Of anonymous bloggers & anonymous commenters
Trust something like this to happen only in India. An Indian blog is at the epicenter of the gossip-circuit in New Delhi’s media/internet circles and is sending out blogospheric tremors (and after-shocks) on a daily basis. The blog is titled WarforNews and is written ANONYMOUSLY. It was started about five months back and now commands a rocketing readership. Its popularity can be gauged by the number of comments each post attracts- anything between 40-100 and all of these are ANONYMOUS as well. I’m sure this is quite unparalled anywhere in the blogosphere.
Warfornews exposes the behind-the-newsroom drama that is played out every day amongst three of India’s leading English news (TV) channels- NDTV, CNN-IBN & TimesNow, as they fight each other for idiot-box supremacy. Office gossip, dirty politics, love affairs, sex scandals,boardroom battles, internal emails, resignation dramas et al are discussed threadbare and each post throws up a series of insinuations, counter-insinuations and conspiracy theories through the ensuing war of comments. Official (and confidential) emails from the top bosses are leaked out routinely and then subjected to the most intensive scrutiny.
Incidentally, there is some history behind all this. For the main protagonists in all the three channels have a common parentage- they all started their news careers in NDTV (with varying degrees of success) before branching out on their own. A perfect stage for a gossipy situation….
Inspite of being anonymous (and hence possibly casual), the content of the blog seems quite credible; it is interspersed with opinions/judgments but somehow, I don’t doubt the veracity of the claims.
Of course, there is intense speculation as to the identity of the blogger (who describes himself/herself as the all seeing spy) but to no avail. It’s fairly obvious that this has to be an insider’s job; in fact not just an insider, but a network of insiders, spread across the three news channels. Recently, I bumped into a technology reporter working with one of the news channels and he confirmed that their entire office was addicted to the daily gossip mongering on the blog. The matter has assumed such proportions that two of the channels (CNN-IBN & TimesNow) have now made the blog inaccessible from their corporate computer networks.
I have been following the blog for a while, but I’m not sure now how to best describe this situation– is it comical, malicious or simply bizarre ? The choice is yours…
On a different note though, this is a perfect example of how blogging can go wrong in an organizational context. A disgruntled employee can quite easily resort to something like this. I wonder if the TV channels have it in their rights to try to take legal action against the blog. For this clearly goes beyond the freedom of speech debate. The blog’s content appears mala-fide in intent. Can the channels file a case and force the blogging site (blogger.com in this case) to divulge some information (whatever is available with them) as to the identity of this ‘all seeing spy’?
13 comments
Hi,
warfornews definitely can be categorised as a a masala timepass blog, more than anything else. Initailly I did read it with interest. But now the ’story line’ looks VERY repetitive- same leaking of e-mails, internal bickerings, personal impressions of ASS on the news reports of the three channels on a given topic….
When the electronic and print media overexploit a story then we all show concern, but when people do the same in the blogosphere, then what should one do?
Hi anonymous,
Can i request you to reveal your identity at least for this post ?
amit
[.]….As I read through most of the comments, I realized that – (1) comments were more in number for posts that were inherently gossip centric (2) most comments seemed shallow and either applauding the post or trashing it, without reason (3) several comments seemed that they came from the same people or people related to the person written about and lastly (4) almost all comments were anonymous. I guess this is okay for War for News, as the author himself is blogging anonymously…[.]
How about this? Some jobless asswipe might have been paid to write anon comments too, or written by the person who runs the blog to make it look like readership levels are rising. Cheap publicity gimmicks if you ask me. Like Jaswant’s Singh’s revelation of the presence of a spy in the Indian govt in his book. What a way to market your product? At the cost of national security? Throw Jaswant Singh in jail.
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