Wednesday, March 02, 2005

The Spindian Express: Not necessarily the news

March 1st

i found this on sulekha; it is an attempt to expose the lies being propagatd by the Indian Express these days. the paper has become the new 'pravda' or 'xinhua': the propaganda arm of the incumbent government.

it is worth noting that Shekhar Gupta, three or four years ago, told musharraf: "we'll take care of getting rid of the bjp." this is sedition.

can you imagine the editor of the NYTimes or WashPost similarly telling the chinese dictator, "don't worry, we'll get rid of bush because he's such a nuisance to you"?

the indian media is one of the most corrupt institutions in the country. the bjp were idiots to not hold the indian express' cojones to the fire when they were in power: it would have been a simple matter to deny them government ads, and that would have caused them (and other scoundrels like the very inappropriatelynamed 'The Hindu') to come crawling. a few libel cases would have been icing on the cake; newsprint-withholding would have been another knife-twist.

but, of course, the bjp wanted 'vasudhaiva kudumbakam' and wanted to be loved by all. that was a serious mistake.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You wrote:
"the bjp were idiots to not hold the indian express' cojones to the fire when they were in power: it would have been a simple matter to deny them government ads, and that would have caused them (and other scoundrels like the very inappropriatelynamed 'The Hindu') to come crawling. a few libel cases would have been icing on the cake; newsprint-withholding would have been another knife-twist."

So muzzling the press is to be encouraged as long as it's your guy doing it? Intimidating the press is reprehensible whoever does it. The BJP also managed to single out Tehelka for tax investigations and such, so its hands are not clean either.

Anonymous said...

I hope that BJP learns its lessons well, and get even with the seditious Indian ELM.

Anonymous said...

But on the other hand, The New Indian Express (published in the four southern states) seems to be doing a balanced job with good columnists.

nizhal yoddha said...

anon 1, so who's doing the muzzling? it is always the left, which is the real fascist power in india. indira gandhi famously muzzled the media. did the nda do a thing? they could easily have shut down the irritating hindu and indian express, but they did nothing. to level the playing field, either the left should stop its attacks on the press or the right should start when it has the chance. the left will never stop.