India’s most reputable newspaper, the Times of India, which many buy, a few read and one or two people trust, has come under attack by a malicious blogger with ulterior motives. The newspaper naturally sent him a legal notice and as a result, the slanderer had to shut down the site.

Now the unfortunate thing about the internet is that it allows one to be anonymous and post whatever they like without any accountability. For example, although an article is taken off from a site, it can often still be found at Google’s cache for days after the deletion, and certain irresponsible people can post copies of the offending article on anonymously hosted sites which are often physically located outside the country. Such a thing seems to have happened in this case. The nineteen posts which the malicious blogger had removed can now be found at another blog. The person who did this should be ashamed of himself. I think it is time we bloggers highlighted the problem.

It is also time we bloggers closed in to protect the reputation of the Times of India from further slander. We should point out that many of the things being whispered about it are NOT true. The Times of India does NOT sell news. I am sure that every article printed by the newspaper is chosen because the editor thinks that it would interest the reader, and not because someone paid the newspaper to run the story. I know from personal experience that the newspaper treats its readers with respect, and does not think that every news item has to be peppered with a photograph of a hollywood starlet in a bikini to make it palatable to him. The unfounded rumours about the newspaper being run by a bunch of overgrown schoolboys who think it more important that headlines contain puns than that they convey any meaning, are absolutely baseless.