IN THE ONLINE JOURNALISM REVIEW, Mark Glaser has more on The Times of India’s assault on blogs — and the Indian blogosphere’s response:
“Maybe it’s premature, but if this goes where I think it’s going, it should go down in history as ‘The Great Indian Blog Mutiny,'” Gupta told me via e-mail. “The Times of India has simply shown how far they’ve come from being a respectable newspaper to being a common school bully. If bloggers can collaborate to provide humanitarian assistance for the greatest natural disaster the living world has seen, they can certainly tackle the Times of India, a man-made ethical disaster.” . . .
“In Pakistan, which is a dictatorship, you can’t criticize the government but you can criticize the media. In India, which is a flourishing democratic economy, you can criticise the government – but not the media. As a result of prosperity, the guardians of our freedom of expression have become cheap entertainment portals and spin doctors.” — Rohit Gupta, freelance writer and engineer in Mumbai.
I think that the Times of India has managed to blacken its own reputation with people worldwide.
UPDATE: Shanti Mangala is declaring war.