Holding NDTV Accountable

It stands to reason then that NDTV doesn’t really respect people’s right to free speech. It treats critics as enemies, and goes all out to suppress their dissent, unabashedly taking advantage of:

a) the strength it enjoys as a big corporate house, with its pool of legal resources

b) the weakness of individuals like Kunte, of most of us bloggers; our inability to cope with the financial and emotional stress of unwanted legal battles over issues not central to our lives

c) the sloth in our judicial system

A new blog, Boycott NDTV lays out solid reasons to stop watching NDTV. With the proliferation of news networks, I’m sure that is not a problem and we get all our news online anyway, right? I’m sure Rajdeep Sardesai doesn’t mind.

The solution, fortunately, lies in the hands of the public. The average reader and viewer can set the anomaly right by rejecting these revenue driven enterprises in a free market economy. Putting these media houses and starry journalists out of business is the only way to save this nation from the scourge of biased journalism in India.

Does boycotting anything work? Pragmatic tells us that such the public actually has more power in getting this done than a legal solution or self-regulation (by the media) [via].

Blogging is a mix between opinion and fact, and everything in between. It does not hold the authority of a news organization. Everyone understands this. People blogging about a certain subject may reach a mutually-agreeable conclusion after much debate, or they may not. They may continue posting rants, opinions, and links on their blogs to prove each other wrong. But that’s what’s so interesting…Journalism, on the other hand, is more like being at a conference. Speakers come and talk, what they say is taken as fact (they’ll usually back it up), and errors of judgment are not taken lightly.

Mridu Khullar, full-time journalist helps NDTV understand the difference between blogging and journalism and asks them to engage their viewers to learn from their mistakes and not sue them.

I’d just like to remind BD and the channel that with rights come responsibilities. Their grilling of politicians and film stars has probably instilled in them a false sense of superiority that makes them think it is alright to be irresponsible and “in your face”, but a tiny criticism of their work is that hard to digest eh?

It is ironic even more, if you read the response that Barkha Dutt had given after the Mumbai carnage. She clearly states that they are open to both praise and criticism, but how come we don’t see it in their real actions??

Why should we expect NDTV and Barkha Dutt to learn from their mistakes? Because as Chandni reminds us, she said that she will and in fact declared herself open to criticism until of course, she got criticized.

Was NDTV unaware that NDTV.com had run excerpts from the blog item that their lawyers were suing Cheytanya Kunte for? And do the “tech” chaps who run NDTV.com have no idea that everything, including everything they remove, is cached by Big Brother at Mountain View? What do NDTV, Prannoy Roy and Barkha Dutt propose to do with the Facebook group that has over 4,660 members demanding that she be taken off air? Will they sue Mark Zuckerberg next?

Churumuri asks who is next on NDTV’s to-sue list. Facebook for having an anti-Barkha group? Or their own site, NDTV.com for running Chetan’s ‘offensive remarks’ [now removed but captured in PDF by Rohit]? Let us not forget Wikipedia for hosting the debate on her role in Kargil. Busy busy times for NDTV’s legal team.

You have become too shallow, sleaze, sensationalist and superficial even for your own good, all I can say is people, we listen to you, so do your job properly.We don’t need you to be pimps for movies people and celebs. We don’t need your opinions, just a rational analysis, we don’t need your pointless debates and dumb followup questions. We need to you enable a democracy.

Chirag Chamoli writes an open letter to the rest of the Indian national media reminding them of their role toward the Indian people and highlighting their mistakes in the past. Let us hope other media houses learn from NDTV’s mistakes and get their house in order before the public loses trust in them.

Bloggers are pissed because Barkha Dutt’s threat to take legal action is in itself a bullying tactic to suppress his right to air his opinion against her reporting style, which we all know actually endangered the NSG operation…Calling her antics as “idiocy” is actually mild, considering that she goes around yelling “fascist” and “fundamentalist” at the drop of a hat. What’s best, she uses these terms casually.

There is a section (probably overstating it) of the blogosphere that is defending Barkha Dutt (see, even bloggers disagree and it’s alright) Sandeep addresses those concerns and once again points to the real issue at hand here – intimidation of a relatively unknown blogger who chose to express his opinion. The grownup thing for Barkha would have been to respond to his criticisms on her own blog/website. I’m sure she has more readers and would have served her cause better.