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Category: Media

It is not just Barkha vs Bhakts, it is also Barkha vs Gunday

Barkha Dutt, the celeb journalist from NDTV, has written a book and it’s getting negative reviews (one star) on Amazon, by scores of people who have most probably not even read a sentence of it. It’s silly, but it’s not unprecedented.

Barkha is blaming it on “bhakts” – a term she and other “liberal” commentators use very liberally to describe people who support Narendra Modi. And the truth is, most of those giving one star and negative reviews to her books are indeed Modi supporters.

So this is all about Barkha vs Bhakts? Or rather just about Bhakts, who last month, angered by Aamir Khan’s comments on “rising intolerance”, raced to uninstall the Snapdeal app and give it a bad review on app stores?

Can we simply close the case because these Bhakts appear as an organized gang of online goons? Gundays harassing a “liberal” law abiding citizen Barkha?

Yeah, gundays, rather Gunday. There lies another story.

Why journalists hate trolls

At the outset, let me make it clear that I’m making a distinction between what is being labeled as “trolling” and criminal online behavior such as cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking, hate-mongering, etc. However, this distinction is NOT made by a league of critics (most of them journalists) who are on a mission to purge the social media by launching a War On Trolling, much like Junior Bush launched War On Terror and declared that “if you are not with us, you are with the terrorists”.

In that case, I’m with the trolls (as defined by them).

Due to internet, can the journalist vanish like the postman?

Many people have argued what the future of journalism could be. Most agree that technology, especially digital, will impact it the most.

The obituary to print journalism has often been written, and it still continues being debated passionately if the prophesized doomsday is near or if these are mere cheap apocalypse mongering.

In this article, I plan to take that apocalypse mongering to the next level. I want to pose the question whether journalism – the art, the profession – will survive technology?

Three cheers for the “moral compass” (updated)

When the alleged force feeding of a fasting Muslim man by a Shiv Sena MP happened, I felt that the religious angle was a spin given to the incident, and that the media was needlessly playing it up. Media showed it as an example of communal bigotry, when it appeared a case of hubris and hooliganism.

However, there was one benefit of doubt the media and the possessors of moral compasses could be given – the victim i.e. the canteen supervisor, in his complaint, had claimed that his religious sentiments were hurt.