Did Al Jazeera tweak the whole narrative of Arab World Protests?

Despite the network’s spectacular converge of the Egyptian protests, one can’t help but suspect its impartiality given that it is owned by a 185-year-old royal family that has friends and enemies all over the Arab World. Of the two major protests going on the Middle East, why is Al Jazeera (and the world) covering one more than the other.

Al Jazeera has come a long way from the time when it was just known for showing Osama Bin Laden tapes. During the Egyptian crisis the entire international media, including BBC World and Reuters, were at least a step behind the Arab news network. At one point, I think, even Twitter was panting with all the running it had to do to keep with Al Jazeera. Indisputably the historic success at Tahrir Square does have a vital contribution from the live 24/7 coverage by the channel.

Dyslexic Media: All this huff and puff over Hu?

American Media arranges a political hit job on Chinese President, Hu Jintao prior to his arrival to Washington. 

Mr. President, this is what they are ready to offer for Arizona.

Today, The New York Times and Washington Post ran stories about how Hu Jintao is politically weak and is hardly able to control his own government. A scary thought. Only, it reeks too much of a conspiracy theory coming out of a country that was just shown king-sized finger by Hu Jintao’s regime...

Dyslexic Media: My rebuttal to The Economist rebuttal

Last night I wrote post about New Delhi lacking a China Policy and an appeal to get one. As it turns out, (pointed out by Achal K) The Economist had anticipated my post and published a rebuttal to my argument almost a month ago. I tell you, these Economist reporters have nothing better to do than to keep guessing what bloggers would write in the future and trying to bring them down.

Anyways, their article about “how Indian attitude towards its bigger neighbor is hardening” was a usual cut-and-paste job. Five examples of Indian assertiveness against China in 2010 had been shabbily slapped together to prove the case. After reading the article, only two questions came to my mind: What are they smoking down at The Economist office and can I get some of that? (I know I used that joke once already this month.) The examples put together paint picture of India as a sheep not a tiger. As always, the magazine was terribly wrong about India. You may not believe me, but they do this all the time.

#10 Time names Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year, forgets about Julian Assange

When Time announced the Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg “Person of the Year 2010” it drew a lot of flak from every direction. (A tweet went out immediately, declaring “Time just announced person of the year 2007”). In its liberal tradition Time had asked us all to vote for choosing person of the year. Then in its elitist tradition, it ignored the votes and chose the guy they were going with anyways, despite the fact that the Wikileaks, founder Julian Assange had received 20 times more votes than Zuckerberg . 

In their defense, Assagne was only responsible for the largest revelation of confidential documents in the history that shook governments and dominated front page of newspapers for months. Zuckerberg, on the other hand, got his own movie, one that makes every software engineer on the planet salivate. Anyone can see that giving teenagers the ability to poke each other without the danger of pregnancy is far more significant than to leak so many secrets that at the current rate it would take more than seven years to publish them in their entirety. 

But this attempt at reinterpreting global events of the year was nothing compared to what China tried…

(Click here for the complete list)

Dyslexic Media: What does Praful Patel want?

I have, like many others, a serious love-hate relationship with the Indian media. As a former journalist I feel their pain, but sometimes you just can't take the idiocy that is produced out of the 24-hour news cycle. Therefore, Dreams of a Typewriter (DoT) is introducing a new feature called Dyslexic Media that will point out some of the stupidest stunts that media pulls on a regular basis.

This is a minor issue, but I want to point it out just to show how much media is capable of hyping most innocent events. The Asian Age carried a report today, Aviation Minister wants to shift ministry? Now, always be on guard when the headline has a "?" at its end. It means that the journalist is just covering his ass from the random guess that he is going to make in the story. The report continued:  

'... [the] civil aviation minister Praful Patel on Wednesday said that “maybe”, it was time for him to “move on” from the civil aviation ministry. Soon after, however, the minister told this newspaper he had made the comment “in jest”.'

The report goes on to tell you Patel's career and speculates on why he might be unhappy with his job.

 

This is what really went on. I was in the damn conference where Patel was giving the speech and this is what he said, "I have come to this annual conference for the past four years. That tells you I have been here way too long... May be it is time to move on." It was a joke! It was a joke about how he has been attending the same conference about Air Traffic Controllers for the last four years. How can somebody produce a three-hundred word story from this not-even-funny small joke is beyond me.

 

Ironic part about the whole affair is that Patel's speech was about irresponsible media making too much of a fuss about tiny  issues and sometimes outrightly lying. How did the reporter miss that part?

 

Image: Indian Praful Patel