Media made to answer after publishing cooked up story

Read full story at link below, especially India Today’s haughty attempt to browbeat a ‘private individual’ into submission by asking his ‘locus standi’ in the matter of enquiring about due credentials behind a highly derogatory and misleading news story.  How about my locus standi that I have to read through your news articles and I can never be sure about what is genuine news reporting and what is your self-proclaimed ‘social service’ in the grand cause of vilifying men!

http://prassoon.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/complaint-filed-against-neethu-chandra-india-today/

On March 3rd 2012 India Today published a filthy article authored by their reporter Neethu Chandra under the title “Dowry harassment: Delhi bride tortured by cruel NRI husband in US”. This was a demonstration of highest levels of yellow journalism; a totally farce story inflated with lies and false allegations. I’m not posting it here and make the entire wordpress stinky. The day after the editor was contacted they removed the article from the site. By that time it got propagated through all the channels and fooled all the readers; apparently, most readers are already awakened and have learned to identify the “bad apples” in the basket. Evidently, these kind of articles that cost less than dirt are putting the publishers themselves in poor light. Formal complaint with Press Council of India has been filed against both Neethu Chandra and India Today. Since the same article got published in DailyMail UK, Neethu Chandra and DailyMail another complaint has also been filed with Press Complaints Council UK. Daily Mail not only removed the article but also published the true story later,  “In-laws deny torture charges“. MSN also reported in similar lines http://news.in.msn.com/exclusives/it/article.aspx?cp-documentid=5900927

I hope this article will give you an insight about how to make complaints against yellow journalism. If something is unclear or you have any questions please post a comment and I will be happy to share the information that I have. It is a very simple process that anyone can follow.

If you find such articles first thing you have to do is to save a copy of it. You may either take a screen-shot, save it to a file , print it to a pdf or paper. This is required when you file formal complaint with Press Council of India. It is also required to contact the editor before we file a formal complaint.

In short what we need for a complaint are

  1. Complaint petition
  2. Copy of the news article
  3. Signed  declaration. (http://presscouncil.nic.in/images/decl.doc)
  4. Copy of the correspondence with editor.

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