Media can keep secrets ! Sadly only about themselves !!!

The Nira Radia tapes are probably the best kept secrets since the secrets of the Emergency. And the parallel is that on both occasions the reason for the secret was that the media did not cover the events. During the Emergency it was because of state censorship. This time around it was due to self censorship.

Nira Radia is and currently the past tense is probably more applicable, the head honcho of a Public Relations firm, one of the most successful ones in India. Her company represents several corporate including India’s largest, the Tatas and Reliance Industries, the Mukesh Group. Ms. Radia was being investigated and her phones were tapped for several months in 2008 and 2009.

Several tapes containing her conversations with various well know personalities, including Ratan Tata were leaked and it was picked up by a few non leading media houses. The mainstream media chose to ignore it. Unfortunately for them, the power of viral social marketing took over and the tapes reached a large section of connected India via popular sites like Facebook and Twitter.

We would like to believe that our media has finally matured and is exercising self restraint in order to promote the national good. Think again. The censorship has nothing to do with maturity. It’s got to do with self preservation. Two iconic personalities of the fourth estate, the highly visible Barkha Dutt and the suave Vir Sanghvi are 2 of the players who figure prominently in these tapes.

The first time these tapes surfaced was sometime in May 2010. And some attention was drawn only in early November when an Outlook article,  highlighted the event. And then the cover-up. Both the media personalities communicated through their immense reach their side of the story.

And they both managed to do what they do best. Tell a story, convincingly. Barkha Dutt, in her defense on an NDTV talked about how her integrity could be questioned, whilst failing to adequately address even 1 of the allegations satisfactorily. Vir Sanghvi through his website, http://www.virsanghvi.com gave an interesting defense.

I spoke with several people and what’s interesting is that not 1 had actually heard the tapes. And therein lies the cover-up. Not one of them had heard the actual tapes. Since I’m not a journalist, I shall not take the freedom that Barkha and Vir regularly do to indict and accuse people on the basis of allegations and rumors. I’ll leave it to you to hear the tapes and decide for yourself, whether the 2 are guilty or the poor martyred souls, they currently claim to be.

As of now, these recordings are available at:
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/some-telephone-conversations

Not sure how long they will be available. No matter what conclusions you reach, the one conclusion which seems to be rather obvious is that the media refuses to apply the high standards they’d like the politicians and the rest f us to follow, do not apply to them. In other words, Practice what the media preaches, Not what they practice.