To Goanet - The biggest - potentially - media story of post-1961 Goa is unfolding and the Goan media is curiously silent about it. There are rumours that a miner will acquire a significant stake in Herald. We don't know for sure whether this will come to pass, but it is a plausible scenario given that a guy who was the miners' PR flack has now assumed editorship of the weekend edition.
Let us agree on one thing - There is no real journalism done in Goa (it is not much better in the rest of India, but let's leave India out of it for now). Journalists in Goa are corrupt - I am talking not about the foot soldier in the copy rooms, as much as those who decide what to actually report. There is an exchange currently doing the rounds on a private mailing list that illustrates the sordid nature of all this. Goan news is fabricated to serve the interests of whichever politicos are in power at the time, the miners, and the real estate lobby. This is by design, for since liberation the newspaper owners have imported (mostly third-rate) outsiders and installed them as editors. These are usually the kind of people who should be milking cows in UP but they get to preen in Goa as opinion makers. (Goans have no standards) It is much easier to control an outsider - give him a cushy flat, a car & driver, and you are all set - than a Goan who might suddenly decide to go rogue on you. After all, every Goan is first and last a xapoter at heart (even if he is a complete bondo otherwise). We know who owns Prudent Media TV. Now we hear chatter that the same guy may make a bid for Herald. And we know who owns the Navhind Times. The NT owners' wife runs the paper, and guess what her last name before she married into the current family was? You can see where this is going, and who will get to hold the (mis)information hose sprayed on Goans every morning. Now mind you - nothing in this media ownership play is illegal (at least nothing that we know of). But Goans need to know from whom they are getting their daily dose of propaganda. Thank God that at least we have the internet now. Internet Jai Ho! (By the way, all these guys read Goanet or get reports about what is written here - although they may pretend to never have heard of Goanet. And you can bet that the migrant editors read every line of every post here.) When I started writing on Goanet the "independent journalist" Frederick Noronha talked up a storm of saffron phantoms. He saw sinister figures behind what he claimed was my "green garb," he wondered about the shadowy sources of funding fueling my activities. When Dr. Anand Virgincar and Dr. Anil Desai came on board Goanet, instead of welcoming two highly intelligent Goans with a different perspective to offer, he cast them as BJP operatives who were geniuses in the art of manipulating the gullible Katlicks of Goanet. But the real scoundrels who were, and are, taking down Goa in broad daylight - those guys firmly remain outside the periphery of his journo vision. Now fast forward to 2011. We know exactly who is funding whom. But you have concede the claim about "independent journalism." After all, who can deny that our journo(s) and journalism are completely independent? Regards, r
