Monday, July 09, 2007

Castiest CBCNN

Ofcourse, the communists are the most castiest people around.

The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : To each, his own tinted glasses
“Girl sets herself afire after rape” said a report on a 12/14-year-old girl, belonging to the Scheduled Caste Bairawa community, who set herself on fire after she was raped by a Dalit youth. “Seven members of Dalit family found dead” narrated the tragedy of another family. “Dalit tortured, FIR against kin” was a report of an attack on a Dalit youth by some of his family for spurning a marriage proposal.

The readers raised these questions: unless the incident is related to the caste of the victim, what purpose does the mention of caste serve? If it is some other caste, is that mentioned? There is a tendency to magnify the crime by giving it a Dalit colour. Does this not perpetuate caste?

Is “dalit” germane to any of these stories? Remove the word, there is
no loss of news value. The addition can only be seen as an attempt to
add colour, to sensationalise.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

By cleverly and deliberately sneaking in the "dalit" word (even if it is irrelevant to the news on hand, as the write-up illustrates), Chindu plays up to the so-called progressive lobby and to get a good name and some cheap journalism awards, particularly those that are dished out by dubious videsi NGOs.