Cheap Publicity? Sure, why not!!

In the name of FREEDOM OF PRESS & SPEECH, we puncture your public image

License to Kill(public image)

Sounds familiar? Yeah, these should apply to the Indian Media & Press which will do anything, try the dirtiest of tricks which are not even in the books, all just to sell their crap. 🙄 Its all about the $$$$$ baby!! 😯

The Indian media is a joke, it has fallen down to the lowest levels which you won’t even find in the western countries. In the name of freedom of press and freedom of speech, they publish/broadcast anything they want, benefiting fully from the big holes in the law and lack of any regulation on what they publish/broadcast. India is called world’s largest democracy, but in a democracy too there should be some control over freedom, otherwise the laws are rendered useless, and they remain there to be mocked upon.

Why? They broadcast/publish the locations of military installations & actions they are going to take(not which they have taken but what they will take) at the time of war(the last being the Kargil War)? Is the common man interested in reading where the guns and tanks of the Indian Army positioned? I don’t think so. Its none of their business, but then, who cares? As long as it sells, its worth broadcasting/publishing. If thats not enough, the media has started a new tactic, broadcasting/publishing news stories rolled in lots of spice, accusing one or other public figures without any solid evidence against them. And if some of it does comes out as truth, they they celebrate as if they’ve won the masses over!!

So, what’s new? I’m ofcourse talking about the Salman Khan issue tossed around by Hindustan Times. If you notice, the title of the page(in the browser’s titlebar) says “PIL filed in SC on spending in Bofors probe : HindustanTimes.com” but the contents on the inside were hot enough to start the fireworks as you can see by clicking the thumbnail below!! 🙄

Now, that’s quite amateurish, you claim to be one of the top dailies and yet show such amateurism by displaying some other headline in the browser’s titlebar which usually goes un-noticed, but not in search engines as this will be the headline displayed in almost all search engines, who take the content of the <title> tag of the page to label it in the search listings.

Coming back to the issue, why this news story is timed with the Mumbai release of Hindustan Times? Something no one is wondering, obviously because of the chaos this issue has caused!! Cheap publicity is what I call this!! Why wasn’t this made public back in 2001 when the phones of Salman Khan & Aishwarya Rai were tapped?? Why make this thing public now, 4 years later? What’s the purpose? To do justice upon Salman Khan? That’s simply ridiculous!! And what is the proof? I don’t think that these tapes would be considered as solid evidence against Salman Khan and his alleged relations with the Mumbai Underworld. He was talking to Aishwarya Rai, his then girlfriend, & was threatening her. So?

Did Aishwarya Rai filed a complaint with the Police? No, she didn’t.
Did Aishwarya Rai or any of her family were harmed? No, not a scratch.
Does the Hindustan Times or the police have Salman Khan and any of the gangsters, with whom he’s been linked, on a tape? No, ofcourse not.

So how do the tapes prove that Salman Khan is involved with the gangsters? In the local streets of Mumbai, New Delhi etc., people often threaten, the ones with whom they have severe enemity or a fight, with the big names of thugs & gangsters who’ll beat the living daylights out of the other if they ask them to. So? Are they all involved with the mafia & underworld, the gangsters? That would be the joke of the century!!! 🙄

If someone remembers(which I don’t doubt), 2-3 years back, Vivek Oberoi made a public hue & cry that Salman Khan has threatened to kill him on phone, the issue was Aishwarya Rai, no suprises. And he didn’t miss an opportunity to repeat this in the media again & again. Why? Cheap publicity!! Whether Salman threatened him or not, there was no evidence except Vivek’s word for it. He went as far as to call press conferences at his home to tell this to the reporters, and went on to say that “he would not give in”, sounded like President George Bush was addressing the people of US after 9/11. 🙄 And the result? Even those who didn’t know Vivek Oberoi(there were quite few who knew him, he was nobody then) came to know about him. What else did Vivek want, that’s what he had done this all for, cheap publicity!! He has a third rate personality of that of a street punk, his movies weren’t doing good and he had no big offers in his pocket. But after this controversy, he suddenly had his pockets full of ad & movie offers and his bank accounts surely brimming with $$$$$. :curse: From nobody to somebody at the price of someone else. If it had been US or UK, Salman Khan would surely have sued Vivek over such public defamation of his image!! I don’t wonder why he didn’t, the police hate him and no doubt the magistrates hate him as well, so he might’ve gotten in more trouble if he’d sued Vivek.

I never liked any of Vivek Oberoi’s movies, that saying after I’d watched just 2 of his movies till date and that too not fully. The guy has no acting sense, no personality, nothing, and was just riding the wave of cheap publicity that he got for himself!! I dunno how he thought that he can become successful like this, these third rate cheap tactics don’t work forever & their life is very short. His father Suresh Oberoi on the other hand, was a good actor, fitting completely in any role he played. But having a successful father is not a guarantee of successful sons or daughters, there are just too many examples to prove it.

Meanwhile, Aishwarya Rai, the green eyed ex-Miss World, has surprisingly remained silent in these issues, even though she’s been at the center stage in both of them. Why? She is a smart woman, doesn’t want to implicate herself by saying anything foul against Salman and by keeping her silence, she also gives a kind of quiet approval against Salman. So she said everything by saying nothing!!! 🙄 And along with Vivek, the issues have proved to be quite beneficial to her as well. 🙄

The people?? Its very easy to fool the masses, they are idiots, and no wonder they proved their mental retardation by burning down the posters of Salman Khan openly on the roads of Mumbai.

And the crop of $$$$$ doesn’t just finish here. Its been raining $$$$$ for the news channels who have nothing but this story to broadcast all day long, repeating same thing over & over again, minute by minute & ironically labelling it as “Breaking News”. 🙄 Sure, why not? The blasts in London which was a “Breaking News”, made it only for a few minutes on these news channels, but the alleged relations of Salman Khan with the underworld are worth the screen for 24 hours in a day.

If you have a sensational news story in hand, then that doesn’t mean that you can publish it without any facts or evidence!! If you have the power, then that doesn’t give you the right to use it against anyone for anything, be it justified or not!! I still remember what Peter Parker’s uncle told him in Sam Raimi’s Spiderman,

with great power comes great responsibility

Its one of the best advices that I’ve ever heard and if people follow it, the world would be a much much better place to live in.

I’m not a fan of Salman Khan, nor am I his advocate nor am I being paid to write this, but I’m sad to see the condition of press & police. Sure, if there’s any solid evidence against Salman Khan, then he should be prosecuted, but till now, no solid evidence has come in light which makes me wonder that is this another cheap tactic by the press to bake their breads? Its sad to see the way freedom & the law is being raped in India by the press. If this continues the way its going, then in a few years, the people won’t be able to live here with peace!! 🙁