See, I told you! Look at the heading of this news piece!

Please look at the heading of this news piece from "The Hindu".
If you did not go into the details of the news piece would you know that the Maoists had actually triggered the blast that led to this accident?

http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/29/stories/2010052956580100.htm

Look at Ram's "put-on" obssession with the extreme Left!

Freedom of the press (Journalistic Freedom)

I like to get into arguments. In fact I was called vidhandavadhi in my undergrad school. Something to boast!

Recently I got into an argument with my friend about what constitutes freedom of the press. We were conversing about "The Hindu" and Ram of course and his contention was Ram was free to write whatever he wants to write about and can defend himself citing freedom of the press.

While this is true while writing opinion pieces (he can have different opinions about matters) the same cannot be said when it comes to reporting news pieces. News pieces are what actually happened out there ---- you cannot just write something else or twist them. Of course you can opine on why that happened in a separate piece.
For example, what actually happened would be like this

"The --------- army entered the town of ---------- and in the process of the battle, 30 children were bombed out of existence".

"The Hindu"'s report would read something like this

"The brave and victorious ---------- army entered the ----------infested town of -------- and were met with resistance from -------------. -------------- is a terrorist organization banned in 400 countries. They are notorious for fielding children in war zones. The ------- army resisted attacking children but in the process of the battle they were killed in the cross fire"

You see the difference! The first one is just a news piece. The Hindu's report contains little news hidden inside a dramatic opinion piece.

What a match!

You have to admire the Pakistanis but eventually you have to give it to the Aussies. Dear-O-Dear!! What a match! Before the match I thought Pakistan could prove to be a surprise packet and probably make it very tough for Australia, which they did. Umar seems to be a natural like his brother and hopefully he makes full use of his talent unlike his brother!! When Aamer, another natural, got rid of Warner in the first over, I thought it would get very difficult for Australia if they tried to slow down and consolidate. Watson and Haddin attacked even if only briefly and and kept the tempo going . To me this was the big reason for their success today. Had they slowed down trying to preserve wickets, they would have left too much to do in the end. Tempo is everything in cricket -- be it test matches, odis or 20-20s. Cameron White sustained the tempo later when wickets fell and as Chappell puts it, this was a big phase which they won. The last over to Ajmal was a bad move. You need someone who can bowl good "fuller stuff", yorkers or even low full-tosses are ok. Good length deliveries - a big no no! Ajmal looks like a good spinner otherwise!

Meanwhile, our experts are busy slamming the late-night parties with IPL and other reasons for our early exit. Hey, dudes, I think winners win even while partying and doing other things. Just that their priority is cricket.

A good cricket post

I have been an admirer of Harsha Bhogle for a while now. He writes well in the sense he has a different point of view than the usual cliched argument. The T20 loss does not rankle in my mind very much --- I treat the T20 format as an unwanted diversion: hey! since when did dancing models become part of a cricket game?
Here is Harsha's latest article in cricinfo:
http://www.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/459511.html

Other people when giving reasons for the "debacle" in the caribbean gave only one reason- "inability to play the short ball". I wonder: Are we living in an era where the bowlers are allowed to bowl any number of intimidating bouncers per over? No we aren't. The truth is, and this is why cricket is slowly losing its charm, the batsmen are too pampered by shorter boundaries, docile pitches, one bouncer per over rules among other things.
The truth behind India's flop show lies elsewhere as Harsha points out, lack of body language and the lack of will to succeed against odds!