Today, Andhrajyothy newspaper took a direct dig at the owner of Surya newspaper alleging that he was resorting to blackmailing. Andhrajyothy alleged that Nukarapu Suryaprakash Rao, owner of Surya newspaper, demanded money from Kaleshwar baba to not publicize his illegalities. Naturally, Surya newspaper alleged that this is a conspiracy against them.

When there are more than a dozen news papers, competition is sure to exist and stories like these are evidence of the cut-throat competition that exists among the print media houses. But in this instance, with newspapers bashing each other, competition has turned ugly. If you can read telugu, you can find the articles here and here.

Competition or not, I would like to specifically point out one thing, the caste-ism card played by Surya newspaper. One doesn’t need an outstanding IQ to guess why this issue is being tied with caste. It was an absolutely shameless act. As a journalist, one cannot fall further. This is what I consider as the lowest quality of journalism. These kind of practices, even when used as a last resort for the very survival of a newspaper, are just plain wrong.

It is obvious that one of the newspapers is lying which raises an important question. As a common man who wants a truthful and honest source of news, I am now in a dilemma as to which among the dozen newspapers in Andhra Pradesh to follow. Who is being truthful? Who is lying? Or even worse, who is deceivingly presenting only half of the story and not the entire picture? Apparently, every newspaper has its own political or business interests and the news are cleverly manipulated to showcase the same.

Probably, before relying on a newspaper we should be well aware of the political and business ties of the newspapers management. As absurd and tedious as it may sound, this is one way to avoid hopping on to the media’s bandwagon and to intelligently decipher the news.

What do you do to make sense of what you read in a newspaper or a news website? Which newspapers do you think are reliable/unreliable? And why?

http://www.krishnachaitanya.in/blog/2010/04/andhrajyothy-vs-surya/