It is not a newpaper. Review on Malayala Manorama

Dear Friends,

Malayala Manorama is supposedly the news paper with the largest circulation among Malayalam dailies. But let us look back at how this paper grew to be so. I remember in the 80s when I was a school going kid, there were 2 or 3 newspapers with nearly the same circulation. The so called 'pynkilis' like the Malayala Manorama weekly, the Mangalam weekly etc had their own readership. Then also the Manorama was a newspaper with a strong bias towards the right.

However slowly the 'pynkili' culture of their weekly gradually crept over to the newspaper as well. The newspaper started a process of slow poisoning of the malayali mindset. Once the people were hooked, there was no escape. The funny thing is that I have heard several people saying that they are fed up with the newspaper, but cant just take the plunge to get rid of it. It is almost like an addiction, where you know that the thing is very bad for you, but you just cant kick the habit.

The newspaper flourishes by appealing to the base instincts, just remember how they sensationalised the ISRO spy case, the spicy reports of the various sex scandals etc. And at the end of it all, there will be a nice sermon in the editorial about how innocent people were victimised and all, while they themselves were the people most responsible for it. I hope we have not forgotten the Dr. Nambi Narayanan, Mariam rasheeda and others, whose lives have been destroyed by this daily.

If you just scan through some of ther photos they put in the front page, you can find gory pictures of some accidents, some cadavers or some silly pictures that do not deserve any place in even a third rate newspaper.

Even the sports reporting is horrible. As an example I can quote the case where they tried to look for dirt when the Indian cricket team was participating in a tournament. All they want to highlight is whether Dravid had a tiff with Ganguly or Sachin etc and amidst all these they forget the action on the ground. Remember the saying,

'' Ksheeramullorakidin Chuvattilum Chora thanne kothukinu kouthukam'' .

Even the way they report the games is the 'pits', bcos all they do is to just state the obvious. The reporters are just not competent enough technically to analyse the games they are supposed to report.

However I have had enough. My enduration reached the breaking point two days ago, when the daily published a gory picture of an accident, where a thigh bone of a person who was involved in an accident was shown dangling from a tree branch. I wonder what news value they see in it. They could atleast have thought of the family members of the person, who might happen to see the picture, not to mention several small children, who see it. I had a hard time explaining to my child who happened to see the picture. He was traumatised when he saw it.

So now onwards there is no going over to the neighbour's place to borrow the Mathrubhumi, after I return from office, to get a feel that I have read a newspaper. Fortunately I also read the Hindu, which I beleive , one should handle like a holy book, in comparison to the Manorama.

All I have to say is this : If the Malayali feels that his daily dose of 'Pynkili ' via the soaps in the idiot box is not enough, or if he is in a mood to see some gore and violence, read some gossips, hear some scandals, go right ahead and get a dose of all this in the morning, thru the Malayala Manorama.

However if he needs to read a real news paper, which is unbiased in its reporting, he will have to look elsewhere. More and More people think this way. N. C. Chacko.

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