Ripples on the brain

For the last two days, all the news channels looked like vultures to me, feeding on the dead bodies of the Mumbai public. What a way to do business! Phrases like “Police told CNN-IBN”, “In a exclusive interview to NDTV” were used generously while reporting the misery. I think there should be a re-look into the news channels already existing and ban some if required. In one of his recent blogs, Rajdeep had argued that if only these new channels had been available in 1992, Babri Masjid demolition could have been avoided. I was like “Oh yeah! why couldn’t you stop Gujarat? How responsible of your erstwhile colleague, the award winning journalist Barkha Dutt, who reached one of the localities just after hooligans torched it to ask the residents ‘Aapko kaisa lag raha hai?’!”. What do these channels think they are doing? Public service?

“Do you think Manmohan should go. SMS 6868.” As if based on the SMSes, these guys are going to evict him from the PM’s chair. Wonder if somebody really SMSes them or they make up the numbers. Then there are channels like Star News. I still cannot pardon myself for watching a piece of news in that channel that talked about how statistics proved that after Chappell took over as the coach, Pathan’s performance as a bowler had dropped - In 25 matches before Chappell’s entry, he had taken 11 wickets, but in 25 matches after Chappell took over he could manage only 10 (I might have got the numbers wrong, but believe me, it was this ridiculous!)!. All the channels invariably kill English both on TV and in their websites (I’m probably overdoing this news channel bashing, but to me the news channels seem to be worse than the millitants at the moment). It is amazing that all of them speak in the same way - they don’t pause at the end of a sentence, pause at somewhere in the middle, no modulation in the voice - the words come out as if they are in a haste to make it before the next pause, the reporters at the locations are invariably agitated and they cause a commotion in the place surrounding them (in fact the police end up managing the camera men before reaching out to the people in distress).

And now a new way to show the misery - praise the people. “The spirit of Mumbai”, “Resilience of Mumbai”. What resilience? If there’s been a bomb blast today and people continue as if nothing happened, that is indifference. Indifference born out of helplessness. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the people. People are well aware that the next day of bomb blast is not going to be more dangerous than the other days (In fact, the next day might be a little safer). I’m blaming the way they are being portrayed for the benefit of the channels. Did you visit the houses of people who died and saw if their blood-relatives went to office the next day? I received a mail today that talked about the resilience and about the way Mumbai residents are “teaching the terrorists a lesson”. Are they? You dumbos need to first understand that the terrorists are not against the people. They are against the government. The people are being used as tools. The people ought to be angry against the government. What happened to the intelligence? Especially after the large haul of ammunition in Aurangabad just a few days ago.

My mind is probably as messed up as this post indicates. But I’m really angry with the media and the government. Mr.Manmohan Singh, Just how many of these do you need to convince yourself that you are incompetent? Stop bowing to every other member of your coalition. Just resign and leave it to someone else.