The dangers of Malayala Manorama’s media empire
August 30th, 2008
Big media corporations around the world are a big threat to human freedom and free flow of information. These corporations twist and create fake news and scary news to influence public opinion to serve their own interests. Malayala Manorama from Kerala is no exception. Recently they have started a sensational article series called "blue truth" in which they claim that mobile phones (with bluetooth and camera) and Internet are social evils! This is a clear example of how a newspaper can exploit fears of technology in a society.
I don’t want to repeat the whole story again as Kenney Jacob has captured the whole story here. I will summarize it here,
According to Malayala Manorama, everything from your mobile can be copied by anyone else. It seems MM wants to spread panic of bluetooth mobiles and mobiles with camera phones.
MM also goes on to say that Internet and morphing technologies are dangerous for society since people can use to create indecent pictures of women!
MM goes on to write a couple of stories similar to what you find in pornographic novels, obviously to please the reader and to cause fear at the same time.
May be Manorama just want to increase its circulation. But the kind of damage that Malayala Manorama is doing to our freedom is enormous.
It is obvious that print media feels threatened by Internet and new technologies. Till recently you had have plenty of influence and money to run a newspaper. Getting message to a large number of people required a lot of money. Internet changed all that. Now people can freely exchange information and print media sees Internet and other new technologies as threat to their domination.
Now you may be wondering what damage can this cause? Well, a lot of our older population has no idea about technology and they are already afraid of it. Now these kind of stories are going to create technology phobia in the society, which will even cause the slowdown of our nation’s progress. Too far fetched? Well, see the story which came out today,
Great news!. In case you don’t know Malayalam I will translate it for you,
Cyber cell of Kerala asked to look at banning camera mobile phones
Human rights commission in Kerala has asked Cyber cell IG to give an expert opinion on the feasibility of banning camera mobile phones in Kerala. According the commission, the morphing technology is too dangerous for the society.
A guy from Eloor had petitioned the human rights commission to ban the phone based on the newspaper reports. He also pointed out that camera phones are banned in some countries.
It is barely a day to two since the Malayala Manorama published the "blue truth" story. Even responsible institutions such as human rights commission is being blinded by the story, because they have no clue of the big picture.
Wondering which country banned camera phone? Well, one candidate country is Saudi Arabia where there is no democracy or no individual freedom (ask any mallu recently returned from Saudi Arabia). Are we going to follow such countries? Interestingly even Saudi removed the restrictions in 2005. I don’t know of a single country where there is complete ban on camera phones!! In some countries (South Korea and Japan), there is a law that camera phone should make a sound when a picture is taken.
If I had the time and money I would have petitioned the human rights commission to,
Ban the entire Internet since a lot of us are watching Internet porn and indecent pictures.
Ban high altitude tourist centres such as Ponmudi since a lot of innocent people are committing suicide by jumping from the mountain top.
Ban vehicles in Kerala since a large number of deaths in Kerala is caused by accidents. Since Kerala is such as small place we can always walk from one place to another.
Ban Sarees and skirts in Kerala since these kind of dresses corrupt the youth and exploit their basic instincts to cause crime in society. Perhaps we can import Burqa from Saudi Arabia.
Ban rupee currency completely. There is so much fake currencies floating around even causing financial instability in India. We can use bartering system.
Ban "house rental" in Kerala. Many people are renting houses to organize flesh trade.
Ban sale and purchase of food in Kerala. Food adultery is causing serious damage to the health of people.
Ban human beings from Kerala since they are slowly and steadily damaging Kerala’s climate/enviornment causing global warming and other disasters.
Perhaps government should look at banning Malayala Manorama for causing social tension and fear. I am sure we have some laws for that as well.
Historical lessons
In Germany, millions of innocent men and woman died at the hand of Hitler’s administration. Is it because majority of Germans were evil? Of course not, it was because they were misled by the German media.
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August 30th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Gud one mate, Its hard to believe this nonsense was printed on a leading daily in Kerala. Are these people out of their mind. Are they still in 21st century.
Our daily s can boast of high circulation, however how do they justify this. I can understand if this one is printed in a one rupee evening paper.
They need to seriously think of quality rather than quantity now
August 30th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Thanks for the link, mate !!!!
August 30th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
mmm…im not surprised by this… Donno if Govt will be tricked to banning the camera phone. That will be a bit too far fetched…Still, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
August 30th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Believe me, within three months Manorama will publish a feature on the dangers of 3G. Now they want to ban camera phones. Even Saudi Arabia allows them. Tomorrow they will target digital cameras. I will send you detailed report on Monday. See my letter on our technological backwardness in Living Digital- August- page-16. See You,
Mr. Jose Manimala.
August 31st, 2008 at 1:41 am
This is really absurd. Have the guys running the newspaper gone mad? just for the sake of cheap publicity they r stooping to such levels..
really loved the sarcastic list of bans
August 31st, 2008 at 8:35 am
Your last item may not a bad idea after all
August 31st, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I’m with Manorama. Imagine you or any of your relative’s video in the internet now. These were taken without your knowledge. Hope you have all watched Cinemala in Asianet on August 30. Do we want ourselves to be victims like those shown there? If bad behaviours cannot be changed or booked, we have to ban the camera phones.
August 31st, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Toms,
I have simple question. Assume some family goes to a hotel and they are sexually attacked by the hotel staff. What happens? They are caught by the police and then punished. right? Do we close down all hotels because of that?
In the same way, if someone misuses mobile phone, punish him. Change laws to ensure strict punishment for using hidden camera (for example, if caught and convicted give someone 5 years in prison).
That is how you deal with it, not by banning something completely. Ban will only promote a lawless society.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:02 am
Read this too, to know how MM make false claims:
http://jocalling.blogspot.com/2008/08/manorama-podcast-still-not-podcast.html
September 1st, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Oh then they should ban all printing press/ newsprint also..so many “p0rn” material available in print..
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I strongly believe this write up is a heavily biased one. Every issue has two sides to it. While one can attack a rival newspaper’s content, this one holds no water. Tell me, isn’t there any grain of truth here? Well, I agree banning is no solution to this problem. Oh! BTW before I submit this comment let me tell you I don’t belong to MM or any other newspaper-I am not even a keralite- so you see this comes from a person who is absolutely not jaded by opinions, I just happened to read this write up and the following comments…Have a nice day
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
In one of the vanitha’s editions they had mentioned about the ‘improper’ behaviour of Students travelling to Bangalore in the a.c sleeper coaches.
The article was concluding (at the cost of anxiety among poor parents) that most of the students/young people are going in the ‘wrong direction’ because of such acts.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Also, remember blogs were blocked for a single day, because some terrorists were using it.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Wow amazing post. It left me laughing on the floor…. especially the last suggestion on bans from your side!
This goes to show the immediate and strong impact media has on society. I think something like this happened in US some almost 100 years ago with a radio broadcast making the world was going to war with aliens or something like that!
I agree with the fact that
1- There are two sides to every issue.
2- There needs to be moderation in anything we do.
Banning anything as many say has negative implications on society. People want it more when they are told they can’t have it. We also need to balance things and learn how proper usage of certain implements. Its funny to think that even when landline phones were invented there were training videos on how to use them and people back then thought the use of phone would lead to degradation of society (lack of face to face contact)…..now look how far we’ve progressed!! Love your blog. Keep the creative writing flowing!
September 6th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Ban or not, MM is doing a commendable role of informing the general public of modern day crimes. Keep up the good work MM!!
September 15th, 2008 at 5:58 am
This is totaly absurds. If you go to mamanoram online u can we visit thier Photogallery section. If u go there u can see the photos poseted are all masala types. Specialy the way some of the campus girls photos are posted. MM always brings this type of things to increase thier circulation. Its not even MM but all other newspaper does this
November 8th, 2008 at 9:56 am
what Ak says is true. MM has a publication ‘the Man’. it publishes such pictures. may be obscenity is subjective, but hypocrisy is bad.