Biased/nonsense headlines

Came across a few headlines in the recent past. Of course IBNLIVE leads the chart with their pro-congress anti-BJP headlines.Here they follow:

1) 'Advani did nothing to save Babri'

Why cannot they change the headline to: "Attention seeker tries to defame Advani over Ayodhya.". Well I agree this is the other extreme. But a good headline could have been : "Person testifies against Advani, court verdict pending."

2) BSP shows Sonia's photo with money garland

Alternately, they could have just said : "After Maya, it's Sonia, age of woman's obsession with money". But instead they chse to put the blame on BSP. This is unfair reporting. And it is the same people who had such a headline about Advani.


3) A similar stance was taken on Modi: "Modi grilled for over 9 hours by SIT". It could as well have been " Modi patiently answers all questions for 9 hours to make sure all issues are addressed in 1 day"


Anyway, these were political. Here are some nonsense ones from ToI and BBC.

4) This one is mentioned by Amit Verma of Indiauncut as well. News by Times Of India's midday: "Oshiwara gay teen killed" Just read the article and see if it was really a gay issue.

But this last one justifies it all. A headline from king of news BBC itself. This news was most read on BBC for almost 24 hours and on 2nd for a long time too.

5) "Man used p**** to assault female police officer " If you read through, you will realize it's a classic case of getting super drunk and apologizing later. Imagine this being the most read when news like US Health care, global warming etc are doing rounds. I guess this proves why we get headlines like above 4.

Random thoughts on Indian Politics

Some thoughts on the current state of Indian politics and of course media interpretations:

• UPA 2: This UPA 2 has again brought out the commi out in me. When UPA came to power, one of my few friends who were unhappy over the results (only 3) commented, 'Now we have to stay "aam aadmi" for another 5 years', which is what Congress promised to do anyway. But things look very different now. Looks like UPA 2 is full of the Stephenites and the IITians and the actions they have taken is very pro genX. For example, look at the budget. The only good thing for common man was tax cuts. Apparently only 2% Indians pay taxes. But the price rise of petrol affects even the poorest of the people. I am not saying that price rise of petrol is bad, but then there were hardly any actions to control the food price rise. How can the government even think of anything else when prices are so high? Ofcourse it doesn't affect our class of people, the ones who mostly eat out or pay so much house loan/rent that food cost < 10% of their costs. These are the people like Shobhaa De who made the comment "And who eats toor daal anyway." These are the same people who are in media and share same ideas. I thought Sonia Gandhi was populist, and yes I do agree that these decisions like the ones made in budget now *may* have long term effect on the future of the country but ignoring price rise.
  
  
  
• IBN's obsession against Varun Gandhi. Has anyone paid them money to do it? All the headlines regarding Varun are so negative. In the latest news about Varun being oe amongst the tonnes of secretaries made a heading with the same alleged "hate speech" picture of his. Even NDTV while putting a nice picture of Hema Malini up there put in a rather angry picture of Varun out there. And then ofcourse there was the "Varun Hate Speech 2" headline where again allegedly Varun compared Sharad Pawar and Mayawati to Raavan and Shurpanakha. This can be funny, but no way hate speech.
  
  
• I am utterly confused about NaMo (Narendrabhai). I do not agree with media's constant basing of Narendra Modi but I also do not understand that how come, every article about Narendra Modi with negative shades have so many "For Modi" comments on it. Are Modi followers really so many that they can flood any negative Modi posts? There are two things I do not like about Modiji and they have nothing to do with religion:
  a) Its a historic precedence to resign when something that nasty happens. So many rail ministers had resigned after any train accident. Were they responsible? No, but they took the moral responsibility. Same with Vilasrao Deshmukh and Shivraj Patil. If everybody does, why not NaMo? Is he above all these people? OOP concepts say "God Objects" are a bad idea. It's true for Politics too, methinks...
  b) It's a good thing to have so many corporates coming to the state. But is the basic human rights being taken care of? Again, the little commie in me thinks not even one step extra should be taken unless we cannot assure the basic rights to all the citizens. Many of these dev plans in Gujarat look forced. I am not sure how many of them are with consent of the "ALL" the people.
  
  
• I am reading Ramachandra Guha's "India After Gandhi".
  It looks like Dr. Ambedkar was a really good man. He had a great vision. I specially loved his statement that- Gandhism (read non cooperation movements, strikes) are good only for a enslaved country. In a free democratic country, there are democratic ways to address this issue and these kinds of things are bad for democracy. I consider this a brave statement especially coming around 1949. Its just the present age politicians who are taking mileage out of his name and instead making people like us have a false prejudice against him.
  

Image Courtesy:
UPA: CNN-IBN
Varun: aurat.in