AN Email I sent one of my professor... Just to elucidate the confusion and things running through my head.


Well, to begin with my complaining has gone done, now I am desperately trying to see some positive things even in the scary media madness around me.
For example today a young bright reported declared that she wants to do a story on the "misuse of RTI"... As officials have told her that too many people are sending in false lengthy enquiries and even officials are sending in RTIs to find out why they have been fired etc... But thank fully one of our bosses dissuaded her from doing it.
He said 'its information that one is asking for as granted by the act that cannot be misuse and any official saying it is being misused is only hoping and wishing to stop the use of this act, as all 'babus till now had to give no information and that was their power but now that they are accountable and can be pulled up for anything. It is good and one should not do a story in any negative light about this act".
I was very happy to hear that because this is the first time I have seen any of the bosses using their vetoing power in a good way, and taking into consideration the larger consequences of a story.
Unlike the time immediately after the Bombay blasts where for days we carried a series on the Jamia University strike. The series began with a list of anti social students who had been disqualified from taking admission cause they had either been part of a student body protest, or involved in some petty crime. Ofcourse we carried that on front page with each students mug shot, brief history and invariably they were all Muslims...
Though it was an important story I felt that the paper was very irresponsible in giving it such hype at a time like that... As the story reinforced the idea that all Muslims are militants violent and anti national and social....
MY RECENT MOST EXPLOIT: I was sent to Rajasthan, to cover ******* foundation... Was quite bemused by it... I typed you enough adjectives so will not elaborate this time... Points will be better-
1. Through out the journey and they stay there felt that I should move out of the big city to a smaller town, there was some strange sense of enchantment in the place. Small towns and villages seem so much more appealing than big urban cities.. Passing through large parts where there are no big mall, big adds, big media firms felt that we seem to be quite useless in what we are doing in the mainstream and city papers, English papers. There are so many people that are hardly taken into consideration etc.
2. Huge amounts of skepticism about the organization and its work.. ******* FOUNDATION, do rural research and organic farming... Funny because it seemed like all a performance and not real.
MUST tell you... The topic of my Investigative project was reseached into written about in the frontline by someone i know in Hyderabad.. Was very happy that it had been written but really sad cause i felt too much had been left out... couldn\'t decide it was badly written or badly edited.. BUt all in all it was just a tr4agedy made out of what A polavaram story should have been, maybe I am just being snobish.. but i just did not feel the urgency or the injustice coming through about the tribals in the story.