Shame shame NDTV shame

The fourth estate in India that blows the conch of 'accountability' and deciding who is 'secular' and who is not has not distinguished itself in more occasions than one when it comes to keeping its house in order or its coverage more balanced. What they do when it comes to their business is none of mine. If they choose to drool pages over a beauty contest and an upcoming film in the name of 'extended entertainment coverage' over farmer suicides and other important issues happening all across the country that is their screwed up priority and I always have the liberty and inclination to change the channel or look at a different page.

However it pisses me off totally when they indulge in sensational journalism that potentially puts people's life in peril and then arm twist their way out when a concerned blogger mentions it in his blog. Now the blog space is beyond their JNU campus intellectual domain and when they are questioned, they have their own blog space where they invite fans of actors to post comments on stupid media soundbytes that they can use to defend themselves or apologize sincerely as they wish. The concerned media conglomerate is the famed NDTV championed by Prannoy Roy who seems to think that freedom of expression and questioning social wrongs are rights that the government has conferred to him and his corporation alone. I came across this blog where they have tried to derive perverse pleasure by putting on a 'International cowboy act' .

The point in contention is their utterly irresponsible behaviour by trying to capture as many shots of the positions of NSG commandos and beaming it on the airwaves for the terrorists of the Taj hotel to plot an escape or possibly cause more harm to the selfless servicemen. Now this has been raised by many media analysts in their newspaper articles. Even the bold editor of Thuglaq, Cho Ramaswamy spoke about it in a serious manner in his magazine as well as in the annual function of his magazine. So why single out an individual blogger. What harm has he done to their TRP ratings? Why choke an apology out of him on one hand while asking the fans of the channel to submit citizen reporter videos and MMS clips? Is the 'freedom of expression' so unpalatable? What about their 'freedom of expression' when it comes to sting operations and their take on politicians and officials they have sworn to expose sans any bias?

Their actions when it comes to covering tragedies like this one or any natural disaster is always 'sensational' . If it is a 'friendly state' their coverage will be benevolent while if it comes to an 'unfriendly state' their coverage will be like a guerilla organization - going for the jugular and forming opinions that they find fashionable and politically expedient to their ends. Their mindless sensationalism has reached monstrous proportions where they have started seeing themselves as a political force more and a responsible journalistic entity less. This is a dangerous trend and will end in 'rogue journalism and reporting' too soon. Their intolerance to criticism is the same as that of the politicians they criticize day in and day out.
If anyone is still reading this blog - do me a favour - write more about this incident and spread awareness. Lets see if NDTV's lawyers want my apology too.