108. Newspapers make money by promoting cheating through advertisements. P S Remesh Chandran

108

Newspapers make money by promoting cheating through advertisements

P S Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum
 Article Title Image By Geralt. Graphics: Adobe SP.

The way in which most misleading articles reach the India people is through the news papers. The news papers in India are notoriously famous for investigating into the lives of peoples and bring out things concerning even their private lives. Even then it is unbelievable that they do not enquire and investigate into the credibility of their advertisers. If we are to believe that if it the advertisers who pay money for the existence of these papers and so they cannot investigate into the truthfulness of their advertisers’ claims, then we will have to simply think that once a newspaper brings out a few things about some person and if he pays, they will withdraw from bringing out more things. If the newspapers go after the story behind each of their advertisers, they will have enough thrilling stories to print through a decade. One or two examples can be mentioned here. At one time newspapers were full of full page advertisements of Teak, Manchium, Goat, Holiday Resort Time Share Farms and Plantations. When we found out that many of these Teak plantations had just below 1 acre of land in their possession, we brought this out and demanded newspapers in Kerala withdraw from giving these misleading advertisements. This racket collapsed, even though they themselves and the news papers also had made considerable money. Then newspapers began to give full page advertisements of misleading and incompetent computer training institutions. The newspapers made huge amounts each day. When we held a press conference in Trivandrum Press Club, challenged these advertisement giving institutions to prove their skills in an ingenuous test and demanded these advertisements be immediately stopped, this carnival also ended, to the dismay and anguish of the newspapers. Now they are after wonder medicines and wonder chains for quick money. Is it not the newspapers that can check this cheating at their source responsible for this massive scale robbery?

Article Title Image By Bank Phrom. Graphics: Adobe SP.

[In response to news article ‘Ads making tall claims to be brought under scanner’ on 03 November 2011]