How can you comment, argue, or take extreme positions based on heresy? Well, this is something we seem to have made a habit of these days. Yesterday, there was a news about 2 Indian soldiers being brutally killed by Pakistani regulars. No body knows where this news come from. No one knows if this is indeed really true. All we know is that we have 2 dead soldiers with mutilated bodies and the press is having a gala time spitting fire and venom against Pakistan. Messers, Rajdeep and Arnab are front loading hate in their questions and asking hapless Pakistani journalist to respond. Check out this article here from Hindu. The article clearly shows some leads that might point to the contrary direction. You don't necessarily have to buy this opinion, but you need to give it the benefit of doubt.
I think news from prime time channels should be followed with a healthy dose of doubt and pessimism and the only way you can vouch for its validity is when you check multiple sources. The ugly truth is that there is no one paper/channel that will report 100% truth. Some have commercial concerns, some political and some others, the plain old compulsions to attract viewership. Funnily, all their interests don't converge. So we as readers need to be intelligent enough and know how to cherry pick our news sources for different subjects. For example, Hindu is a great economic critic of the Government. Where as ET is always going with the wind. Politically Hindu is left leaning while IE is extreme right. TOI by the way has no opinion. I think editorials by Chetan Bhagat is stretching it a bit. Still I like the glossy photos and the how-to-cheat-your-wife advisories.
I think this includes a dose of author bias. So tomorrow, I will try and think of some generic pointers that ight help us trace the truthfulness of an article. But for today, I will give Pakistan the benefit of doubt.
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