Shameless Bias of Media: Rahul’s Melodramatic & Scripted Speech vs Modi’s Visionary yet Grounded Call to Youth

To know the bias and the shallowness of the mainstream media, this is a good comparison.  Rahul Gandhi is a nincompoop with a silver spoon and his speech that day – where he brought up the “Power is Poison” statement – was scripted and made up.  It was easy to know.

On the other hand, Modi spoke from his own experience and work he has done.

Who is a leader and who is not is pretty obvious when you see their track record.

For these ivory tower journos – Sagarika’s tweet is pretty telling.  She thinks that there are bigger economic challenges for majority of Indians other than food, health and education!  Its obvious that she has no idea of the India out there which exists.

It is very interesting though that Modi was able to talk about these economic issues that people face and link them up with the economic success that Gujarat has become.  It obviously didn’t have the melodrama of Rahul Gandhi or perhaps the “real” economic paybacks that these journos may be getting from Congress!

Some journalists showed their personal political disdain even more clearly. (link)

There were some notable exceptions. The Hindu, for example, didn’t mention Modi on the front page. If you wondered why, as CNN-IBN editor did, this is what The Hindu’s editor Siddharth Vardarajan (@svaradarajan) said in response on twitter “We refuse to be part of the herd. Every story on our p1 was far more newsworthy than a speech by a CM to a Delhi college.”

Which were the front page stories that The Hindu felt were more important than Modi’s speech? The lead story was Chidambaram’s comment on the army and AFSPA, the second was a story on the Sebi-Sahara imbroglio and the third focused on the violence in a dalit hostel in Patna which was ignored by Patna University officials.

Mid-Day was another paper which ignored Modi. Not just on the front page, but completely. “Publishing a Narendra Modi news item – especially Wednesday’s speech in New Delhi – on Page 1 is based upon two assumptions: one, that Mr Modi will be the Prime Ministerial candidate for the NDA; and two, that he will indeed become PM after the next general election. Both are, well, assumptions,” Sachin Kalbag, editor, Mid-Day, said to Firstpost.

“We did not have Mr Modi on Page 1 because chief ministers make speeches all the time. It is part of their job. I don’t remember taking a Maharashtra CM’s speech ever on our Page 1, even though we are a city newspaper and our state CM’s speech may be considered far more relevant to our readers. For that matter, we rarely take a CM’s speech even on the inside pages. Our news approach to speeches is that unless there is a policy announcement in them that affects lakhs of our readers, or they represent landmark events, we don’t analyse them. This is true for the PM, the state CM, Mr Modi, or anybody else,” Kalbag added.

So Varadarajan might have carried it on the front page – if there were no more newsworthy stories. Kalbag would not have in any circumstances.

Amazing.  Here is a guy who not just talks about progress but shows the way on how to do it.  Here is a person who is focused on getting his constituency developed in whatever way he can.  Policies, administrative set up, Marketing, procedures reduction.. whatever is required… happens.  And India of today – mired in utter incompetence at the top, corruption to the level of plunder by the politicos and lawlessness to a point of anarchy – has NO TIME to listen to him??!!

There is something called ignorance and then there is masochism…. beyond that there is yet another phenomenon that we Indians have become competent at – Self Annihilation.  From treatment to Ramdev to Anna Hazare to Kejriwal to Kiran Bedi to Modi, we have shown we are masters of that art.