Sunday, January 24, 2010

I don't read the newspaper, because they all have ugly prints

I used to read newspapers earlier but now a days the only thing close to a newspaper I read is Mumbai Mirror. There are two reasons for that, one, it's magazine sized and easy to hold when you are doing something that doesn't require eyes and hands. Other is that they claim to be a masala paper and they print what they claim.

As a kid my parents and school teachers used to tell me to read newspapers to be aware of the goings on around us. Since I always liked to read I used to read the newspaper and it was my only way to be aware of the recent events. Today there are so many modes available for the same and my favourite is internet, because of very obvious reasons.

Besides availability of other mediums these newspapers have lost what they used to stand for. What would you say when Tiger Woods' sex stories are covered in sports pages along with what Eva Langoria bought on her b'day and what is Victoria Beckham's shopping schedule and what is Cheryl Cole's holiday plan. When all you can get on the cover page is IPL auctions, film awards and celebrity b'day parties.

I think the reason for calling these so called news stories page 3 news was to restrict all these stories in one single page and that is the 3rd page and not front page. Unfortunately there are so many page 3 these days. These days journalism is not based on stories rather it's based on persons. Like sports news is not sports news, it's sport person's news. Water quality is Hritik Roshan's bathroom happens to be a bigger news than many thirsty Mumbaikars.

By the way, I would rather read Filmfare, if I had to read about celebrities. At least they use better pages and print.

How obviously fake can it get?

It's funny when Shiv Sena talks about not letting Australian cricketers play in Mumbai, because of the attacks on Indians in Australia. If anything Shiv Sena should be supporting Australians in their attacks. If we go by the ideology of the party that brought this very particular party into political map, people from other parts of country should not be allowed to come into Mumbai for job opportunities and if anyone does so they should be thrown out by force.

Not sure about the realities in Australia but even if we go by whatever is being claimed in media, they are not doing anything different from what Shiv Sena and MNS did and are yet doing to non-Marathi residents of Mumbai.

In a classic case of opportunism I heard the party leader saying, "agar IPL walon me thoda bhi desh prem hai to wo Australians to IPL me khelne nahi denge." I just want to ask one question, "where is this desh prem when your party workers beat up the citizens of the same country?"