Sunday, September 16, 2007

CNN-IBN says what it wants to hear

In the latest turn of events, the doyens of CNN-IBN have perhaps decided that the Ram Setu issue is getting too hot to handle. Therefore, it is trying to steer the issue towards what always works, i.e. the Aam Aadmi. As you know, Aam Aadmi always trumps Ram.

According to this report:

Local fishermen say the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has hijacked the real issue - the livelihood of the thousands of fishermen settled there – to meet political ends.

They say the dredging of sand from the seabed and the limestone blasting – required for the construction to get underway – will affect fish populations and wreck the fragile marine ecology.

“The break the rocks here using big ships. When all this (debris) is thrown in the fishing area, it affects our livelihood. Our fishing nets are torn due to these broken rocks,” says a fisherman. [link]

The video can be found here. Since we do not understand Tamil, we could not ascertain if the fisherman on camera indeed said this:

Vishwa Hindu Parishad has hijacked the real issue.

The voice over did not contain the above statement. There is a world of difference between the above and:
  1. Local fishermen say there is another, more real issue.
  2. CNN-IBN thinks local fishermen think that VHP hijacked the issue, but did not say it. It was assumed anyway.
  3. CNN-IBN thought it would be cool to have local fishermen say there is another, more important real issue and CNN-IBN thinks VHP hijacked it.
  4. CNN-IBN thinks that it would be cool if local fishermen actually said "VHP hijacked the real issue".
This is bizarre.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw the video. The local fisherman does not say VHP or any hindu organization name. Nor the voice over as you point out. The fishermen are worried about their fish, not VHP or the bridge or the project.

They have developed in to a news channel that can even "generate" their own news apart from reporting what is available.

barbarindian said...

Thanks Vajra.

This is extremely alarming, somebody should do something about it.

In The Shadows said...

BarbarIndian,

Ideally, there should be a neutral watchdog over these channels ....

But our IB ministry seems more inclined to ban FTV and music channels rather than lying news channels and papers like Tehelka.