The Shame of being Barkha Dutt

I liked Barkha Dutt. I thought she was a good journalist. That is until recently. When terrorists stuck Mumbai I stayed glued to TV to find out how we are fighting back. And at that time, time and again, I saw Barkha Dutt reducing herself to a pitiable sham of a journalist, to put it mildly.

Sample these.

She tells, standing in front of the camera, that Sabina Saikia, a journalist with the Times Group, is in the 6th Floor of the Taj Hotel. Next thing we know is that she dies at the hands of the terrorists.

Then, flushing her sense of shame down the toilet, she interviews Shantanu Saikia, Sabina's husband, and here is her question, "What have you been telling your kids about their mother?" Shantanu broke down hearing this question, and Barkha continued, "I hope we haven't upset you with these questions."

Barkha goes to the people standing for their loved ones trapped inside and asks, "What do you feel right now?" and I was like, "What do you expect them to feel?"

Barkha Dutt is shamelessness, stupidity, immorality personified. The only thing she knows is gloating in her imagined-sense-of-aura-called-barkha thing. I hate her and NDTV since that time.

One Mr. Kunte, unable to see all these, wrote an article about her irresponsible journalism, aptly and mildly titled, "Shoddy Journalism". In his article Kunte exposed Barkha completely. Barkha got really angry reading it and used all her borrowed might (of NDTV) to sue Kunte. Now, Kunte is a wise man. He knows that his job is done and in any case there is not much point in trying to match the dog in barking. He promptly issued an apology in which much to the delight of many readers he made the same points which he had made in the original article. Barkha again got doubly angry but couldn't have done much. So she did what she does best. Churned up some crap which she tried to sell under the garb of journalism.

She hosted this talk show to debate whether or not (hold your breath, don't laugh) blogs should be regulated. I had a good laugh watching it. Here it is if you haven't seen it yet.