If you have not been reading Media Crooks, you have been missing one of the sanest, most incisive commentator on Indian current affairs you could ever find anywhere — mainstream media, social media, off-line, online, wherever. I am an unabashed admirer of Media Crooks. I am a fan.
Media Crooks sets the gold standard that very few observers are capable of achieving. Take his expert fisking today (link provided below) of Mr Katju, an ex-judge of the supreme court of India who writes a lot of politically motivated stuff and is often in the media spotlight. Katju deserves to be taken to the cleaners and MC does it with aplomb and ruthless precision.
Here’s an extended excerpt:
Despite being a judge who would be expected to care for facts JK [Justice Katju] still chose to peddle fake and unverified numbers of Muslims killed in Gujarat 2002 in his article. And, of course, he makes readers believe only Muslims were killed and not Hindus. If this is not political tinkering, what is? On February 18 in a chat with Rahul Kanwal and Meenakshi Lekhi on Headlines Today JK used more spurious nonsense to defend himself. He cited women’s bellies being slashed and ripped and burnt. This gory tale doesn’t come from anywhere but appears to be from Arundhati Roy’s wonder world of fiction. I had quoted the whole fake story of Suzy Roy in “SC exposes media’s clean shit” after the SC didn’t accept Zakia Jafri’s petition against Modi. For her bogus story in Outlook magazine, Arundhati had apologised but JK uses similar stories without an iota of evidence. Is he fit to be the PCI chairman? When told that Modi has been elected by people, JK nonchalantly says “we all know how elections are won”. Is he suggesting all elections in India are also spurious or is it only when it comes to Modi? The only major case of election-fraud in a court is not related to Modi but to P. Chidambaram.
In addition to the bellies-ripped story, JK also cites the killing of Ehsan Jafri as a planned attack. It took Meenakshi Lekhi to point out to him that leading the killers of Jafri was not a BJP man but a Congress MLA called Meghsingh Chaudhary . . .
I doubt anyone in the media or any observer would deny that the campaign against Modi was the biggest witch-hunt in India. The hunters who participated benefited financially, in position and in influence. There is no reason not to criticise Modi but it is the proportions and usage of spurious information and analogies that make JK look more like Teesta Setalvad or Mallika Sarabhai. . . In his interview with TimesNow Jaitley mentioned how as Law Minister he had experienced senior judges on the verge of retirement clamouring for post-retirement postings. He also mentioned that some judgements just around the pre-retirement phase could be affected by such lust. With his open political campaign that is intended to benefit the Congress party, JK now has people wondering about the conduct and motives of judges themselves. By his conduct and utterances JK has pushed people into wondering if judges are above political persuasions when they are in office. This is the dangerous lump on the breast that cannot be ignored. In my previous post I have not attributed any motives to JK’s biased, prejudiced and spurious articles and nor have any of his critics in the current episode.
. . .. . . In my earlier post on this topic I had wrongly mentioned JK has an opinion on everything under Pluto. No Mr. JK, it seems your favourite planet is Uranus.
For all the corruption and scams that the Congress has been mired in, JK doesn’t have much to say about it. His conduct and frequent outbursts and outrage does make one worry about the conduct of our judges. In recent times SC judges have received postings on various statutory bodies immediately on retirement. There isn’t any cooling period post retirement anymore. Meenakshi Lekhi pointed another important aspect of JK’s behaviour and political persuasions. With so much of bias and prejudice against the BJP, particularly Narendra Modi, how can a member of this party who has a complaint to be heard by the PCI chairman ever expect him to be fair and impartial? This alone is good enough reason for JK to resign or to be sacked.
. . .
The awful truth also is that without the “justice” tag, without the “PCI Chairman” tag and most of all, without the “anti-Modi” tag JK wouldn’t be allowed to write in the media. Not just writing, being anti-Modi is like a license to write with spurious analogies and information. This time everyone called JK’s bluff. It looks like the cats may survive their nine lives but spuriousity certainly killed the Katju.
Go read the full article on spuriosity and Media Crooks’ previous article on the same topic of Katju, “Justice For 10000 Killed In Gujarat 2002“.
Also, the article that Katju wrote “All the Perfumes of Arabia” and Arun Jaitley’s response where he asks Katju to resign from his current official position as the chairman of the Press Council of India.
And do yourself a favor and follow @MediaCrooks.
Life is a Random Draw 
Agree with you Prof. MediaCrooks is absolutely brilliant. A real karma yogi.
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This is (not entirely) off-topic. During the 2002 carnage in Gujarat, either no woman’s belly was slashed, or at least one woman’s belly was slashed. Exactly one of these two statements has to be true. If zero women’s bellies were slashed, then Roy should face charges for libel or spreading misinformation; a simple apology won’t do. But if there can be no absolute determination of which one statement is the truth, let’s not even try to run a nation. Or eat tonight.
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This is not a fair article.Katju vehemently disapproves of Congress’s scams and of Antonia Maino and his prince charming.
Also, when he said,“we all know how elections are won” he didn’t imply tampering of EVMs but how people vote along caste and religious lines instead of looking at the merits of the canditate.
Katju has no faith in the present Indian system and is of the opinion that country needs a total overhaul or a ‘revolution’ similar to French revolution.
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