The Hindu was the first newspaper/magazine that i had the habit of flipping through on a regular basis. It had started off when i was in the 7th grade (+/- a couple of years - the brain cells seem to be committing mass suicide these days). Anyways it was the Young World that first got to me. I used to pick it up for the cartoon strips that they had and the odd quiz here and there. Then there were the supplements like Thursday's Sci & Tech , the Friday review and the excellent Magazine which came out on Sundays. Later on there was the India Today to which I would resort to in case i needed a source of entertainment in anything i read. It was a weekly that was desperately trying to be many things at once and succeeding at none. It was like it was the love-child of the TIME and the Cosmo.
Only when I was in high school did i discover the Hindu for what it truly was, an excellent source of unadulterated news. True , some of the events that reflected poorly on the Communists would suffer a disappearing act, but whatever was presented was not tinted with the editor's take on the matter nor was there any "angle" to the story. For that you had a completely separate Editorial section which one could choose to ignore. Once the news was consumed, the process of interpreting it was left to me as a reader and that was the most interesting part of the experience. Looking back, it was in this way that i discovered many of the things i truly believe in today. My world views were shaped by my experiences and not by some bloke sitting at the copy table with an agenda on his mind. It would have been easier the latter way but then one might as well give up thinking, for an individual has to be partly defined by his belief systems and opinions.
I have come to realize all this only in the last few years or so after being exposed to the partisan nature of reporting on many of the media outlets. The two worst offenders in this sense are FOX News and MSNBC. Now there are people who would vouch for either network and stoutly defend their camp, but so would I if i had been force fed either view points in all my formative years. These two have moved from the business of reporting facts to the business of delivering opinion. No offence but who do they think they are, priests.?!! I always used to dismiss these things as not yet being a part of the mainstream thought. Imagine my shock today when i came across this piece of news.
But should I have been surprised? In my own experience, I have managed to influence an argument or impose an opinion on a soul who knows little about the topic under debate. There are people I have interacted with those who have too little or no information to counter my opinion on many issues. Then there are also some who have pre-conceived notions that they would not admit to the rigor of an investigation. It may be convenient to slot them as being opinionated or bigoted, but these are still in their small numbers and this perception is also being shaped through your own interests in the issue. What i am scared about is the earlier case because I believe that they form a large section of the population. A section who go with the flow, who would listen to a strong voice , not necessarily the voice of reason and who would happily let others do the thinking for them unless told so explicitly. The voices speaking to them would have been loud, in the process rendering the listener mute. I just wish there were more like the Hindu out there today.
-shri
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