Headline opinions!!!

I was late to work today …. I stayed back to listen to the Headline news. Then, I got into an argument with my colleague on some trivial issue. We were discussing about something we read on the Newspaper. We discussed and argued and spent a good amount of time over the topic. We do this very often. It is sometimes on ‘How the Tamil Nadu government can allow non-brahmins to perform pujas in temples’, sometimes it is the war in Iraq, sometimes it is the dropping of Ganguly from the team… reservation issue, poverty in India, religion, on how to bring-up children, on how doctors publish contradictory reports etc… the list is not small and we always have something to discuss.

It is good to have some meaningful discussions especially politics, the things we can not discuss with our spouse at home. The wrong thing here is that most of the discussions are based upon the headline news that we read and listen half-heartedly.

I wonder how many of the discussions we have are based on thorough research and not just reading some ‘masala’ website. I remember discussing with my friend on an incident that happened few years back, when a SC/ST girl from Kerala committed suicide for not being able to continue her studies. There was a mini-bandh in Kerala and the buses and other properties were destroyed. I too was upset on the girl’s death and we argued on how wrong things are. My opinion was based on after reading one newspaper. When I read different newspapers, I got more details and a different version of the event. Now, whom do I trust? I read few more newspapers and after spent some time every day to read the story about this subject and finally I came to the conclusion that the whole incident was unwarranted. The girl died for completely different reason than as first reported. How many people would have resorted to violence by reading/hearing the first report? Who is to blame? Is it not our fault to jump to conclusions based on reading just the headline and not reading the whole story?

What would be a society where people’s opinions, views, thoughts and actions are based upon headline news that changes from time to time and from source to source, a society where people do not have enough time to think thoroughly about anything?