NAZI-GATE: GUYS, IT’S TIME WE ‘KILLED’ JOHANN BACH

WHEN THE MEDIA WENT ‘BACH’ING UP THE WRONG TREE
We begin with this post with a premise, so that some of those readers who have any seditionist, trans-nation conspiracy notions about this blog, shed these ideas before we move forward.

Nowadays the charge of sedition is as commonplace as a tavern on a Goan street.
As journalists, we are ashamed at the way the Indian media reported the two most sensational murders in recent times. These tragedies virtually grabbed the attention of Western and Northern regions of India. Its the murders of Scarlett Keeling at Anjuna, Goa and Arushi Talwar in NOIDA, near Delhi we are talking about.
While initially, the media did play a role in bringing police incompetency to the fore in these two cases, they completely went hell-for-leather subsequently.

The media behaved like this stallion, which ran for almost two weeks till it collapsed dead… Why? Cause it had overheard that the stud farm owner tell the stable boy, “the moment those nuts bounce back into the barn, snip em off.”
Sure no one wants to be a gelding… But is being called an ass, any better?
Every tidbit, every rumour, every sliver of gossip, unconfirmed stories reported by the TV media and the print media on the Arushi-Scarlett murder, were projected as if they telling the viewer the gospel truth.

Dodgy, fishy theories floated by the police were often lassoed and then branded by the media as their own ‘investigative’ work.
Bob Dylan would have probably explained the credibility crisis in the media with a verse like this…

No confirming facts
No editorial rigor
No editorial tact
Just point a gun, jerk the trigger

Not only were these salacious, mischievous make-belief morsels just reported, they were amplified, till your ears ran shrill and you felt like scalping a journo or two yourself.
Perfectly respectable broadsheets had turned into yellow dossiers of journalistic verbiage. The media became an unfortunate catalyst which converted gossip to gospel.
We, Penpricks, saw a story in this.

NAZI-GATE is our effort to highlight the glaring deficiencies in the media, in a language the media knows best... NAZI-GATE is an attempt by Penpricks to pay the media back in its own unworthy coin.

We believe, this expose says it all about present day journalism. An age where FANTASTIC has an edge over whatever’s REAL.
Ask the editors of Deccan Herald, Asian Age, Deccan Chronicle, Daily Times, Indian Express, Times of India, Telegraph (Calcutta), New Indian Express, Gomantak Times, Dainik Gomantak, Herald, Goa Doot… By now they should acknowledge it… and in case they should disagree just whisper Perus Narkp in their ears… These are just some of the guys who carried the story.
These are the guys who actually went about ‘Bach’ing up the wrong tree… ;)

So what the f… is PERUS NARKP
The Anagrams
PERUS NARKP: It’s an anagram for SUPER PRANK. Hartosh, Siddharth Vardharajan, Jonathan Allen, Rajesh Ramchandran, Krishna Prasad… you guys got this one right…
MARSHA TIKASH WAHNAAB: Its not Akshit, nor is it Bhawana Sharma… It’s scrambled for Shrama Shakti Bhawaan. It’s the name of the building complex in Panaji, Goa which houses the offices of the Goa Union of Journalists. Take our word on this, with Suhasini Prabhugaunkar as the union president, its no short of a concentration camp ;)
MALAK DULAB: Just one guy managed to crack this one… We’d said Malak Abdul heads the Perus Narkp, the intelligence wing of the German Chancellor’s Core. It’s scrambed for former president ABDUL KALAM. Since neither Perus Narkp nor German Chancellor's Core doesnt exist, the question of Malak Dulab's existence doesnt arise either.
EHT REA ENP CABK SKRIPC: That was a twirl of text fringing the Perus Narkp logo on the press note. We felt this should have been a give away, if there was any… But it fooled these ???? dumbkoffs ???? again for quite a while… Unscramble this and you get THE PEN PRICKS ARE BACK

HOW DID WE GO ABOUT IT
We love Bach… We simple love Bach's music.

And such is our faith in him that we knew he’d see us through this story.

Next we scanned the internet for a suitable photograph of an old gramp from somewhere o

ut side India with obvious European features. We found one pic that suited our purpose. And attached it with the pressnote… Sorry gramps, whoever you are, wherever you are.

Then we picked up a predictable looking German logo with an Eagle on it, using google images. And then used Micrsoft Word Art to adorn it with our logo.

The address on the press note is a slight variation of the official address of Berlin

police. We then used Yahoo Babel software to slip a few German words in, to make the press note sound official. The phone numbers mentioned do not lead to the Berlin police.

The signature we picked up from google images again.
Now the tricky part. The story.

The Goan media loves an easy feed. Give them an 800 word press note about a minister inaugurating a public toilet and chances are it should appear the next day, not a word changed. With the Indian media, we needed something idiotic and exotic.

The Bach story suited our bill.

In fabricating the story, we slipped in a lot of these anagrams PERUS NARKP, MALAK DULAB etc… (There’s nothing that conveys a message quicker and effectively than the fact

that you’ve been not only proven wrong, but stupid too)

Then a thought crossed our minds… Since we had included Bach in the story, why don’t we throw in a piano for good effect too? So we included a 18th century piano, the same century Bach was born in.

Then we turned the heat on a bit more.
We also stated in the press note that this fictitious SS Colonel Johann Bach too loved music and was a talented musician… And that our fictitious character was sired to Ambrosius Bach

in Eisenach. These were the real birth details of the 18th century Bach too. Check it up on wiki.

We mailed this press note to several newspaper houses in Goa. We called three newspapers too introducing ourselves as Hamman Smit, a press official working for the Perus Narkp. The thick German accent seemed to have passed muster. In fact Suhas Belekar who works for a Marathi publication in Goa, Dainik Gomantak appeared happy and grateful to have even spoken to a person of German origin on the other end of phone. Maybe its the Aryan thing...

Once the story was picked up by the local media, the national newspaper swooped in quite literally like vultures eager to pick prey.

The story seems to have really spread quickly over the weekend. That's fine, but we sincerely hope lessons have been learnt. Hope newspaper desks anywhere in India spend a bit more time fact-checking and running checks, before letting stories through. Sure mistakes can happen, but lets not manufacture facts, shall we guys like the way Deccan Herald, Telegraph or rediff.com have done.

Over the next few days, we'll run two other parts to this story. The first part will scrutinise how this story was covered by the national press. We'll also rank the newspapers by the quality of their fibbing on this story.

The slag they have added, the issues they have tweaked. The second will look at the role of the local Goan media in allowing NAZI-GATE to happen...

Till then...

Odog Culk (DAMN... thats good luck)

P.S. Here's a copy of the ATTN PRESS NOTE --...PERUS NARKP press note that started it all...