Of late, the media has been subjected to some terrific bashing. We get regular emails from readers scorning coverage of "unimportant" and flippant topics.
Of late, the media has been subjected to some terrific bashing. We get regular emails from readers scorning coverage of "unimportant" and flippant topics. Often, there are taunts about why we devote entire pages to how actors get six pack abs and who attended whose party. Most times, this criticism is well deserved. We do deserve a punch in the solar plexus to take all the air out of us. Poof! We need some deflating, now and then.
Yet, recently the media (only doing its job) has blown the lid off a huge scam in cricket, with a British tabloid, News of the World, setting up a sting operation. It is established without doubt (no investigations needed) that what started in 2000 with Manoj Prabhakar speaking out against the match fixing scam, is not over yet.
Hysterical? Yes, sometimes. Sensational? Definitely. But the truth, nevertheless. The media has opened the cricket can once again and found that the worms had never gone away. Take a bow, News of the World.
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Then again, take the Tiger Woods scandal. Purists may claim that this is not journalism that journalists need to write about the game and not dig out scandals about affairs. Professionals do not buy that. Public figures pay a heavy price for all those millions, fame, endorsements - it comes with the territory. The Woods scoop was so complete, so well done, that the top golfer could deny none of it. From pictures to testimonies of the women, the newspapers had it all, a great story that readers could sink their teeth into. That was a scoop of a lifetime and any true blue journalist, doing their job, would certainly say hats off to the reporter who unearthed it, never mind all the righteous whining.
So, it is with the fixing scam. The journalist Aniruddha Bahal who first wrote about fixing in cricket, in a sense, changed the course of the game. From a journalistic point of view, it was a "scoop" or a newsbreak with the impact that most professionals would dream of having in their lifetime.
So, all criticism justified. We, the media, do jump the gun several times, we are Page 3 obsessed, Bollywood-centric, and, in general, cannot duck the brickbats hurled at us with so much relish. Yet, sometimes we are also spot (fixing) on. What say you, Tiger Woods?
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