Monday, January 4, 2010

India's "insecure" minorities - It does not stop at 49.5 percent

  • tags: no_tag

    • Images - from bottom to top:
      (a) Haj Pilgrims at Mumbai hijack airliner for 15 hours [link]
      (b) Violent stone pelting protest in Gujarat to get a BRTS stop named after a Pir [link]
      (c) Muslims protest to ban Google in India [link]
       
    • Haj pilgrims confine crew in AI plane for 15 hours
    • Haj pilgrims on board an Air India flight from Jeddah refused to leave the plane on arriving here and confined its cabin crew for 15 hours resenting the diversion of the aircraft from fog-hit Delhi.
    • [source: Deccan Herald]
    • By the time news reaches you, several filters get applied. Some of it does not reach you at all, or, sometimes when they do reach you, they get sanitized by the "style guides". For instance, once the news factory churns out the above piece of news, it becomes something like this:
    • 20 unruly fliers 'hijack' AI flight for 15 hrs
    • See, how easy it is? "Haj Pilgrims" become "unruly fliers", like they say, news is like sausage, you don't wanna know how it's made. At least you know the broad outline of how this one panned out, including how the security personnel made no attempt whatsoever trying to rescue the crew. What you don't know is just how much never makes it beyond the editorial desks. You didn't hear about Miraj riots, perhaps you didn't hear about violent stone and bottle pelting at oncoming cars at Mahim during Muharram either.
    • Happy New Year. Stay alert, stay safe.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.