Saturday, August 7, 2010

Trysts with MSM - Part 10

MSM stands for Main Stream Media

It all began when fellow alert tweeter,
Venkat Gopal bought this issue to the forefront:

NDTV picks this report from PTI :
http://bit.ly/9JoCqd and adds a line http://bit.ly/crAD0E @BDUTT

This report is about a hand hacking incident in Kerala, wherein the hand of a 24 year old man was severed by goons for questoning them about teasing his sister. The line in contention was this:

In the PTI (Press Trust of India) report: Police dismissed political motive behind the crime.
NDTV (which attributes the report to PTI): Some of the men, who attacked Abhilash were RSS-BJP workers but police dismissed political motive behind the crime.

Now, why would NDTV add that line when the actual PTI report does not have it? This was the question we posed.

And then Shri Siddarth Varadarajan (who by the way is an editor in The Hindu and not NDTV :D) comes and tweets
this:

Kerala man's hand cut off for taking on eveteasers: 'Some of the attackers were RSS-BJP workers'. No howls of outrage?
http://bit.ly/awmuP5

No prizes for guessing which link he tweeted - the NDTV one! Couple of folks (including me) have asked him separately (pasting below my queries) :

LOLL @
svaradarajan ... hope you had a look at the original PTI report. http://bit.ly/9JoCqd .. would you like to clarify now?
Also @
svaradarajan look at how they killed basic english sentences too ! if anything, the howling must come from journos!!

After a while, Sidd replies
back:

@
Vengdu @kvsarmaj @visaraj @ssudhirkumar The NDTV one is the FULL pti story. PTI free site has redacted version for nonsubscrbrs like you

Now, we are further confused!

@
svaradarajan non subscribers get better english and neatly edited reports? while subscribers dont? @Vengdu @kvsarmaj @visaraj
@
svaradarajan plus also why have IBN, IE, carried the "redacted" version? They are non-subscribers like us? @vengdu @KVSarmaJ @visaraj

To which, he
replies:

@
Vengdu NDTV link clearly says PTI. @ssudhirkumar Subscribers free to edit but not add. That's the way it works world over with wires.

Now, more confusion!

@
svaradarajan so you are saying, PTI edited it's own report, cleared it of the shoddy english, deleted RSS-BJP, while NDTV didnt?

More. NDTV says story first published at 13:36 IST. Updated 16:27 IST. PTI says 14:21. IE says 15:45.

@
svaradarajan Indian Express: http://bit.ly/ayHbvJ CNN-IBN: http://bit.ly/antUOv ... exact same as the "redacted" PTI version.

In the meanwhile, fellow tweeter, KiranKS
pulls up reports in other publications.

PTI:
http://bit.ly/9JoCqd Indian Express: http://bit.ly/ayHbvJ CNN-IBN: http://bit.ly/antUOv but @NDTV adds RSS-BJP!! http://bit.ly/ahNd35

Other fellow tweeters
pull up links too, while Sidd pulls up a link on the "original PTI story on Mangalam!

Later in the evening, Kanchan Gupta gives us these
facts:

PTI 1.05 pm take says "RSS-BJP workers"; removed in 2nd take at 1.40 pm. NDTV should have corrected. @
BDUTT

So the point is very simple now - why is NDTV carrying out a story that the original soure PTI itself has made changes to? While all other newspapers, channels are picking up the latest vesion of the feed, why has NDTV not done it? And guess what - no clarification has come from Barkha, Vikram Chandra or Nidhi. A mail has been sent to
feedback@ndtv.com , but as usual no reply yet! Thanks to all fellow tweeters for pushing the question and participating in the discussions yesterday.

5 comments:

Siva Chandan G said...

LOL!! non-subscribers get better english and neatly edited reports but subscribers don't.

Sid V tried to provoke people but failed.

B Shantanu said...

Well done Sudhir...Good post. Thanks

Raghavendra said...

NDTV Ka Haath, Congress Ke Saath

http://i36.tinypic.com/mvk9c0.jpg

http://i34.tinypic.com/2mrw86o.png

Anonymous said...

Excellent work, keep it up!

Anonymous said...

there is however a minute possibility that pti, indian express and cnn ibn published the ndtv version along with ndtv but quietly removed the line without informing ndtv to discredit ndtv! now why'd they take so much pain to discredit media having little credibility is beyond comprehension.

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