Friday, November 05, 2010
The old lady of Bori Bandar doth protest too much!
While it is laudable that The Times of India and its most effective new channel, TIMES NOW, have taken up the corruption scandal around the spurious allotments of luxury flats in Adarsh Housing Society’s Tower at prime location in posh southern Mumbai area of Colaba ---- each apartment costing Crores of rupees, for a pittance of its market value, to Army personnel, politicians and bureaucrats, bending all rules and regulations; the week long campaign, both in front pages of Times and in prime time coverage on TIMES NOW channel, gives an appearance of some hidden agenda behind the seemingly noble act of exposing corruption in government circles.
The Old Lady of Bori Bandar, the nickname with which Times of India is known, does seem to protest too much --- to borrow the Shakespeare phrase. And that robs her of all her credibility.
Hasan Kamaal, an old Urdu Blitz editor and a seasoned media analyst in his editorial in Mumbai’s Urdu daily, Sahafat explains: The way a section of media, especially a big English newspaper and its English news channel is exerting all its power on exposing Adarsh Society scandal, it appears their objective is something else………. This section of the media is trying to drown out the scandal of horse trading and ‘Operation Lotus’ in the recent Karnataka upheaval, by their earsplitting cacophony on Adarsh Society scandal. (Free translation from Urdu).
While for people, the voice of media is regarded as speaking for the people, the way the so-called paid media is operating in India, its activity is bordering on criminality. It is covering up a major scandal that threatens the democratic institutions and thus encourages by default, if not be design, the corruption that is the core cancer of our society --- the political corruption of robbing or distorting the people’s mandate in myriad ways of short cuts and manipulations.
It is for people to judge, who is doing the more poisonous corruption, the corruption involving country’s resources, the corruption involving nation’s governance, or the corruption involving people’s brainwashing.
By selling out its commitment to be a bridge between the masses and the ruling classes, media has become more of a liability than an asset to the civil society. A more vigorous campaign should be initiated to expose the criminality of the paid press, which is abusing the trust of the people and indulging in activities in hiding the truth or at least the whole of the truth.
The immediate result of TOI/TIMES NOW campaign is the hardening of Congress High Command resolve to treat the exposing of Adarsh Society scandal as well as Commonwealth Games scandal running into thousands of Crores, as political gimmickry favouring BJP in its own political scandal of horse trading and buying of opposition members to prop up its majority in Karnataka assembly. TOI and TIME NOW are playing partisan games, that is sure to result in the serious erosion of their credibility with their readership and their viewers who are not necessarily in the Saffron camp, in which TOI/TIMES NOW are now stealthily sliding in.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
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