'ROBBING PETER TO PAY PAUL' -- HMM... THINK THE HEADER'S ALL MESSED UP

It's one of Republican candidate John McCain's fav jokes, but we'll just tweak it a bit to our advantage...
QUESTION: What's the difference between a cat-fish and journo?
ANSWER: One is a low-life, bottom-feeding scum-sucker; the other's a fish."

We did tell you a few days ago that we'd do another post illustrating concerns expressed by Preetu Nair on how a "few local journos and their editors play host to a corrupt system". We've managed to fish out more for you this time.
Its about this journo called hmm... Mr P, who's just hopped jobs from a newspaper with small circulation to a newspaper, that's just about set to munch them all.
We think we've mentioned Mr P sometime back on the blog too... Just that Preetu's recent observation has made us put some information available with us into proper context.
This Mr P hails from the coast in Bardez. Oh its a great place to be in. Cops love the coast for the moolah they can rake in. They love a posting here... Raking in the pennies and the pounds plus, few awards here and there, for all the 'meritorious' work put in during the tourist season. Some of us journos follow the same path of success... Mr P has been doing the same all this while.
So what was this Coastal Regulatroy Zone (CRZ) blackmail racket, we talked about... No no you thought wrong, Claude has nothing to do with it... Its about this same Mr P...
See, sometime back a particular English language newspaper decided to run a series on CRZ violations along the coast. Mr P thought it a great opportunity to cruise along.
The strategy he adopted was simple enough. A real win-win strategy.
You narrow down on a genuine CRZ violation. You then approach the owner of the property and offer him a deal. The deal is two pronged.
1) My newspaper is doing this story on CRZ violations. The CRZ violations you have committed is a story enough for me. Gimme an X amount of money and I will drop the story. or
2) If you don't gimme the money, I'll run the story anyway. And maybe line up for an award somewhere down the line.
We know of two instances where Mr P has approached guys who have violated the CRZ norms in Bardez. They were offered the same proposition we have stated above with some variations. In one instance, Mr P actually asked for a residential flat instead of money for dropping a story, while in the other case Mr P asked for an X amount of money and a car.
Its really Preetu's timely observation, that gave us an opportunity to contextualise this input, else folks would have interpreted this as some kind of a witch-hunt.
One more thing, we dunno if you noticed this guys... ever since we put up the notice, that we are coming with up with this 'CRZ and the art of blackmail' post, we've received a hell of lot abuse. More than the usual. We suspect, that it was Mr P himself trying to psyche us out of this post. Its there for you to see, a lot of a Fs & Bs which we did not approve, but there's still a truckload of brickbats we've received since that post...
Hey thats fine with us... while bouquets make us blush, brickbats only make us tougher. So keep em coming.
As an after-thought... We think despite all the whetting by the HR dept, Derrick the TOI Goa editor doesn't know what he's got on his plate. Barring Paul Fernandes (one nice guy we know for sure. There might be a few others too. Very few), a messy lot has slipped into their reporting team, including a very very dicey trinity. And imagine a reporter's desk led by a guy like Raju Nayak. Phew... You could actually play a few mixed doubles tennis teams with the number of raqueteers TOI has unfortunately roped in...