Media Watch: Someone wants us to believe, Rahul is Lord of net also (Updated)

Monday, January 31, 2011

Someone wants us to believe, Rahul is Lord of net also (Updated)

Drums of Campaign glorifying Rahul is getting louder and its now bordering absurdity. Someone wants gullible Indians to believe that Rahul Gandhi is most popular Leader on net.
Several national newsmedia today published similiar themed news in which they tried to portray Rahul as most popular Indian political leader in net

Hindustan Times claimed

Rahul Gandhi has a fan page following of 67,921 people which could be among the largest for any leader in the country on the popular social networking site.

NDTV claimed

Rahul Gandhi is a hit on Facebook. He has a fan page following of 67,921 people which could be among the largest for any leader in the country on the popular social networking site.

Now comes the more interesting part. If you take a closer look - the source of news is not common for NDTV & Hindustan Times its PTI(screenshot below) while for all others its their inhouse Journalists Now it will take a lot of convincing for me to believe that it was sheer coincidence that PTI & all other media houses cameup with this independent of each other (unless one of them is ripping off). Having brought up with staple dose of Bollywood movies… I can think of only one explanation for this coincidence … “Paid News”
I am also intrigued by theme of this campaign. Perhaps this may be a campaign to counter all the negative press INC & Rahul is getting in twitter. Or some PR agency wanting to prove the ROI for money they have received. What ever it may be this is plain distasteful
And by the way, It seems journos of all these media houses forgot to do a web search on fan page following of original Gandhi – Mahatma Gandhi. Original Gandhi has a has a fan page following of over 287,161.