Shame on the Media!

A Rs 6000 Crore project which could generate over 100,000 direct employment opportunities and 400,000 indirect ones. The nation's 4th largest IT/ITES firm, a $ 4 Billion company. Ordinarily, one would expect the inauguration of the former and the announcement that the latter is being allotted land to set up operations to have made the headlines and to have been carried in the TV news. Right? Correct?

WRONG!

Apparently, the media in Kerala has decided that such mere tid-bits of news do not deserve to be reported. Of course not, especially not when there are earth-shaking items such as the cow elephant which fell into a well, or the latest casualty list from the ongoing slaughter on our ever so wide National Highways or some juicy lil' scandal or the other. News of events which could have a significant bearing on the economic future of the State, of each one of us does not deserve more than passing mention on the news or a couple of columns in some inside page right next to the Obituaries!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the media of Kerala made a total no-show out of the launch of Technocity. Except for the notable exception of The Hindu, Business Line and ET , no other newspaper carried any significant report of the inauguration of Kerala's largest IT infrastructure project. One needn't compare this to the "Live" broadcast of the foundation stone laying of a bus terminal in another city a couple of days later to realize that there are some very vested interests at work here.

Not that the media brigade was not present at the inauguration function. Yours truely was there, and could not fail to notice the proliferation of cameras - TV and still - and the ubiquitous OB vans. Yet, mysteriously, all that footage and all those snaps seems to have vanished!

A lot of us have felt the same thing, that the media which cries itself hoarse about the "lack of development" in Kerala has shot itself in the its....ahem....family jewels by choosing to ignore this bit of real development news. TDF has registered its protest strongly by sending an open letter of protest to all the concerned media houses. Request all of you to join this chorus of protest, to tell the powers-that-be who imagine they can control our perception of reality by screening out inconvenient truths and feeding us the hype that the desire to perpetrate. Together, let's tell them......