Tuesday, September 08, 2009

YSR saga and its coverage

What are your thoughts on the whole YSR saga and its coverage on Chindu?
Sorry for the lazy post here, but I had been on a break and will continue posting soon.

3 comments:

Xinhua Ram said...

I haven't followed this issue too closely nor do I have access to Indian TV but looks like the rest of the Indian media had no hesitation in making a Lincoln or FDR out of YSR. Chindu seems to have done well, relatively or otherwise. My opinion, from limited data, anyway.

Sudhir said...

Xinhua, you are wrong. They are not making him Lincoln or FDR, they are making him Saint YSR. Infact some overzealous leaders are also asking for Bharat Ratna for YSR. So very soon, maybe we will see Bharat Ratna Saint YSR!

In all this hulla gulla, Chindu has actually been a little balanced in its coverage about YSR's achievements. Even the local pages did not go gung-ho about how great he is, and blah blah. But, what made interesting/amusing reading was the experience of two Chindu's journalists who walked all the way upto the hill where the accident occured. Interesting because they mentioned the hurdles all journalists faced while reaching that place, and amusing because the whole piece was badly edited. Atleast I didn't know when the articles started and when it ended! I am not able to find the link now, but will send it once I find it.

On a side note, when I first read the question on the blog, I also realised that Chindu in general had very few editorials on YSR over the past 5 years. I think they had 2 when he won twice, and once when YSR had a direct war with the local media.

In contrast, especially as time passed, the eulogizing of YSR crossed all acceptable limits in the local media. It is being projected as if he took AP from nothing to where it is now. It is totally unfair that Naidu who has been equally instrumental in ushering in a new era is plainly sidelined.

On a personal note, I disagreed with YSR on many many issues, but was saddened by his death because

a. there was a particular kick in watching YSR and Naidu battle it out almost every day. It was like a Jeffrey Archer novel ;-).

b. Like it or not, he did some good things that directly made the poor feel good. Though I think this was mostly because of good rains and therefore we had good revenue.

And the nauseating build up to making his son the CM is plain disgusting. As on sunday, I wrote this: http://serious--fun.blogspot.com/2009/09/so-many-points-so-little-time-aug30.html

I am sure I will have much more to write this sunday :D.

- Sudhir

Hindu Fundamentalist said...

apologies for the long absence. the unplanned outage is due to modem failure. the free replacement modem is taking 10 days.
havent followed much of the ysr coverage on chindu, but i expect it to be sombre affair. i thought, p.sainath's article on ysr was fairly balanced.