In the recent times of confusing news articles, tv debates and discussions, As a daily news absorber, I have been acquiring a useful skill of sorts, the skill of differentiating the bakwaas(crap) news from the truth. Most of the times, it can easily be done by differentiating the politicians who just speak whatever come to their mind at that moment to defend themselves/offend the other. Most of the bakwaas news will come from these politicians and they also become famous for it. You can easily see most of them trending on twitter on various issues. They definitely made a name for themselves, and they think it won't matter, as our so called democratic country is full of people like them winning election after election, you know how!!
Are our media channels are sincere enough? Almost all national news channels and most of the news papers nowadays, seems to be compromised, you can read about one of them here and here. It's amazing how conveniently they fail/ignore to investigate the important issues and bury them as early as another new issue comes. They ask questions every day and mentions at least a scam in every show(yes, news also became shows now), but who is stopping them from investigating a scam and bring the truth out for everyone. Or may be they are busy analyzing whats going inside each party and what gimmicks politicians are playing on each other. The National news channels are losing their credibility badly. And the regional news channels(at least in AP) are comfortable doing senseless debates or being movie masala outlets.
During the current Uttarakhand disaster, where still thousands of people are waiting to be rescued, TOI came up with this crap, which shows they didn't even bothered to double-check it from another source, and later they blame Modi's spin doctors for it? as far as i can see only TOI got that news posted on that day(tell me if i am wrong). May be TOI is very weak in playing spin. Now this whole shameful episode is well explained here.
Is our media so corrupt that they just sold their soul to the politicians/political parties/big daddies or they just became so gullible that they can be persuaded to any extent?
However, I still believe not everything had gone to dust.There are still good articles written. I think Caravan is doing a good job of reportage(at least its good till now). Some of its best articles in recent times: The Insurgent on Aravind Kejriwal, The Outlier on Subramanya Swamy and Inside Man about the Attorney General Of India Gulam Vahanvathi. There are many more articles if you have time.
And at last, You shouldn't miss the newly launched online portal, NewsLaundry, and especially Cothesline(a weekly episode on NewsLaundry), if you want to know whats really going wrong on in our media.
