The 24x7 channels have turned on the election tap in full force. But some of them take the cake. Star News had Deepak Chaurasia doing a live debate programme with politicians and an assembled audience somewhere in Uttar Pradesh with cameras mounted on cranes. The amazing audience was all male, as though women in UP do not vote! When asked a question by the anchor they would
shout, abuse,and almost descend to fisticuffs with those whose views differed. Reasoned debate, UP style.
Funny how the media becomes a champion of free speech when it wants to and wants to curtail free speech when it suits its ideology. While Times Now did extensive coverage on the unfair ban on Rushdie to visit JLF, on another programme the channel's editor, Arnab Goswami moderated a debate about the ABVP ban on Sanjay Kak's film on Kashmir being shown at a college in Pune. He asked another filmmaker if he had obtained a censor certificate before putting his film on the web. The filmmaker said a censor certificate was not needed to screen to private audiences or to stream live on video. Goswami quickly retracted::"We must remind ours .. more>>
