internet could have been blamed for violence on the streets. I guess both Sibal and Abdullah have been quiet since the violence at AM wasn’t communal but unleashed by one group on its own. The violence wasn’t by Sagarika’s “Internet Hindus” or Barkha’s “Bigots”. If that had indeed been the case then Sibal, Abdullah, Sagarika, Barkha, Rajdeep, Ashutosh and more would have come out with all guns blazing. Instead, our news channels didn’t know where to look or who to blame for what happened. And then some even had the gall to blame the social media for provoking people.

This is a tweet by the mother-in-law of MSM sermonisers, Ashutosh of IBN7, he blames some “gangs” on Twitter. If he has seen some gangs making the provocation he doesn’t know who but wants others to identify and prosecute them. One can safely believe that he hasn’t seen any and is indulging in lie-mongering of his own kind else he could have openly named some people or gangs. The man considers himself a ‘journalist’ and makes terribly loose statements frequently on Twitter without any specifics. If Bollywood ever wanted an actor to portray fake outrage at the drop of every 12-rupee coin, Ashutosh would be their man.

Let’s take a look at a tweet by Sonia Singh of NDTV. Again, she too claims people are putting up images that can create ‘tension’ without verification. Once again, she tweets without any specific reference to any image. It would be safe to assume she is referring to the same gang as Ashutosh and we all know who that gang is. Don’t we? My response to her tweet is also in the image. Truth of the matter is that the online folks on websites and twitter posted accurate images of some criminals from AM. Some of these were also reported by news websites like Firstpost. Some images were captured by Atul Kamble of Mid-day who was assaulted by policemen.  Hmm! Not to be left out, Akash Banerjee of Headlines Today jumps into support SoniaSingh. He says ‘self-check’ not possible in social media which is why MSM is needed.

First, nobody has said MSM is not needed and there’s no context. Second, there’s a history of lies and bloopers from MSM which Banerjee’s third rate channel makes him forget. His own super-boss, Aroon Purie, once plagiarised and blamed jet-lag for it. And then as recent as a few days back a major news paper’s website announced Dara Singh dead three days before his actual death. DNA announced Vilasrao Deshmukh dead on August 7, a week before his actual death. As for sensitivity, Banerjee’s channel was the only one to flash tits of the Guwahati molestation victim. And has the MSM already forgotten how they brought hell on Sarabjit Singh's family with the wrong news of his release from Pakistan? So Banerjee and his tribe would do well to look inward before sermonising.

Media crooks frequently utter nonsense on twitter and their channels and when confronted and questioned they play victim and wrongly complain of being abused. Scientists are about to call this phenomenon ‘Barkhadrome’! Truth: None of these unworthies and their channels had the honesty or guts to question the threats issued by Asaduddin Owaisi on Muslim radicalisation. Events of AM followed immediately after his threats in parliament. It’s actually quite a few from Twitter who gave the warning signals which even the Mumbai police seem to have missed.

Here’s a tweet that mentions gruesome pictures being circulated in Mumbai to provoke muslims to attend the protest meet at AM. These were supposedly pics of muslims who were butchered in Burma. I am quite certain the Mumbai police too would have got these fliers if these were circulated to citizens so openly everywhere. Neither Ashustosh nor Sonia Singh had the courage the point this out but then come out like angels sermonising. MrsGandhi’s tweet’s timeline is 1.57 am on August 10 which is more than 24 hours before the AzadMaidan gathering. This is apart from SMSes that were being relayed according to the police themselves. 

That’s not all, the tweet from @Pushpraj4U from the ground mentions groups getting into local trains in Mumbai and shouting slogans. This was confirmed on August 13 in an NDTV program itself by Sonia Singh. How come news channels missed this too? Or were they sleeping on their jobs? 

Incidentally, a fake handle,   @officialskynews tweeted Margaret Thatcher’s death on August 14 but was quickly dismissed as a rumour by other tweeters. That’s how social media works unlike MSM which perpetuates lies unless challenged by social media.  

Now, let’s get to the juicy part where both Ashutosh and Sonia advise to check and recheck before tweeting images or provoking people. Far from tweeting rumours or lies many on twitter have been very careful and were verifying each news item and each report and each image in tweets. Along with others I too tried to verify the images that were received in a leaflet by @MrsGandhi. And what comes up is shocking to say the least. The images in the leaflet were faked to provoke muslims. The images were from earthquakes and other incidents in Thailand or China and had nothing to do with Burma. 

I tweeted information about the site which showed the mischief that many muslim leaders were indulging in to provoke their followers online and on the ground. Farhaz Ahmed, a Pakistani, in his blog PakAlert Press explains systematically how images of deaths were misused to provoke muslims. His post was in the context of Pakistani social media and not India. In India it was Muslim leaders who planned the agitation who used fake pics and that wasn’t through social media. It is just that both Ashutosh and Sonia Singh would have found the same info as I and others did and could have been specific about whom or which group is misusing and abusing social media. They did not! And it’s not very hard to tell why!

There are three interesting images of individuals that are disturbing. Two are of those vandalising the Amar Jawan memorial which was tweeted by many and also carried by online news sites like Firstpost. There’s a third image of a man carrying an automatic gun through the streets at the scene of violence. (See Youtube 0.23) All these three images were buried by all the news channels. Not one of them was outraged at these disturbing images. Now I would like Ashutosh or Sonia to answer if these pics were mischievous and faked by Twitter.

Were these images not available to them? They should have flashed these images or at least the faces of these criminals so that police or citizens could identify them. Nothing! As for Akash Banerjee, it would have been better for Headlines Today to have shown the faces of these thugs instead of cleavage of molestation victims. All the violence, including two people killed, was in support of victims from fake pics that were used by the leaders of the protest at AM. No channel reported the truth. Not Sonia’s NDTV, not Ashutosh’s IBN7 and not Banerjee’s Headlines Today. So my modest suggestion to these media celebs is to look inward and not sermonise social media.

So what’s with the rant against the Twitterati and social media by these media celebs? Now that’s where Kapil Sibal comes in. First he has made no secret his wish to censor the internet and had faced flak from every corner. What’s his reasoning? It’s that there was potential of the internet, social media sites to incite violence. Even communal violence! AM could have been handy but unfortunately from the wrong party. So media hacks like Ashustosh and Sonia are doing a great job for Sibal. Keep accusing Tweeters of posting fake pics, unverified pics and messages, of provoking Hindus and Muslims without any specifics and there you go; the perfect recipe for Sibal to act upon. None of these news channels have shown any courage or nerve to report Assam or AM accurately and honestly. 

At the time of writing there are rumours of Assamese and NE citizens being threatened and that there’s an exodus of thousands from Hyderabad (A.Owaisi’s constituency) and Bangalore. There were special trains organised for them to leave at Bangalore (From late on August 15th to early hours on August 16). Not one of the many 24X7 news channels had any report on the facts on the ground. Instead, celebs like Barkha were tweeting silly nonsense, unreliable information with no real source and even colouring events with clever communal tweets. Truth is, Barkha, Sonia, Ashutosh and others in MSM do have an agenda unlike most on twitter. Real threat is that all of this may not end with Assam alone. Not one word from MSM on these threats. If not for social media they may have even totally blacked-out and buried all of these incidents including Assam and AM. Fact: unable to face the onslaught of fast dissemination of information on the social media these media celebs cook up allegations against it. Sorry, won’t sell anymore, no matter how much they Sibalise riots and violence.

Why Indian MSM Wants Social Media Dead

In recent times Herman Cain, an Afro-American candidate, pulled out of the race for the Republican party’s nomination for US Presidential election in 2012. Three women from his past had alleged sexual harassment by Cain which eventually forced him to abort his campaign. In contrast, Abhishek Manu Singhvi (AMS), MP and Congress spokesman, resigned on April 23 from various posts after his alleged sexual adventures were leaked through a video on the internet. That was enough for the Mainstream Media (MSM) and even PCI Chairman, Justice Katju, to start screaming for controls over the social media. The sex CD which involves AMS and a female lawyer was reportedly made by AMS’s driver and according to AMS was “fake, doctored and morphed”. How a driver went to Darbangha (Bihar) and found enough money and support and morphed a tape will remain a technological wonder for a long time. His alleged motives are “dog-bites and low pay”. Seriously, many of us may complain about our salaries but going to the extent of morphing our bosses into sex videos is taking even revenge too far. Tsk, never mind!

The case was brought to public light not by the driver or by the MSM or by the social media. It came to prominence when AMS filed a police complaint against the driver and got an injunction from the Delhi HC against airing of the CD. On what basis the HC gave the injunction is another mystery and it almost sounds like pre-screening. Naturally, people wanted to know what was on the CD and what the facts were. This is where the MSM failed as it completely blacked-out the story. The court had stayed airing of the CD and not the reporting of the story. It was then that the story spread like wildfire on Twitter, Facebook and other social media and finally parts of the CD were uploaded by some on the internet.

In response to the public clamour for the story Rajdeep Sardesai even responded by calling them “Eternal Voyeurs”. Such is his disdain for ordinary people. Rajdeep also asked why the Opposition was silent over the issue, as if they, or any political voice, should determine what the press or media should be reporting and discussing. A dead give-away. 

Even so, when the cookie finally crumbled, the MSM wasn’t discussing the AMS sex incident, they were busy debating whether ‘Internet is above the courts’ (For uploading the CD against the court injunction) and some like Justice Katju and Sagarika Ghose were discussing ways and means to ‘check’ the social media.

Nothing would please our MSM (and some politicians) more than to see the death of social media. It has come to challenge their monopoly, their bias, their spins, their lies, and their selective reporting. In the US the Internet media has seen the death of many newspapers and quite a few TV channels. Some 300 newspapers have died in a small country like UK. Unlike print and TV, social media requires the regular MSM and public figures to be interacting with people sensibly which is where they have failed in India. Public opinions can be suppressed in newspapers and TV but not on the social media. So while raging against the people on the social network and wanting to desperately ‘check’ them the Indian media really needs to understand the way social media works and harness it productively and profitably. Comments under the post “Media as cover-up artist for Seedy Singhvi” will reveal how even keen news-watchers were totally unaware of the AMS incident. That is how successfully the MSM blacked-out the story.

The Internet wasn’t created in India. The Internet didn’t evolve in India. None of the major social media engines were created in India. For all its other problems the US still remains a country with absolute freedom of speech. President, Pope and even religion are no exceptions to such freedoms. Books are not banned and books can be burned. Nazi group marches through Jewish localities to offend them is allowed. Protests at funerals against dead ‘gay’ soldiers, in bad taste, are allowed. Bad taste is not a crime. Therefore, for Internet and social media to thrive in the US environment wasn’t as big a challenge as it is in India. Mind you, the same laws that punish defamation or illegal activities otherwise also apply to social media in the US. It does in India too. It is just that in India free-speech is largely reserved for the powerful and the MSM. Now that the situation is changing it’s causing unease among many in the media and politics. US citizens over many years have grown used to and cherished their freedom of speech. Most of them know what to believe and what to ignore. The Indian govt and media simply doesn’t trust ordinary people to have the good judgement over issues.

If the AMS CD was uploaded on the net it was because the media didn’t discuss it. It got uploaded because people generally believed that this level of gagging by a court and black-out by MSM can only mean there is truth in the story. That a prominent lawyer like AMS would seek an injunction and instead of continuing the FIR against the alleged conspirator reach a settlement with him further reinforces the belief that the CD is neither morphed nor doctored. Apart from the frivolous discussion; “Is Internet above courts” on CNN-IBN (who else but Sagarika Ghose?) and other channels, NDTV even discussed if ‘India is going the US way’ on the media issue. Among participants on NDTV was Shoma Chaudhury, editor of Tehelka, a near-gossip tabloid, and the same tabloid that famously used call girls to do their jobs. That is enough said for morality in media.

If there is evil in the social media, it is prevalent elsewhere too, particularly in the MSM and politics. It is how we respond to it that counts. It is not easy for someone to survive in the social network by constantly peddling lies and misleading information. In Indian media it is definitely possible and sometimes it even seems they are paid for it. For those screaming about morals so much in the MSM there is an example of a prominent journalist Keith Olberman who was suspended from his channel, MSNBC, for a small but undeclared donation he made to politicians. In contrast people like Barkha Dutt are celebrated in our media despite established wrong-doings. In the US Barkha Dutt would have been permanently trashed and out of the media for good. So people like Rajdeep Sardesai would do well not to sermonise on morality, which he often does. The likes of Shoma Chaudhary, Sonia Singh (NDTV), Sagarika Ghose should also be frequently reminded of the sordid NOTW affair in UK. That tabloid is what much of Indian MSM should be compared to and not values of ‘Freedom of speech’.

In the last US presidential election Youtube was successfully used by CNN to allow ordinary people to put questions to the candidates and have them debate the issues. Many other clips from Youtube are also used by US news channels in their reports. Why Indian media cannot find productive use for social media other than promoting egos of individual journalists is simply the fear of sharing their turf. Forget harnessing social media productively, the frequency with which our news channels twist and manipulate tweets to suit their agenda actually amounts to abuse of social media by them.

The MSM perceives a loss to the social media on the issue of AMS, his sexcapade and his final resignation. This is hardly the truth. Social media did not bring AMS down. In the final scene of the movie ‘All the President’s men’ WaPo editor Ben Bradley chides Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein thus: “You know the results of the latest Gallup Poll? Half the country never even heard of the word Watergate. Nobody gives a shit”. That’s right half the US didn’t know and didn’t give a shit till Nixon finally resigned. That was despite tremendous coverage by the Washington Post and a few more newspapers. Here we are, an entire MSM blacking out the AMS story and they want the world to believe it is the evil of social media that has to be ‘checked’.

Social media didn’t bring AMS down. He brought himself down with his dirty deeds, social media just showed the courage that MSM did not just as Woodward and Bernstein didn’t bring down Nixon on their own. MSM, and Justice Katju, would do well to partner social media rather than try to check it. If ever ‘Power to the people’ made sense in a democracy it is Social Media. Celebrate it!