"The Great Indian Media"

Orkut was recently banned by most of the educational institutions in India and in some states like Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh speculations are ripe that they will issue directions to all the cyber cafes to impose a ban on social networking sites. Well, the major trigger was the kidnapping and murder of Adnan who was allegedly kidnapped and murdered by his 'Orkut' friends. I don't know but by banning Orkut the only people who will be happy is microsoft people and I am sure that the ban is not for parents or for the benefits of the masses. It's sheer lack of wisdom and may be just a byproduct of the generation gap.

In India, we are trying to ban the social networking site whereas recently Tony Blair expressed his interest to join one popular networking site after his retirement. Can we think such a thing about Mayawatis, Sharad Powars or even for Manmohans? Anways, your police department is inefficient, ban Orkut, You have no control over other media like news paper and Tele vision then ban the websites. Talking about indecent content I guess that advertisements and the kind of news items getting highlighted as breaking news contains more derogatory content than the Orkut. Look at the classifieds carefully you will find numerous advertisements of "friendship clubs" and "massage parlours". Well, I don't know but may be the next step will be to ban "I don't know what, our enforcement officers are sick". In India more people die of heart attacks due to poor performance of cricket team or due to Stock market crash. I have a solution, ban them.

Let me highlight the major reasons for the two recent happenings.

Murder of Adnan -> The story goes that Adnan made friends with some people on Orkut who envied his lavish lifestyle and for that they planned to kidnap him. All went well but then the news of kidnapping spread like wild fire and kidnappers who were amateurs panicked under police pressure and murdered the boy. So, to stop somebody from making friends ban Orkut. Nice solution.

Everybody is pointing fingers at Orkut but then the actual reason for the murder was not the Orkut but our Great Indian Media who were breaking news after every 3 minutes and were interviewing Toms Dicks and Harrys about what they think is right. There is so much competition for news these days that news channels are fighting to go on air first and once they go on air, they just keep hanging there. They will show 20 seconds footage for 20 times to make it look like a 7 minutes video footage. Anyway, the real reason for the murder as quoted by Bombay police was

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Sixteen-year-old Adnan Patrawala may have been alive if his kidnappers had not panicked after hearing of the story making headlines across news channels.

Adnan's parents share that view and even the police are now trying to identify who leaked the news to the media. "The police office should be investigated who leaked the news to the media,” says Adnan’s father Aslam Patrawala.

To ensure that similar situation doesn't arise again, the police have formed a new strategy to handle kidnappings.

The FIR will now be lodged much later than usual to maintain complete secrecy. Instead, a written complaint will be taken down with the family's consent.

Instead of informing the Control Room, the Crime branch, which investigates sensitive cases, will be called in immediately.

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Well, Mumbai police is taking proactive steps to counter these happenings but Media will not learn its lesson.

Public Lynching of a Thief - As I said, they were showing a 20 second video footage for more than 20 times showing the public bashing of a chain snatcher. No mention of the lady, whose life was endagered by this thief. There have countless cases where chain snatching can end into a life threatening act. You can just imageine a gold chain tied around your neck being pulled out by full force. So they kept saying that its a human right violation act. Agreed. But its a case of public fury and its the culture of a place. There has been a similar news on the same news channel's website about an Indian man whose one arm and one leg was chopped off because he stole a pizza.Go on, great Indian media, fight it.

Bring it to public that what is happening. But no, how can you? You are too busy to show human right violation. Its right that theythey have brought the issue to light but have also given it a communal angle. I don't know whether the public asked his name first and then started beating him but the journalist made it sure to enquire the name and established that he was a minority. Wow! and what happened next is that a crowd gathered and stoned a police stone because a minority boy was beaten up by the mob and police helped them. So soon everybody forgot the chain snatching act and communal tension is slowly building up in the town. Tomorrow some people will catch a hindu thief and lynch him to death and then something bad will happen.

Media is great and when it come to creating controversies, they are really wonderful. Perhaps the latest hit "Chak De India" has tried to capture the stupidity of media in true light.