Recently a blogger, Chyetanya Kunte posted this retraction on his blog, an apology for an earlier post where he totally trashed NDTV and Barkha Dutt in particular for their coverage of the Mumbai blasts. NDTV obviously threatened to sue the poor bastard which shows the new depths this once venerable network has sunk to.

My own thoughts about the massacre in Mumbai and Ms. Dutt’s coverage can be seen here and here. Basically, a very large part of the infuriating, stomach-turning experience of watching the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last year was the ‘journalist’ seen here with some BS award.

To put it very mildly Ms. Dutt and NDTV, sucked! Big-time. But then, the channel that I once had a lot of respect for has made it’s full-time job sucking for the past few years. But this is a new low.

Is NDTV so thick that it tries to sue a blogger? Do these stupid twats understand anything about freedom of speech? Personal opinion? How the internet works? Honestly. You can never, ever make someone take down a posting on the internet because once it is online it is in the wild, it will be around forever, even if the original poster takes it down.

As for the apology from Mr. Kunte let me just say this to the folks at NDTV. Your channel and news coverage sucked. Barkha Dutt sucked even harder. You idiots want to sue everyone who thinks so? There are thousands of people on Facebook in a group called ‘Make Barkha Shut the Fuck Up!” (Or some such shit to that effect) One of the more popular search terms people use to find this blog is (and I kid you not) ‘BARKHA DUTT BITCH’.

Get your head out of your asses NDTV. If it looks like shit, smells like shit and tastes like shit it probably is shit. You guys had a respectable channel. But somewhere along the way egos, ratings, political agendas and advertising money made you join in the race with every other news channel in a downward spiral into the lowest common denominator sort of news and guess what? You’ve won the race. There is no respect for you within the industry. Even normal household viewers who are essentially opinion-less sheep that you have dumbed down with Bullshit news about kids stuck in gutters and the US election now realise that the ‘news’ you air is essentially content-free filler between the ad breaks.

Read the full story for Mr. Kunte’s apology and the original post he wrote after the mumbai massacre.

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Rants barkha dutt, douchebag, mumbai, mumbai blasts, mumbai terror attacks, NDTV, NDTV vs Blogger

On the front page of ‘The Times Of India’ today were many articles about India’s ongoing war of words with Pakistan about the terror attacks in Mumbai but one little sub-article made me laugh until coffee came outta my nose. 

Here’s the text:

Indian dossier credible: Mulford

    A day after authorities in Pakistan rubbished India’s dossier linking Pakistani nationals with the Mumbai attacks, US ambassador to India David C Mulford said the evidence provided to Islamabad by New Delhi was ‘‘credible’’. Mulford told TOI on Wednesday that the dossier had been prepared with help from the FBI. “The US is not in the business of compiling evidence that is not credible,” he said when asked about Pakistan dismissing it.

The US isn’t in the business of compiling evidence that is not credible? Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone remember the ongoing War in Iraq? Does anyone remember that they never found any WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction,nukes) in the country? None. Not a single one. Zilch. Zip. Nada. (Proof of nukes was the US’s reason for invading Iraq.)  

And the US now admits it fucked up. I still remember watching the press conference a few years back where then CIA chief George Tenet said that the US had ‘SLAM DUNK EVIDENCE’ that Iraq had WMDs.

SLAM. DUNK. EVIDENCE. Repeat those three words aloud to yourself. This is the Chief of the most important, most powerful intelligence agency of the most powerful country in the world. An agency that has shaped world events either openly or behind the scenes like no other. Read more…

Books, Rants At the Center of the Storm, Bombay, bombay blasts, David Mulford, Dick Cheney, douchebag, George Tenet, i love america, i love you america, iraq nukes, Iraq War, Legacy of Ashes, mumbai, mumbai terror attacks, Nukes, SLAM DUNK EVIDENCE, The History of the CIA, The Times Of India, Tim Weiner, US ambassador to India, WMDs

A couple of weeks have gone by since the terror attacks in Mumbai and I thought I’d just write about the reactions of various groups of people to what happened.

This is a follow-up to my previous post. Bombay. How I loved you.

Lets start with the ‘media industry’. A lot of people raised a huge stink about Barkha Dutt’s grating coverage of the events and the huge cock-up about whether the hostage situation at Nariman House was over or not. There is even a group on Facebook called ‘Get Barkha off air’ or some such crap.

Please. Get Barkha off air? She may look like a dog, sound like nails on a chalkboard and ask the most inane questions but people who say that she used to be great but has sold out, ought to get a clue. Also, part of essential reading for all students of journalism and mass communication, especially all the wannabe Barkha Dutts doing piece-to-cameras for news channels ought to be this book.

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media – Noam Chomsky

Books, Rants barkha dutt, bombay blasts, douchebag, facebook, gandhi, India, indian press, indira gandhi, manmohan singh, mumbai, mumbai terror attacks, namrata siviya, narendra modi, NDTV, priyanka gandhi

As a child growing up in the city and as an adult working there, Bombay has always been a place that gives me a very real, physical, buzz. There is a magical energy about the city that gets under my skin. Yes. it also smells stinks of shit and fish and the economic disparities are so in your face that its like a swift, unexpected nut-kick sometimes. But you have to love the city.

Not anymore. Not for me.

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Rants Bal Thackeray, Delhi, douchebag, marathi manoos, mumbai, mumbai terror attacks, twitter