News - Whats its use

I have been growing more and more skeptic about the worthiness of news as it is being presented to us. Not only I would question the worthiness of news, but also raise questions about intoxication of our minds by these half-baked news stories.

The news sellers want the government to save its pupil from being treated by quack doctors. Yet they like to enjoy the freedom to intoxicate the minds by whatever way they wish and call it freedom of press. Isn't it the responsibility of the government to protect the citizen from the perils of wrong and misleading information?

Keep the above seriousness aside, here is a forwarded mail by Anala by which I was kind of surprised as it bore much similarity to my own thoughts. Here it follows:

Prashant (TV Anchor): Two persons have been injured in a freak climbing accident. Jai and his

companion Zeenat had gone up a hill to fetch a pail of water when Jai fell down
and broke his crown. Zeenat came tumbling after. Live from the hill, our

reporter, Amrita Shah, takes up the story.

Amrita Shah: Thank you Prashant. Well, as you say, two persons - Jai and Zeenat - had gone
up a hill to fetch a pail of water. Suddenly, Jai fell down and broke his
crown and Zeenat came tumbling after. Prashant.

Prashant: Thank you Amrita. What do we know about the hill?

Amrita: Not too much. Jai was going up the hill to fetch a pail of water when he fell
down and broke his crown. Zeenat came tumbling after

[Headline appears at the foot of the TV screen: "hill breaks crown of pail-boy Jai"]

Prashant: What news of Jai and Zeenat?

Amrita: Prashant, it seems that Jai had gone up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
We know nothing about the pail, or how heavy it was but it seems that Jai
fell down and broke his crown and Zeenat came tumbling after. I have here with me,
an eyewitness to the accident, Mr Shahid Trivedi. Mr Shahid, tell us what you
saw.

Shahid Trivedi: Jai and Zeenat went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jai fell down and
broke his crown and Zeenat came tumbling after.

[Headline appears at the foot of the TV screen: "Boy and girl tumble down hill. Water spilled"]

Amrita: Jai and Zeenat. What do we know about them? Are they brother and sister? Are
they married? Just what were they doing on the hill together?

Shahid Trivedi: Jai and Zeenat went up the hill to fetch a pail a water.

Amrita: And what happened next?

Shahid Trivedi: Jai fell down and broke his crown.

Amrita: Go on.

Shahid Trivedi: And Zeenat came tumbling after.

Amrita: Prashant, there you have it. Two people innocently going about their business
to fetch a pail of water when one of them falls down, breaks his crown, and
the other comes tumbling after. Back to you in the studio Prashant.

[Headline appears at the foot of the TV screen: "Water errand ends in tragedy"]

Prashant: I have with me in the studio now, Professor Chandrashekar Belagare from the
Indian Institute of Applied Hill Sciences. Professor: a hill; Jai; Zeenat; a
pail of water. A tragedy waiting to happen?

Professor: Well that depends on the hill, the two persons, the object they were carrying
and the conditions unde rfoot. Let us look at the evidence so far.

Jai and Zeenat
Went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jai fell down
And broke his crown
And Zeenat came tumbling after.

Clearly, one would suspect that if Jai's fall was severe enough to break his
crown then the surface of the hill must have been slippery or unstable. But I
think were overlooking something quite fundamental here. Who was carrying the
pail? Jai fell down and broke his crown and this is the key Zeenat came
tumbling after. If Jai and Zeenat had been carrying the pail together, would
they not have fallen at the same time? The fact that Zeenat came tumbling after
suggests that Jai lost his footing first and perhaps knocked Zeenat over as he
slipped.

Prashant: Professor thank you very much. So there we have it, two persons Jai and Zeenat
went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jai fell down and broke his crown
and Zeenat came tumbling after. Later in the programme, Osama bin Laden
captured in Afghanistan , President Obama says he did not deserve the Nobel prize,
and Pakistan launches nuclear warheads against key Indian cities. But next up,
join us after the break for a studio discussion about hills, boys and girls
and whether water-fetching trips should be supervised. Well be right back...

News of Reality OR Reality of News

I curiously peeped into news papers from Pakistan to see how the scenario around Mumbai attack is being showcased there. And it was really funny. See this piece of article from The Frontier Post.

Mumbai terror attacks Further evidence of the Anglo-American-Mossad-RSS nexus - Amaresh Misra


...terrorists looked like Anglo-American covert operatives and that the entire Mumbai operation was an attempt by Anglo-American forces to destabilize India and push it further into the Israel-US orbit....


...Clearly, the attackers would not have come from the sea route without some kind of a connivance of Gujarat and Maharashtra Governments with the terrorists, and the connivance of RSS type Hindutva elements...


...One Police officer who encountered the gunmen as they entered the Jewish Center (Nariman House) said the attackers were white. "I went into the building late last night" he said. "I got a shock because they were white. I was expecting them to look like us."...

...Anonymous sources in the Police have revealed that Karkare was taken there, by a joint team of anti-Karkare, pro-Hindutva Mumbai Police officers, and Chota Rajan men....

Want to read the whole article? Here is it.


Here is another wonder article.

Maharashtrian suicide squad on Pakistan mission - Tooba Afridi

Indian newsweekly ‘Outlook’ has disclosed that one of its loyalists had raised a “suicide commando squad” of “dedicated Maharashtrian youth to be covertly deployed inside Pakistan."

Full article.


Haven't read Outlook yet, check it out in The Frontier Post.


If the news that Pakistanis get can be twisted in this way, the news that we digest every morning is probably similarly twisted and turned. News delivered by our so called free media is equally frothy and tarnished as that of other side of the border. The problem lies in human mind which needs anchors, wants to know causes of everything even if there are none, and the media exploits this "want for cause" by making up causes which appeal to the largest population (which turns into largest sale). So, you need to fight not the media but your own mind and console it that not every event has a cause and not all cause (as showcased by media) is the reality.

Another news of interest: TRP rating of "Malegaon blast investigation" has dropped significantly and hence news related to this has been taken off air.