Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Misleading headlines.

We do anything for numbers. By we I mean media. These days all kinds of headlines are made up to catch the attention. When you go to the details there is no connection between headlines and the report. Look at this particular piece, it appeared in the website http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/9302.asp I paste it here so no one has to go clicking to look for it.

"As IT outsourcing demand in India falls apart Indian IT training institutes leave India in search of life abroad"

This is the headline. When I first read it I thought Oh god it is already happening? Questions - how and to whom are we losing to came up so I read on.

IT education and training major NIIT Ltd will set up 85 training centres across the world over the next 12 months with an investment of Rs 20 crore. "Out of the 85, 60 would be opened in India and rest in China and in other locations," NIIT Chief Executive Officer Vijay Thadani said. The time-frame for this expansion has begun six months ago and some investments of the slated Rs 20 crore has already been made in upgrading some of the existing centres, he said. NIIT currently has over 3,500 learning centres in 31 countries with over 700 centres being in India. NIIT Ltd today entered into a strategic partnership with Sun Microsystems to introduce specialised education and training programmes for students on Sun's technologies.

The piece no where says anything about outsourcing demand falling apart. In fact the NIIT chief says that "out of 85 centres planned 60 would be in India" Wow he must be losing his mind. They are opening so many centres when the demand for outsourcing is "falling apart" Isn't that called hara-kiri? Even in terms of plain commonsense? Don't think the reporter who got the press release or the subbie who put it up thought about it. He or she just thought "Hey its about outsourcing (is it ?the report actually talks about training centres, some one help me understand the connection if there is one) so let me make up some whacky line. " Sure they got me reading but then they are not gonna have me reading the rest of their site...ever. Unless I want to get my daily dose of media sensation.

Talking about headlines, Last week sometime Sachin (apna sachu) ruled himself out for the test squad to WI. So NDTV decided to ask our Mr. Dependable what he thought of it. The headlines read something like "It does not matter if Sachin is not there." Now I am not a big fan of Sachin but I was shocked that Dravid would actually say something so blatantly. Whether they play good cricket or not, our boys in blue (or is it men in blue) sure know the art of diplomacy. So this was shocking. Bitten, I sat through many many reports about reservations to see the report. And then Dravid filled my screen and said in a very typical way something to the effect "it would have been great to have Sachin. Unfortunately he can't be part of the team, now we have to play without him. This will give the younger players a chance......" Now where did he say "It does not matter if Sachin is not there"?

Unfortunately I can't stop watching NDTV cos my cable fellow refuses to give me any other English news channel! Life's bloody unfair I tell you.

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