Honours Board from BITS Pilani
But media should remember that there is an age old saying that Sun, Moon and Truth are the three things that cannot be hidden for too long. Today in journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right. In this age where old news is cold news, priority is to get it first from anywhere to everywhere and from anyone to everyone rather than get it right.
No wonder Peter Mcwilliams said that the news media are, for the most part, the bringers of bad news and it's not entirely the media's fault as bad news gets higher ratings and sells more papers than good news.
Leading news agencies which include Earth Times, TopNews, Monsters and Critics.com, BreakingNewsOnline 24/7 News Ntwork, Times Now. TV, Zee News, NDTV.com, IBNLive.com, Daijiworld.com, Express Buzz, Times of India, Calcutta Telegraph, Indian Express, Deccan Hearld, Hindu, Indopia etc have reported that an IT Engineer Niranjan Kumar employed with a leading IT company in Bangalore has been arrested for throwing his unwanted baby into a well.
However in some of the news reports it is mentioned that the 30 year old Niranjan Kumar is a Gold Medalist in Mechanical Engineering from BITS Pilani which is incorrect.
It is well known that Birla Institute of Technology and Science – BITS which has campuses in Pilani, Dubai, Goa and Hyderabad is one among the top ranking universities in India today and was recently reaccredited by NAAC with “A” grade and CGPA of 3.71 out of 4. BITS offers Gold medal to batch toppers for a year of admission irrespective of the degree they do or the department they belong to. BITS presently does not award gold medals departmentwise. It must be reiterated that no candidate by name Niranjan Kumar who had studied Mechanical Engineering from BITS had received a Gold medal or for that matter even a silver or bronze medal.
It is still fresh in public memory that some time back whole lot of prestigious news agencies had reported that Deven Sharma who was appointed as President of Standard & Poor (S & P) was an alumnus of BITS Pilani while he was from BIT Mesra.
The current state of news media must take the blame for public’s general lack of information which is vital for responsible citizenship in a democracy. The media fancies in the news if it makes a good story, without much regard for the factual accuracy and ensures that truth is lost in semantics and theatrics.
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