There are some stories that simply don’t make the news, while others more than make up for it in terms of volume……even though both may be in the same zone…..Let’s look at a few random examples:

• Amitabh Bachchan’s house getting flooded is news, 1.3 million people in Bihar and Orissa losing their homes due to floods is not news
• Prince Stuck at the bottom of a well is news, while a Dalit boy burnt alive for daring to pull water out of a well is not news
• Gay people protesting in Australia is news, Landless marching to Delhi – in the largest march since Independence is not news.
• The Sensex at 20,000 is news, companies laying off people due to the strengthening ruppee is not news.
• Discrimination against Shipa Shetty is news, Discrimination against Muslims & Dalits is not news
• Bobby Jindal is welcome news, Mayawati is not…..
• And SRK on a high protien diet to get his six pack is news……… but, millions not having any diet to speak about is not news…

And, as India together puts it:

"43.7 Million People break Guinness World Record." This is surely the stuff of which headlines are made. Nearly 44 million is a lot of people. And both Indians in general and the media here in particular usually love Guinness records. According to a recent Associated Press feature, The Hindustan Times has run over 50 stories this year about bids for Guinness records, and it is still not far ahead of the competition. The latest to join the ranks of record-seekers – or, at least, to be reported in the press as considering the possibility – is the family of Raj Kapoor. Yet the record broken by 43.7 million people did not quite make it.

Perhaps the nature of the event was the spoiler. The 43,716,440 people who together (reportedly) broke the record were participating in approximately 6540 events in about 127 countries, organised to enable people to "Stand Up and Speak Out" against poverty over 24 hours spanning 16 and 17 October. But then again here was a relatively "happy" story – that so many millions are willing to express their concern about this serious problem is surely good news. Even though the media today have a preference for upbeat stories, this one obviously didn’t have what it takes.

There is a wold that does not exist as far as journalists are concerned…. This level of blindness to a whole section of India is not just editorial mandate, it is also, at a certain very basic level, journalistic ineptitude. For a lot of young journalists who work in the metros – the villages are somewhere else, Independence happened somewhere else, and caste system does not exist. 

Maybe newspapers and news magazines ought to spend some of their money on training their personnel on the basics of India.

I would probably start a lesson by telling them that India is in South Asia and its London and New York are not its districts next to . Noida and Vashi