Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Indian media biased?

There is some sort of "media bias" e-mail being circulated on the net. It is declared, without any citation or references, that mostly all of the media groups and agencies in India (NDTV, Times of India group, Indian Express group, CNN-NBC etc.) are owned by non-Hindu organizations. And that is given as a reason for why these media groups have (allegedly) become "hindu bashers". Here're some excerpts:

NDTV: A very popular TV news media is funded by Gospels of Charity in Spain Supports Communism. Recently it has developed a soft corner towards Pakistan because Pakistan President has allowed only this channel to be aired in Pakistan. Indian CEO Prannoy Roy is co-brother of Prakash Karat, General Secretary of the Communist party of India. His wife and sisters.


India Today which used to be the only national weekly who supported BJP is now bought by NDTV!! Since then the tone has changed drastically and turned into Hindu bashing.


I think this is utter B.S. (Yes, it is true that NDTV is the only Indian channel that is currently being broadcasted in Pakistan. But I don't see why that would suddenly make them anti-hindu. By the way, I don't think "co-brother" even means anything.)


I spent some time online and googled these alleged connections but didn't find any authentic information. The only sites where this "media ownership alignment politics" is mentioned are on-line discussion forums, blogs and some religious fundamentalists' web-portals. Barring the last one, most questioned the validity of these fragile allegations. Here's some more:


Gujrat riots which took place in 2002 where Hindus were burnt alive, Rajdeep Sardesai and Bharkha Dutt working for NDTV at that time got around 5 Million Dollars from Saudi Arabia to cover only Muslim victims which they did very faithfully. Not a single Hindu family was interviewed or shown on TV whose near and dear ones had been burnt alive, it is reported.


Tarun Tejpal of Tehelka.com regularly gets flat check from Arab countries to target BJP and Hindus only, it is said.


(Emphases mine)


Does someone really have to be a genius to see right through these?


I have made a rule of thumb long time ago: Do not trust ANY forwarded e-mail at once. Most of them are nonsensical twaddles. A little research can easily reveal the truth.

The last line of this forwarded e-mail reads "PONDER OVER THIS. NOW YOU KNOW WHY EVERY ONE IS AGAINST TRUTH, HOW VERY SAD."

Really, how very sad!