Monday, December 27, 2010

Times Of Turncoat

One of my favourite sources of entertainment every day is going through the country's largest English daily - The Times of India. There are 2 ways this entertainment takes place - (a) stumbling across atrocious and frequent spelling, grammar and factual errors and (b) spotting the news articles from the midst of the paid pieces.

This morning (27-Dec-2010) has been particularly fulfilling on both fronts.

Yesterday (26-Dec-2010) TOI (Gurgaon edition) carried an article on the Tau Devi Lal Stadium being rented out for a New Years bash and how this is criminal on so many counts. With quotes such as "To use a cricket ground for a dance party is a matter of shame for the government. We suspect that money has played a role in such wrongdoing" from an INLD leader. Producing a scanned copy of the article below (please click on the photo for better viewing).

TOI article, 26-Dec-2010


This morning when I opened the paper I was amused to see another article, carrying the same picture as y'day proudly mentioning 'Tau Devi Lal to host Asia's largest New Year Party'. The tone all upbeat and positive. The article goes on mention how this will help Gurgaon's district administration's revenues and also make Gurgaon a popular destination for entertainment. It specifically mentions how "the necessary precautions have been taken to maintain the ground and specifically the pitch..." Again, producing a scanned image of the article below.

TOI article, 27-Dec-2010
Well done TOI, true to your style!

P.S: This was an example of type (b) entertainment as I mentioned early in the post. Here's a look at type (a), again from today's newspaper (27-Dec-2010). There's this article about 'German bakeries' in India. The summary paragraph at the beginning talks of, among other things, how "...a lot of people, including perhaps the terrorists who planted a bomb in the Pune cafe last week, think so...". It really is too trivial that the Pune blast at German bakery took place on 13-Feb-2010, or ~10 months back and not exactly 'last week'. Oh, the hazards of copying and then pasting old articles.

TOI article, 27-Dec-2010

4 comments:

Subtle Expressions said...

Love the TOI bashing :)

Abhishek said...

Copy pasting - the knowledge age worker's greatest aid can make even the best feel stupid at times...... So no surprises there.....
TOI - The Arnab Goswami of Newspapers - perhaps best represents India's youth and sensibilities if you think about it......
And if you get a chance - read a certain Vijay Kumar Bobilli who writes a column - Beyond the Lies..... You will be amazed by his English.
PS: No wonder Chetan Bhagat's columns are published in this newspaper too :P

saurish said...

Great job buddy. TOI has really become a TOI let paper. It's online edition is nothing less than a soft porn paper.

And on the top of it,it's shocking headlines.

JD said...

Excellent catches, Suhel. My standing instructions to the newspaper delivery people are: if the only paper available is TOI, don't deliver any paper that day, since in any case I won't pay you for it!