Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Sachin Tendulkar Book controversy

A few days ago I came across a news piece on Sachin Tendulkar's autobiographical type book with collection of some rare pictures of his life. There were many salient features of this book such as only ten copies of this book were going to be published and they were priced at a whopping price of around Thirty Seven Lakh Indian rupees.(only good part was this whole amount was supposed to go for charity purpose) but
the main attraction (?) of this book was that each copy of the book was supposed to contain Sachin Tendulkar's autograph with his own blood!
Now this made me restless! I thought how Sachin Tendulkar could have agreed to do such a stunt? Though neither I am a sports person nor do I have any special liking for cricket, I surely have special respect for Sachin. He most certainly is a great Indian personality and is also a good human being. So definitely this piece of news about his blood-signed book made me think negative about the whole idea and Sachin himself. Look at the media power! It can surely change perceptions. I was not happy about this news.
After reading this news in all major newspapers, finally there was clarification by Sachin Tendulkar himself that he had not agreed to sign copies of this book with his blood and this false piece of information was complete rubbish. Now came the clarification from the publishers that they were misunderstood and misquoted by the media. If such was the case why the clarification came by Sachin first? This was a cheap publicity stunt. Even for a good cause one shall not rely on such petty measures. Media also has a responsibility. It shall verify the facts before publishing news but in today's cut throat competition that cares about veracity of any news item? 'We shall be the first to break the news' is the mantra of any news agency, news paper.
Thank God Sachin didn't sign the book with his blood!

2 comments:

  1. There should be a Quality Assurance check on news media regarding veracity of news that can affect public sentiments. The news media that do not comply to the standards should be black listed. This will ensure that the news media think twice before publishing such false information.

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  2. but he has given a DNA sample of his frm a mouth swab... so no blood on the book, but the DNA of the genius will be der...!!!

    but finally vikas, a harworking guy made it big... instead of learning frm him ppl idolise him and use cheap tricks...!

    Regards,

    Srilaxmi V. Pai

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