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Why does Shinde need to crush Social Media?

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After threatening to “crush” the electronic media, home minister Sushilkumar Shinde did a U-turn, claiming he was referring to the social media and not journalism. Let us assume this is what Shinde has told to social media, but how will he crush them? It’s his party which always gets crushed here. He is messing with the social media; he is doing another blunder. In his clarification he said, he was referring to social media and the violence incited against students from the northeast in Hyderabad and Karnataka. He said his comments were not about journalism, but he had stoked a controversy by frightening to “crush” the electronic media, alleging a section of it was unnecessarily provoking the Congress by indulging in “false propaganda” against it. There are several channels which are loyal to Congress and some are loyal to BJP, even AAP also ruled headlines and remained in news for long time.

Blaming media is fine but crushing them is a somewhat weird comment by Shinde, which he cannot do. He always remains in controversy due to his unwanted statements. Now social media is questioning him, how is he going to crush social media, if he meant that? Commit blunder and claim it as being misquoted by media the next day is now fashion by politicians. Congress should crush it’s own ego and learn to accept freedom of speech.
Shinde, who is a Lok Sabha MP from Solapur, alleged that since the last four months, a section of the electronic media was “manipulating” news about him and his party. The video footage of his remarks along with his clarification was aired by news channels. The home minister also left no one guessing when he said that he had got inputs from intelligence agencies about a section of the media. Shinde’s remarks came against the backdrop of a series of opinion polls in the national and regional media which predicted a poor showing for the Congress in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls while forecasting a big win for BJP under Narendra Modi.

If the message is bad, attacking the messenger policy is a futile action. It is amazing to know, how power corrupts the vulnerable. They forget that they live in a democracy. There is no difference between him, Lalu and Mulayam. When it suites them they will crush media. They will not award public ads to certain newspapers. This is another form of emergency. However, arrogant Congress should be taught a lesson for disgracing the 4th pillar of democracy. Congress if voted next time will behave like a dictator.

Meanwhile, surveys conducted by corporate media always have BJP as most preferable winner and Congress as the next. People of India have grown wiser. Opinion polls are proving to be false because Congress in 2004 and 2009 won the majority of seats but opinion polls had shown BJP as the favourite party. Congress will come again in LS election in 2014. Opinion polls have never come in true numbers. These opinion polls always project BJP as the winner. People should question the motive of these polls because opinion polls motivate people’s mind.

In 2004, initial pre poll surveys were predicting NDA to bag anywhere between 320-340 seats and this number got scaled down step by step as one approached closer to elections after a reality check by the Poll(fraud)sters, who were forced to swallow all their initial euphoria and finally by the time of exit polls, the lowest tally was predicted by the NDTV by Prannoy Roy which gave the NDA 235-250 seats. However, what the NDA finally got in those elections was just 182 seats. The story repeated in 2009 as well where the poll(fraud)sters once again were predicting a close race between the UPA and NDA.

In the present survey, a total of 14,142 people responded across 543 constituencies. That is an average of 26 people per constituency. There are no further details on gender, urban/rural, low/middle/high income, age and other parameters these 26 people belong to. Is this a good enough sample to predict the number of seats each party would win? Recently, all the polls predicted 6 to 8 seats for AAP in Delhi and gave 40 to 50 seats to BJP. People should stop believing the polls.

The surveys can predict certain trend if done by independent agencies. Some channels have a slant towards BJP. So, the survey is very much on predictable lines and even the so called experts sitting in the studios were mostly BJP supporters. So, it lacks credibility. The sample size of 14 thousand for an electorate as diverse as ours is not correct to say the least. We are seeing plenty of it in every TV channel today. We need regulation of broadcast media. Otherwise, this country will be in shambles. Anyways, people have become much smarter than the media and social network plays very vital role on controlling this mainstream media’s non-senses. Politicians should always refrain from commenting on irrelevant issues and attack on media.

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Vaidehi Taman
Vaidehi Tamanhttps://authorvaidehi.com
Vaidehi Taman an Accredited Journalist from Maharashtra is bestowed with three Honourary Doctorate in Journalism. Vaidehi has been an active journalist for the past 21 years, and is also the founding editor of an English daily tabloid – Afternoon Voice, a Marathi web portal – Mumbai Manoos, and The Democracy digital video news portal is her brain child. Vaidehi has three books in her name, "Sikhism vs Sickism", "Life Beyond Complications" and "Vedanti". She is an EC Council Certified Ethical Hacker, OSCP offensive securities, Certified Security Analyst and Licensed Penetration Tester that caters to her freelance jobs.
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