India Uncut
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Monday, June 05, 2006
Mayawati = Times of India
In a shocking admission, Mayawati has said that she has given party tickets to people in return for money.
This seems to me rather similar to the Times of India selling editorial space. In either case, I wouldn't complain about these transactions if they were transparent. In ToI's case, that would mean clearly indicating that the space had been sold, with an emblem like, to take an existing example, "advertorial." (They used to put an 'M' sign on each such article; they no longer do.) In Mayawati's case, it would be with an announcement that a particular candidate had paid money for his ticket at the time of announcing his candidature. After that, let the readers decide how seriously they'd like to take an article, and let the voters decide who they want to vote for.
Withholding this information, though, amounts to breaking the implicit compact between newspaper and reader, political party and voter. It would seem, though, that most readers and voters don't particularly care much. What to do then?
This seems to me rather similar to the Times of India selling editorial space. In either case, I wouldn't complain about these transactions if they were transparent. In ToI's case, that would mean clearly indicating that the space had been sold, with an emblem like, to take an existing example, "advertorial." (They used to put an 'M' sign on each such article; they no longer do.) In Mayawati's case, it would be with an announcement that a particular candidate had paid money for his ticket at the time of announcing his candidature. After that, let the readers decide how seriously they'd like to take an article, and let the voters decide who they want to vote for.
Withholding this information, though, amounts to breaking the implicit compact between newspaper and reader, political party and voter. It would seem, though, that most readers and voters don't particularly care much. What to do then?
