Gujarat : even BBC falls prey to pseudosecular campaign

Author: Rajesh Prabhu-Salgaonkar

A faction in Indian media, pseudo-secular pseudo-intellectual pseudo-journalism is trying to create hatred against Narendra Modi on all fronts. International media houses are falling prey to the sinister design.

Mumbai, May 3 : An Indian media faction – the pseudo-secularist one – is still finding it difficult to acknowledge the good work done by Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, his achievements & his administration. Where there is no doubt about the growth & development achieved by Narendra Modi’s Govt. in Gujarat, the faction of media, particularly the leftist & so called Secularist group, has started trying to create confusion in public mind by questioning every proven achievement of the Gujarat Govt under Modi. The section of media doesn’t highlight achievements of Gujarat even on science & technology front. Having failed to grill Modi on the issue of 2002 the post-Godhra situation in the state, the frustrated lot of pseudo-secular media persons in the country are clearly & visibly un-easy while dealing with Gujarat issues.

 

However the general public, empowered by the social media tools, is taking such types of pseudo-intellectual & ill-motivated journalism to task. In what can be termed as acute embarrassment to major media houses, a ‘Modification’ of articles that were published, based on GDP of Gujarat state was done hurriedly. Today Business Standard, one of India’s leading news-paper, carried an article by AK Bhattacharya, with a set of figures that depict growth in Gujarat, trying to drive home a point that ‘growth of Gujarat is a myth’. Soon, other media houses like Rediff, and surprisingly the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) joined the bandwagon. this resulted in print media splashing articles quoting the figures quoted by Business Standard. BBC even went to the extent of nailing Gujarat with a story titled “Is Gujarat’s Red Hot Economy a Myth?” But…

But soon followed the counter figures, with accurate proofs, that exposed the ‘MYTH’ of the very same media houses. The article published by Business Standard quotes the GDP of Gujarat as 6.3%, where as the actual figures stood at a towering 10.08%.

The credit of exposing the leading media houses and their credibility goes to one Vijay(@centerofright) who exposed the mammoth difference between the real figures and what was contorted and published. With the real facts presented before them, Business Standard was forced to edit their original article and issue a clarification that read thus: This column has been modified to incorporate corrected data. (Read the article here).

The step taken by Business Standard of publishing the original article without conforming to real data and their subsequent correction led to an outright flurry over Twitter, the micro-blogging site. There were rampant discussions that questioned the credibility of the concerned media houses and the news they present to the common man. Even the reliability and integrity of the reknown broadcasters like BBC stands questioned. An irritated BBC had to change the title of their article to ‘Gujarat IS a Red Hot Economy’.

“It is silly that reputed media houses made mistake in a topic like GDP of Gujarat when Growth of Gujarat is a heavily debated issue.” Many tweeple raised their concern.

The modified article of BBC can be read here: “Gujarat IS a red hot economy.”