…the Jan Lok Pal Bill become an attempt by the marginalized urban English-educated classes to take back their country. Its evident in way public feedback is sought, as per the draft Bill, through a website, something that the “poor” don’t really have access to. It’s evident in the qualification criteria for the committee (Magsaysay Award winners, Nobel prize winners, Bharat Ratnas) that the urban middle class wants what we Bengalis call “bhodrolok” in charge.

- On The Jan Lok Pal Bill by Great Bong

I have been too confused to put to words what I felt about the Jan Lok Pal Bill, because it was largely a sense of unease at what was going on and the methods adopted to achieve the goal. (I tried to joke it away “Who’s this chick, Anna, then?”) That article on Great Bong’s blog is fairly accurate manifestation of what I felt. As a matter of principle, the proposal feels all wrong. A committee of guiding ‘Elders’, no matter how benign it sounds, is ultimately placing power in the hands of people who have no accountability to anyone.

Anna Hazare may be a man of great virtue and his intentions may be noble, I have no doubts about that. Yet, I find myself disagreeing with campaigns he has run in the past such as banning the sale of alcohol and tobacco in the ‘model village’ he set up. What seems like a beneficial idea, on the surface, is actually a measure that inhibits free will. It is lecturing from a pulpit, saying “I know better; you are too poor/stupid so do this instead.” The idea of a Lok Pal smacks of similar holier-than-thou sentiments.

I do not profess have a better solution. However, I do agree with the argument that measures are needed to prevent corrupt politicians from running for elections in the first place, rather than try to clean up after they have been voted into power. At least Anna Hazare’s campaign has piqued the country’s interest and got the youth interested in taking action. What isn’t so good is the shrill “YOU MUST OBEY US” cries.

The person suing this time is a snake-oil wood-pellet salesman called Paul Ceglia who looks like an unemployed Bengali art teacher. He has already  been convicted once for fraud (long story, but apparently that’s how he unearthed the evidence to file this lawsuit) so on normal days people would laugh him away. Which indeed he was, when he filed the lawsuit last summer.

Now, however, he is being represented by a law firm that specialises in technology IP disputes called DLA Piper which says it has done the due diligence in this matter and certain that none of the evidence is faked.

This is big because if a law firm is willing to financial risks and loss of face by backing the authenticity of evidence it’s submitting to court, not to mention that Ceglia has already been to jail once and knows the consequence of such an outrageous fraud claim (even more jail time), this makes it all the more believable that there might actually be something here.

Hoo boy. Who could’ve thought circumstances would make a sequel of The Social Network possible?

****

In my review of The Social Network, I was fairly critical of it but I don’t think I explained my stand clearly. See, the problem with it – in my opinion – is that although it’s an exceptionally well-written and acted movie when seen on its own, it is not a good movie about the origins of Facebook. Where The Social Network failed for me was that even though it got the events and the chronology right, it got all the motivations of the characters wrong. And I’m not even talking about the ‘official’ Zuck / Facebook version of what happened (the ‘official’ Bible happens to be The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick); I’m talking of how blatantly Aaron Sorkin twists everything to tell a story he as a person who didn’t know much about Facebook (like most of the viewers) wants to tell rather than the one even its source material tells. (The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, the book the film is based on.)

The iconic scene right at the start with Rooney Mara? Fabricated, as Aaron Sorkin himself confesses. While the film portrays Zuck as a misogynistic nerd who made Facebook out of spite, Mezrich tells the story of an ambitious college kid who knows the masterpiece he wants to build (and, FYI, is not driven out of hatred out of being spurned; instead mentioning Zuckerberg’s relationship with current fiancé Priscilla Chan). Mezrich also give a more complete picture of how uninterested Eduardo Saverin was and how he put up ads for competing social networks on Facebook early on, while the movie glosses over this to make Saverin look a handsome Brazilian hombre who got royally screwed over by an asshole. Even the stake dilution was completely overblown, as in real-life and in Mezrich’s book (which, if I may remind again, is supposedly the source material for the film) the stake was reduced to “slightly less than 10%”, not the jaw-dropping “less than 1%” in the movie.

Sorkin had an agenda here to tell a gripping story, but it just isn’t the one which captures the true motivations and intentions of the characters he could have pieced together from so many accounts. Nobody expects a documentary – but when it got the chronology and the events themselves right, changing the other bits to make Zuckerberg come across as a jerk seems intentionally malicious. This is why I feel The Social Network is ultimately a bad movie because it fails to do what it sets out to achieve: tell The Story of Facebook.

****

And while the latest lawsuit does open up the discussion again on whether Zuckerberg really was a jerk, you have to remember this is a 20-21 year old kid (at that time) we are talking about. In the same position – with an idea you feel can truly revolutionise the world – with no life experience dealing with millions or with VCs or investors, how much wiser decisions would you have taken instead in Zuckerberg’s place?

The thing about staying many times zones away from your home country, without easy access to newspapers or TV media is that it’s extremely difficult to follow what’s happening ‘back home’, especially in rapidly developing news stories such as the IPL controversy. Of course, there are news sites but then sitting down and browsing through news on a site is so much harder than reading a ‘compiled’ version, i.e., a newspaper or a news bulletin.

Maybe there’s hope for ‘mainstream media’ after all. But let’s not forget that even Tehelka started off as an unconventional outlet, in that it was a website.

I don’t know whether you have heard of Wikileaks until now; there remains no doubt whatsoever though that after today’s major whistleblowing coup they accomplished today. Although Wikileaks has shown the guts to go up against ‘the establishment’ previously nothing quite matches the controversy they have set off today, releasing a video which shows a US Army Apache helicopter opening fire, and ultimately killing, twelve people including two Reuters journalists. It’s a 17-minute video that is going to bring up a lot of questions in the near future about US presence in Iraq and rules of modern warfare in general. (You can also see the complete, unedited video here. In case you don’t have the bandwidth to watch the video, you can read the transcript but it doesn’t show the true horror of what happened.)

Image from the US Army report on the incident

The initial reaction will be that of outrage and there are many reactions along the lines of how “the people in the video obviously aren’t carrying weapons”. In hindsight, from the comfort of our room, we can say that because we can watch it back at our leisure (I just dread having to use that last word) but during a war-zone when making split-second decisions, it can be easy to overreact and consider a telephoto lens of a camera to be an RPG – especially when you’re trying to make out what’s happening from such footage. And while I don’t find radio chatter along the lines of “Look at those dead bastards. Nice.” to be condonable, I do realize that soldiers on the frontline are not bound to make politically correct commentary. The New Yorker has released preliminary legal analysis regarding the rules of engagement with respect to this video. I think (and this is purely personal opinion) that the initial firing, while not absolutely necessary, can be understood as being over-cautious. What follows later on in the video, of opening fire on a van try to carry away wounded was overstepping the boundary.

What strikes me is the feeling that Pentagon would’ve given more shit about this – and mainstream media would’ve given more shit about this – if it had been foreign correspondents instead of Iraqi journalists (albeit still working for Reuters). It wouldn’t have taken three years, nor would they be making excuses right now of ‘not being able to find the video‘. That, I think, is the main issue. While what happened on that day is…understandable…the Pentagon going to great lengths to try and shut people and being forthcoming about details is what’s going to cause a major loss of confidence in the region. This video itself has the potential to become ‘recommended watching’ for terrorists – and the US isn’t going to come out looking any good out of it.

Image via Wikipedia

‘Mainstream media’ is a term that will be brought up again and again when this issue is discussed over the coming days. The very fact that it was Wikileaks – a non-profit organization that doesn’t take any donations from organizations, only individuals – publishing this online via bulletproof hosting servers in Sweden, without any physical offices was what made it possible. In times which are already financially hard for newspapers and new TV channels it’s difficult to conceive them being able to withstand the pressure from various authorities on not releasing such a video. Indeed, Reuters had been trying to get this same video released under Freedom of Information Act and failed. What did Wikileaks do? It obtained copies of the footage from whistleblowers within the military, did on-ground background research, broke the encryption on the copy they had and released the video. They went ahead and were simply able to do things while a news organization would have had to face pressure to shut up and at the same time consider the legal liability of disclosing this. That’s probably what gives whisteblowers greater confidence to reveal damning information to Wikileaks rather than a brick-and-mortar entity that can be sued to divulge their identity. Pentagon identified this and considered attaching Wikileaks by, among other things, outing whistleblowers and making an example out of them.

At the same time, you can’t deny the fact that the resources behind a ‘proper’ (although the definition is now up for debate) news organization can often make things easier to investigate. Wikileaks has been forced to shut down temporarily (and currently operates in a stripped down state) because of funding issues. Following the release of this footage it’s seeking funding right now to help it release further videos regarding US military actions. As it says:

Press conference at the National Press Club in Washington DC, a cost which starts at $2,000 for a medium-sized room with projector and microphone. In addition, it costs $5,000 to Web cast the video from the National Press Club.

This is why I don’t believe in statements such as “mainstream media is dead”. I know it’s trendy in the blogosphere to refer to the old guard as MSM and fill gigabytes of ‘pages’ online with whoop-whoop battlecries of “old media is dead, blogs will do all news reporting in the future”. It doesn’t take much to publish a blog or a video online, but it takes resources and support – for better or worse – to be able to get that content on to a proper pedestal that ‘MSM’ does. As the Washington Post opinion piece in the last link says, both ‘new’ and ‘old’ media have their own uses. ‘MSM’ can reach out beyond the fraction of the global population that is online and influence policy much more effectively than the blogosphere can.

Screengrab from 'Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare'

One last thing struck me was how the footage looked so…unreal. Like being in a video game. My first emotion when I see or hear about next-gen weapon systems is childlike excitement. It reminded me of this mission in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare where you’re a gunner on an AC-130H gunship and you’re providing air support to ground troops. And how I initially failed in the mission because my ‘friendly fire’ kept decimating troops from my own ‘side’. I’ve read about research on this; on how pilots who’re bombing targets have less battle trauma (despite killing more people) because they effectively push buttons on seeing images on a screen, compared to troops who’re fighting on-ground and see the kills up close. And I can’t help but think how it seems from the radio chatter in the Wikileaks video that the soldiers involved might have felt, to an extent, detached from reality.

What is truly shocking is how little aid was able to reach to the island nation in the first few days since the earthquake struck. News reports showing bulldozers piling up corpses and riots over single cans of water make for disturbing viewing.

So choose a charitable organization working in relief operations there, and donate now. Even if it’s a small amount, it counts. A country like Haiti is hit harder because it is so poor and has less resources already. I’ll be donating what I get from part-time work this month to Doctors Without Borders and the World Food Programme operations in Haiti. Take your pick, and donate now.

This brings me a to odd juncture in this blog post. Readers from UK have access to multiple charities they can donate to for the cause (including the ones I mentioned). I initially thought of sharing links to sites where readers from India could donate too. Surprisingly, as far as I see it there isn’t a single website based out of India that allows to donate to emergency relief funds. Not even the Indian Red Cross! (Having a single paragraph saying donations are tax-deductible is useless.)

Well done, Times of India, well done

Furthermore, Indian news sites seem to be paying hardly any attention to this ‘story’. Forget the front page, there isn’t a single reference to the Haiti earthquake on the world news page of hindustantimes.com (when I saw it). And on Times of India’s website, a link to a story on Haiti is buried deep beneath stories about some UN weapons inspector being caught in a sex sting. Times of India then goes to reach heights of tactlessness by displaying keyword ads in its news article for ‘Haiti’ and ‘emergency situation’.

At least world leaders are pledging aid and the media is paying attention here. Not so encouraging on the streets, where the attitude here is – to a large extent – “don’t care”. I just hope that enough people chip in, in whatever way they can in times of humanitarian crisis.

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"I wonder if this will look good on the op-ed page"

So The Hindu decided to give its website a major upgrade. The old site is still lurking around at thehindu.com – in all its 1990s Internet glory; the new website is at beta.thehindu.com. This redesign has been done by Mario Garcia Jr. Mario Garcia Jr, in case you haven’t heard of him in Hindustan Times, where they brag about getting redesigns done from him on the umpteen number of times it has ‘changed’ over the past few years. Journalism outsourcing professionals in India have been out-Bangalore’d by a Floridan! As someone else puts it, “Future contestants of Mastermind might like to consider “Indian Newspaper Design” for their specialist round. The answer for all 10 questions is Mario Garcia.”

Weight, what?

Consider what we have had to deal with so far. A cursory look suggests that the designer of the Hindustan Times website had an Uzi pointed at his head while he was designing the website, with some sub-editor saying “Naach Basanti, naach” in the background while yet another editor shouted “I want like, every, goddamn news article section to be on the front page. It’s so cluttered that the basic idea behind this is “Let’s put a link every 1cm and hope the user clicks something, even if accidentally.” And then HT editors keep wondering on their blogs as to why they aren’t earning revenues through ads. If guys like these stay around a bit longer, journalism will be dead.

wearepartof.indiatimes.com

Times of India‘s website is a tad better than Hindustan Times. Their delight knew no bounds when ComScore (quite probably made a mistake and) declared that TOI’s site was the most trafficked in the world. Maybe it was the whole subdomain thing which bamboozled ComScore, because I kinda find it hard to believe that with the number of Internet users India has, TOI’s site got more visitors than any other newspaper website in the world. TOI’s site design is a bit better but still somewhat cluttered.

The new Hindu website

Coming back to The Hindu’s redesign – what I wanted to say was “This is fantastic!”. The design is really clean. Everything is arranged in a proper fashion – heck, they even placed the ads properly rather than jamming them anywhere, anyhow. When you land on the website, you eyes scan easily through the content without getting overwhelmed with information. There are flashing scrolling tickers and animated jumping monkeys to distract you. Also, The Hindu has decided to implement with a ‘web first’ policy – which means that from now on their reporters will publish their stories first on the website, then in print. Most other newspapers keep breaking news to a minimum, opting to publish online only very important breaking news via dispatches from agencies. Hindu‘s idea, if it takes off, could mean a day when the online version of a print newspaper – that too one of the more traditional ones! – is given more importance. Why this makes sense is that fresh, original content being posted on the website first, a lot more people might be interested in reading news there – thus increasing potential for ad revenue. I don’t know about other, but I for instance only check online news sites in case some major event has happened and I want new news updates – or in case I need to link back to a news story. And with an uncluttered interface, chances are that readers will stick around longer and read more of Hindu‘s content.

Douglas Adams, in his essay What Have We Got To Lose, was right on target that the future of media is online. Years after he originally wrote this article, its astonishing to note that most people associated with news media still think the same way, websites are still made with the same thought process like the early days of the Web that DNA has described in the essay. I urge you to read his arguments on why digital media makes sense for everyone – even media house owners once they get it.

Originally posted at Youthpad.

photo credit: Kitty de Medici

You see, most of the outrage is centered around “INDIANS ARE BEING RACIALLY DISCRIMINATED AGAINST! BUY BARACK OBAMA POSTERS FOR Rs 100 ONLY AND BURN IT!”. Sorry to disappoint you guys but Transporation Security Administration has made some truly astounding errors earlier too. SRK isn’t the first one to be stopped because his name featured on the watchlist either – earlier, a five year old kid called Matthew Gardner was prevented from flying too. The same link (gracias, Cracked.com) details other incidents – like a guy called David Nelson being stopped too, and someone else who was handicapped and her crutches were snatched away because they needed to be inspected.

‘Shah Rukh Khan’ being on the watchlist doesn’t mean that the Shah Rukh Khan was being ‘targetted’ – it simply means that quite possibly there’s a suspected criminal with the same name whom the authorities are looking out for. The issue is not of targeting but that of idiots who slavishly follow rules taking things a bit too far.

While at this point you would love to hear a redneck joke or two along the lines of “haha Americans are so dumb”, lemme remind you that security staff anywhere around the world can be dumb when it comes to taking rulebook interpretations too far. I don’t understand why HT decided to headline this story as ‘Child abuse by CISF…’ (what’s described is not child abuse); anyway, the story is about how CISF made a 10-year old kid stand outside a security checkpoint for over an hour because he didn’t follow the security drill.

Must we protest outside the Parliament?

Once upon a time there was a kid who was studying in an Uttarakhand college. Unfortunately, despite the fairy tale beginning to this blog post, his life did not follow typical fairy tale trajectory. The guy I am talking about is Aman Kachroo, whose death due to ragging sparked off a chain of events which has culminated in two students being expelled this week from Delhi University’s Kirori Mal College. What that one tragic incident in a small college did was blow to smithereens the excuse that ragging helps in bonding with seniors.

Even I agree and support fruitful interaction with seniors. As long as it is harmless, it is okay. I’m sure that most college seniors who’re ragging don’t go in with the mindset to kill or grievously injure someone. I hope everyone has that much humanity left in them. The problem starts when, intoxicated with the feeling of being in power, a college student(s) who is doing the ragging forgets the point where his actions have crossed a line. Specifically picking up Aman Kachroo’s case, this is what I remember reading in a newspaper report. He was asked to give an introduction in shudh Hindi – now this itself is innocuous, harmless and may I say, a popular form of ragging. I wouldn’t call this ragging per se; it’s the sort of interaction that I’m sure everyone is OK with. Now, Aman’s family had been living in Tanzania for a considerable amount of time and the kid didn’t know much of Hindi. One thing lead to another and in the end he died due to injuries inflicted upon him. I do not know whether this is true or not, but that’s what a newspaper report said.

Post this, the Supreme Court issued directives that ragging in all its forms must be stopped forthwith. Protests have been raised that this is too harsh a measure, that benign forms of interaction should be allowed. Try to understand this issue from the court’s point of view. Can you provide an empirical, unambiguous definition of what ‘safe’ or ‘benign’ ragging is? How do define some action as ‘going too far’? This is further complicated by the fact that ‘damage’ could be both physical and mental. You can have a shot at this – and you’ll realize that this is extremely difficult to do. You could say, in a sense, that ragging extremes are a bit similar to road rage. Both arise from a need to show-off who is in a position of power. And it brings a sea change in a person who otherwise might be quite sociable in any other setting. Typical Dr Jekyll turning into Mr Hyde scenario.

Between the two extremes which the court had at hand – of allowing ragging to go on with the possibility of further such incidents happening and of a total ban – the court decided to choose the latter. I support that decision even though I admit the consequence will be that harmless fresher-senior bonding will be impacted badly. Besides, even if a definition of ‘extreme’ ragging could be reached it would be punitive measure instead of a preventive measure. Won’t do a shitload of good to someone who’s dead or injured. Probably, putting in preventive measures was also on of the points the court considered when passing this directive.

Coming to the controversial decision taken by Kirori Mal College in expelling the accused students. Frankly, they had no choice. Court orders are quite firm that action needs to be taken in case any such incident is reported. In case action isn’t taken, the complainant could have taken college authorities to court over this issue. Maybe the sentence was a bit harsh; the college principal admits he was trying to set an example but he was well within his rights to do so.

Extreme ragging incidents remain under-reported. College authorities will be strict for a few weeks to make sure the court order is implemented; indeed, most freshers are already reporting that hardly any ragging it taking place. Eventually though, colleges will relax monitoring and that is the time when further ‘incidents’ might happen. So the need is also to sensitize seniors to be aware of what the limits are. Also, the need for interactions with seniors is definitely there. Otherwise it will be hard for newcomers to find their way around a place. College authorities themselves should take the initiative to hold sessions where such interactions can take place where anything ‘sensible’ is allowed. You could have counsellors around to ensure that things don’t get out of hand, and in case any fresher wants to back out of any bit then s/he can do so.

Even if a single potential death or serious injury is prevented by the Supreme Court’s order, I think it is worth it.

9.9 group is one of the leading media houses in this particular vertical and this media college hopes to impart to its students knowledge of how to go about working in this domain. Limited seats are available for the conference, so you need to register beforehand by sending an email to events@schoolofconvergence.com. There is also a registration fee of Rs 300 (brunch will be served, included in this registration fee) but if you’re really interested in doing a course in the field of mass communication / media then it would probably be worth it (even if you aren’t thinking right now about joining 9.9 SoC) as a lengthy question and answer session is scheduled – in which you can get your doubts cleared. Both students and parents would find this interaction useful. Key members on 9.9′s leadership team are veterans from media and education industry, so they know a thing or two about what they’re saying.