Media Watch: How was the block buster Chak De India born. That was when scriptwriter-Lyricist Jaideep Sahni found out to his wonderment just a 3-inch space in print media for the girls who won the gold at the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
Even that 3-inch space was not there for the girls now as the following statistics would prove. India won the Finals of Champions Challenge II on Saturday around 8-30 PM, within five minutes this site carried out all details. Further, the official FIH website too highlighted the win around 10.15 PM. Still, except one English Daily, none others in India could even mention that India won the Cup in their paper next day.
Only newspaper out of six I took up for study cared to mention semifinal and finals results of the Champions Challenge Cup II. The details are
Times of India
Semifinal not mentioned
Final result not mentioned
Hindustan Times
Semifinal not mentioned
Final result not mentioned
Indian Express
Semifinal not mentioned
Final result not mentioned
Tribune
Semifinal not mentioned
Final result not mentioned
Mail Today
Semifinal not mentioned
Final result not mentioned
The Hindu
Semifinal mentioned
Final result mentioned
Probably as these papers did not mention the semis results, which arrived official website well in the day time, they all decided to give a goodbye to finals as well! As we already pointed out no paper in India carried out the result of first match as well, which India won 5-3. Perhaps that day the whole press was watching Sri Lanka – Pakistan World Cup cricket final. Even that type of occasion was not there with respect to Kazan semifinal and final dates, still vast section of Indian population were not told of this rare women hockey success.
Now, let us hope the most intelligent heads in the media would not say the Kazan event is not of top grade!
Media is certainly casual and careless towards a performing women sport which is not a desirable development.
However Ball Boy Bunt2 has a point. He expects another film producer now will come out with a better film than Chak De! India.
Note: Never carried away by the newspaper websites. What appears in print is vastly different from frequently updated sites. All the papers quoted above are Delhi edition only.