Jorunalist Vs Activist: Throwing shoes is not journalism

When a Sikh journalist threw a shoe at Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram, the reactions varied. However, the worrying issue is that there was not enough condemnation of the action in media.

It is true that the act did help in delayed action against Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar. The anger among Sikhs community against these persons who were accused of involvement in the killings of 3,000 Sikhs in Delhi, is justified.

But a journalist should remain a reporter, a person who watches events as a bystander. A journalist should not become an activist. If he becomes one, he ceases to be a journalist.

It is a dangerous trend. Once you are a journalist and you are covering an event, you ought to forget your association with your caste or community. Tomorrow a journalist may wear any identity on his sleeve.

He may become a Muslim and the target of shoe-gate could be a BJP leader or a North Indian journalist may hit a Shiv Sena leader for campaign against migrants from UP and Bihar (or a Tamil Nadu politician for support to LTTE).

A Dalit journalist may hit an Upper Caste person or vice versa. Yes, it grabs attention but it is an unhealthy trend. Congress MP Naveen Jindal is the latest as he was hit in Kurukshetra when Ram Pal, a retired teacher hurled his shoe at the MP.

It had started with Muntadir Al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist, who threw his shoe at George Bush. He missed the target and again took off the other shoe to hit at Bush which the then US Prez ducked. Now the trend is catching on in India.

Ideally a scribe must respond as a reporter, with his pen. He should ask tough questions but must not act irresponsibly. He is privileged to meet the high and mighty as an unbiased representative of the citizens and society.

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India TV upsets Bohras: Internet-based low IQ journalism causes major goof-up [Baitullah story]

Excessive reliance of internet and declining standards of journalism have resulted in acute emarrassment for Rajat Sharma's India TV.

Searching the internet and trusting the results without verifying has put the channel in deep trouble. The blunder of showing the head of Dawoodi Bohra community, Syedna Burhanuddin, in a programme that focused on Taliban, has the entire sect up in arms against the channel.

If you search google image for any person or event, it is not necessary that the result is exactly what you want. Any other image present on the page can also be shown. It's not for nothing that the old adage 'one needs brains for copying' is repeated so often.

So they were doing a story on Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsood. It seems in search, the page showed up the image of the holy figure of Bohras. And without verifying, the dumb heads inserted it along side a fake 'created news' of Baitullah's so-called marriage 'nikah' ceremony.

His Holiness Dr. Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS) is the spiritual head of Bohras, who are a peace loving and gentle community. But their patience ran out. Many of them reached the India TV office and rest have protested in the towns wherever they live.

The channel has apologised. But will it learn? The standard of journalism and journalists are deteriorating. They read less and rarely consuled encyclopedias, rather prefer wikipedia or a search engine and don't use brain when they go for search.

India TV has been criticised for its stress on spreading rumours and showing news and shows based on superstitions, spirits and sensationalism. The latest incident has hit its credibility. But one expects that other channels would learn a lesson and urge their staff to use brains.

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Does media ignore terrorist strikes in Assam?

Assam has again become the most terror prone state in India. The serial blasts that hit Dhubri, Sonitpur and Maligaon caused the death of ten persons.

Did national media give adequate attention to it? No. Though compared to past, the channels gave a few extra seconds but the coverage was far from satisfactory. There were hardly any analyses and detailed reports. 

And there was no emphasis on talking to the families of victims. The fonts of headlines were slightly bigger because the bomb blasts occurred on the eve of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Assam.

Soon the news about Shahrukh and Amir Khan coming together, eclipsed all. Among newspapers, Indian Express covered the story better than other papers. This is not surprising as ULFA remainst just a militant outfit for the media. 

It somehow doesn't probably qualify as a terrorist group in the eyes of our editors. Or is it that Assam and the entire North East still remain a distant part of India, which the newsrooms in Delhi don't relate to, as much as they do when the Cities ravaged are Bangalore or even a small town like Modasa?

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