Thuglak magazine Fake News
It is not even a month since the passing away of the founding editor ‘Cho’ Ramaswamy, of the Tamil political magazine Thuglak, and it has already deteriorated into a Fake News peddler. Till Cho was alive, the magazine was worth reading – even if some of the views, opinions, and conclusions were anti-liberal or against Centre-left policies. Long time readers of Thuglak, like myself, used to feel that Cho Ramaswamy consciously tried to maintain or impose a sense of neutrality on the subject being discussed.
When I first heard that Gurumurthy is set to take over as the succeeding editor, I commented that Thuglak is set to become a outright BJP trash very soon. But never in my dreams did I think it would happen so soon.
Before we go into specifics, let us understand the difference between a print media or a blog or a TV holding true to a particular political philosophy (liberal, conservative, left, right, etc.) versus becoming a wholesale propaganda for a particular party. Take for e.g., The Washington Post. It is more conservative than The New York Times. Yet both endorsed Hillary Clinton in US Elections 2016 (but it is The New York Times which is taking most of the flak from President-elect Donald Trump!). OTOH, Fox News is not only conservative, it is rabidly anti-Democratic Party and can only speak GOP propaganda. Therein lies the difference.
To get back to point, when a media gets into supporting a ‘party’, not the ‘philosophy’ mode, it becomes very difficult to be objective. Thus to keep toeing the party line, the writers start to pick and choose facts, obfuscate, mislead, and of late write outright lies. This is the reason for the sudden rise of Fake News and Post-Truth.
When I first heard that Gurumurthy is set to take over as the succeeding editor, I commented that Thuglak is set to become a outright BJP trash very soon. But never in my dreams did I think it would happen so soon.
Before we go into specifics, let us understand the difference between a print media or a blog or a TV holding true to a particular political philosophy (liberal, conservative, left, right, etc.) versus becoming a wholesale propaganda for a particular party. Take for e.g., The Washington Post. It is more conservative than The New York Times. Yet both endorsed Hillary Clinton in US Elections 2016 (but it is The New York Times which is taking most of the flak from President-elect Donald Trump!). OTOH, Fox News is not only conservative, it is rabidly anti-Democratic Party and can only speak GOP propaganda. Therein lies the difference.
To get back to point, when a media gets into supporting a ‘party’, not the ‘philosophy’ mode, it becomes very difficult to be objective. Thus to keep toeing the party line, the writers start to pick and choose facts, obfuscate, mislead, and of late write outright lies. This is the reason for the sudden rise of Fake News and Post-Truth.
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