The watchdogs are only watching Bollywood

I logged on to CNN.com this morning and watched several clips of the flood situation in India. The same stories were on msnbc, bbc abc and pretty much any news channel to which I had access. Wanting to know more about the governments response I went through all of the Indian news websites and was amazed at the complete the lack of coverage.  All the Indian news websites, timeofindia.com, indianexpress.com,ndtv.com etc. none of them had a full coverage of the news. In fact most of them didn`t have ANYTHING about it. According the Western media nearly 400 people have died and over 2 million people have been displaced, have lost their homes and had their lives ruined. There`s a major disease crisis looming over it all, not to mention how, if ever, the lives of these people will be rebuilt. And all the best Indian media websites had news about ?some Dhoni dude is leading the cricket team?, ?Sanjay Dutt appealed? and the ?Leftists said no to nuclear deal? oh yeah there was news about the American Bridge collapse and the Miners in Utah in which 6 people could lose their lives!!!. And i`m sure Shekhar Gupta was walking the talk with Aiswarya Rai or some such.

I don`t know what goes on in the brains of Indian English ?Journalists?. But I do know that they cater to people like you and me, the middle class, well educated and urban. And to me it is an insult to my intelligence to even look at what our ?media? has to offer. We don`t care about our people who are devastated because we don`t even know thanks to our ?media?. Shame on all of the Indian English media and shame to us all of not demanding accountability from the media. Yes, the media. Before we take on our politicians we need to fix our ?media? which appears to be run by a bunch of people who are obsessed with cricket and Sanjay Dutt. They are supposed to be the watch dogs but they are only watching Bollywood.

So it comes down to people like us, yes I mean you who are reading this to tell our ?media? that we are not watching any of these channels till they bring us real news. We need to switch CNN/BBC and all the other channels that covered the misery of the people whose lives were ruined. Yes, foreign channels, and I say this with reluctance as I have seen how ?fair? they are but at least cover it. In their extraordinary urge to show India`s bad sides at least they expose the politicians and the government. When Katrina happened in the US,  THAT WAS ALL the media covered. That`s why Americans live in a better world because their media holds the politicians` feet to the fire.

If you feel there any fragment of truth to what I have written, send this e-mail/message to as many people as you can and stop watching/reading, NDTV, Times of India, Indian Express,  Deccan Herald and any channel/paper that was watching Bollywood when they should have been watching the floods. We need to tell these people ?If you covered Sanjay Dutt but didn`t cover the floods you can`t call yourself a news channel?.

Purushotham Nayak
Bangalore
August 8, 07