Reporting from Dalal Street

7

Scene 1: The year was 2004...I was working for a Hindi news channel. The Sensex was hovering around the 4500 mark. Reporting on the markets was then a quite unexciting job. No bull run. .. No 500 point upward movement in one day .. No record landmarks... It was under such circumstances that one of my colleague wrote a market story with a outlook of Sensex crossing over 5500 in the next fortnight. I still remember the furore we created and asked him to scale down his exuberance. Scene 2: If this was not enough, a senior official from a govt department made a comment on the sidelines of a seminar in 2005 stating that the market would soon reach 18000 mark. All hell broke loose since the markets had not even tested the 8000 levels. The media highlighted the statement...And the poor official got a tight rap....

Demons Yet Again

10

So yet again, the electronic media is the insensitive, senseless devil who only understands the language of TRPs and hence chose to blow up the Mumbai molestation incident out of proportion. No, I am not saying this... It's the self appointed TV critics who think its fashionable to blame media for all the ills in the society. Dear Politicians, please be happy. You are not the only whipping boys for a frustrated society. The media will now give you company. The context Two couples out on New Year night get hounded by drunk hooligans whose hormone levels were on a high. They groped the women and pulled their clothes, pushed the men who were accompaning them and refused to let them go. Until two responsible photographers from a mainline newspaper arrive at the spot and click pictures while also alerting a nearby police van on....