Monday, July 13, 2009

Differences between an essay and a news report - Ananth Krishnan case study

In an age when tweets, blogs and hollrrs have captured a significant space in providing news updates, there is still a significant importance of the regular news report across various dimensions.
Mr.Ananth Krishnan of Chindu has been the latest to jump on the China bandwagon after the departure of Pallavi Aiyer(got the name right finally!). Reading his news reports have been a treat for bloggers of this blog as it shows one how a blind supporter of a particular ideology writes reports. In many ways it reminded me of my old history class when we wrote essays on some arcane topics like "Industrial revolution and its impacts on Indian dairy farmers". In his analysis of the violence in Xinjiang,
Ananth in his eagerness to paint the Chinese Government as being misunderstood heroes and the Uighurs as the villian shoots himself in the foot several times.
For example he makes some statistical statements like these,
the region was almost entirely inhabited by native Uighurs. Hans made up only 6 per cent of the population then. The Chinese government launched a “Go West” drive to modernise the backward region, and the arrival of big industry to tap Xinjiang’s vast resources has seen a considerable change in the region’s demographics. According to the 2004 census, Hans made up 40 per cent of Xinjiang’s 20 million population. In this time, the Uighur contribution to the population fell from close to 80 per cent in 1949 to 45 per cent in the last census.

Then it is followed by a volte face analysis where the thought is that the Hans have less to gain than the Uighurs. All the while his facts don't support the analysis and in the best case give lukewarm support.
All this leads to a verbal lynching of Rebiya Kadeer, the leader of the WUC in a partisan way only a government propaganda machine is capable of.
In contrast, many Uighurs have not even heard of Ms Kadeer. A businesswoman with ties to the Chinese government, Ms Kadeer made millions off the government’s industrialisation of Xinjiang. She was later convicted of economic fraud, and as an after-thought, decided the government’s policies “were not in the interest of Uighurs.” Her campaign has sought to make political gains out of an ethnic conflict that has set back both groups, and risks further fanning the flames of discord.

In many scenarios this parallels the situation in J&K and Chindu's complaints about India's handling of the issue as opposed to China's handling of Urumqi situation which is being praised raises a lot of questions about the partiality towards reporting the facts.
Mr. Ananth is probably better served taking some journalism courses rather than coming up with half baked pieces like this one.

2 comments:

Insider said...

Well.. There is also the possibility that he was trying to write a balanced report and not go all the way to the other side as the line of thinking of this blog would want him to.

Dirt Digger said...

Insider,
Thanks for your comments. I agree, that was my original line of thinking. But reading it again, (the sacrifices one makes) I would stick to my line of thinking.