Spelling mistakes are granted absolution, by default. Ambiguity in reporting is tolerable, though wih a pinch of salt. Both these follies can be disguised as opportunities, to learn the correct spellings for sure and not to forget them ever, and in the second case, to derive our own opinion of the news being reported, instead of being fed in by the inevitable bias of current-day media. But the levels of mediocrity which have surpassed spelling errors and typos, want us to take a serious decision: either to cry or laugh, over the time and money spent on newspapers these days.
Even though I had long-ago made the decision to not spend time on newspapers, I do browse through them now and then. Having recently read a book on the sainthood process in Christianity, this news item (TOI dated 02/05/2011) attracted my attention, only to confirm my belief that I should not spend time on reading newspapers. I wonder what the editor was thinking of when this piece of news went into print; either of these?
1) Nobody's going to read the article, or the whole of it; so anything can be printed.
2) The tiny bit of sleaze should be printed twice to get noticed.
If this size of an article requires TOI to print the same sentences twice at different places, what is the status of those half-paged and full-paged articles? And with this kind of mediocrity present in the basic function of disseminating news, what is the degree of sincerity and seriousness in the much-hyped "social initiatives" of the media...
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