Ugly Side of Media : Barkha

This post is triggered by recent disclosure, that has mostly been kept out of main pages by the Indian media. But, here is the first of several of the tapes, thanks to Open Magazine.




One of the previous posts, "Rann : Brutal and Taunting", ends with the following commentary on media, which is vindicated by recent expose.

• Here is the List of Padma Shrees : Lookup the achievements of the Padma Shree awardees for Journalism to see the decline in matter of couple of years.
• 2006 : Sucheta Dalal, Mrinal Pandey
• 2008 : Vinod Dua, Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt  

About the awardees
Sucheta Dalal is a financial journalist who has to her credit co-authorship of book "The Scam: Who Won, who Lost, who Got Away".  Mrinal Pandey is a writer and prominent journalist, who spent several years looking into the conditions of rag-pickers, domestic help etc, among her other accomplishments.
 
In contrast, Barkha Dutt, the Group Editor of NDTV, has a list of controversies that is longer than her achievements. It started with her coverage of the Kargill war, where her actions purportedly lead to death of 3 soldiers and resulted in dismissal of a colonel, while Ms. Dutt kept climbing ladders on her so called "coverage of Kargil". Thanks to NDTV's Prannoy Roy, she continued to muzzle opposing views with law suits and supposedly contributed to several deaths due to irresponsible and sometimes factually incorrect reporting. And yet she was awarded the Padma Shree somewhere in her sensational career.

If one is still wondering how she became the chosen one, the answer lies in the series of tapes now available on Youtube. Here are the transcripts from Open Magazine "Tell me what should I tell them.". 

While on the topic, also exposed is Vir Sanghvi, selling his column space to Radia. Open magazine transcripts of the conversations are here: "What kind of story do you want?".

Accountability
Barkha Dutt seems to have weathered the storm with NDTV (Prannoy Roy) and IBN (Padma Shri Rajdeep Sardesai) trying hard to defend the indefensible.

But there is hope. Vir Sanghvi is now removed from the position of "Advisory Editorial Director" at HT Media and his weekly column "Counterpoint" is, in the words of Vir, "taking a break"!