What’s OpIndia.com? Apparently nobody since Hindustan Times completely banned the Kapil Sibal “land deal” story which has propelled the remarkable website on to the national consciousness.
Who is Smriti Irani? Again nobody since Hindustan Times, leave aside the investigative story, didn’t even consider the presser of India’s Human Resource Development minister worthy of coverage. Every other story, from a Karnataka chicken to dime-a-dozen weather reports, mocked at its readers in complete disdain today.
Indian Express, typically, covered the story inside its covers but with a completely outrageous slant. It manipulated the story not as an alleged “land scam” but as Sibal allegedly siding with a “money launderer.” You see, scams—that too made-up– exist only for a particular political party in a particularly hostile mainstream daily. (Mischievous that the newspaper is, it covered its tracks with the mention of “land” in its online story).
These are the newspapers who are awarded and feted on fake “Panama Papers”—a CIA operation which is distributed to select media outlets around the world who then acquire a halo, claiming to have worked themselves to ground in heroically unearthing this massive scam. I mean how fake could you really get!!!
These newspapers run “investigative report series” on environmental hazards in Goa; every sneeze of a Dalit; every sweat of a Muslim, every strand of hair on a Dravidian mirror but try making them cover a scam concerning Congress or Left! It’s sunk on a sea floor without much ado. There are relaxed norms for columnists–such as Sibal, Yechury or Chidambaram–who are above reproach or probing questions. (And by the way why Surjit S. Bhalla has stopped appearing in Indian Express since becoming a member of Modi’s Economic Advisory Council? Any idea, sirji).
But could heat on them would lessen any degree only because the English mainstream media plays the cover-up game? Unlikely. Such are the avenues and platforms—social media and TV channels—available to readers that truth is out despite wool being pulled over their eyes by presstitutes.
And it is these rogues who beat their breasts on the “freedom of press” having done their best to slaughter the cause of independent media. All its “star” go into a slumber when their masters are grilled by unassailable facts. The more they stretch to cover, the more torn undies get in the process.
