{"id":8002,"date":"2010-12-20T05:39:09","date_gmt":"2010-12-20T05:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/2010\/12\/20\/200-mn-pti-lie\/"},"modified":"2010-12-20T05:39:09","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T05:39:09","slug":"200-mn-pti-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/200-mn-pti-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"$200 mn PTI lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Neeraj: Truth on Obama\u2019s India trip<\/strong> : $200 million. That\u2019s roughly the amount the US spends each day on the war in Afghanistan. But India\u2019s \u2018premier news agency\u2019 Press Trust of India (PTI) chose to put this price tag on US President Barack Obama\u2019s November visit to India, a claim quickly dismissed by the White House as wildly inflated.<\/p>\n

When I heard about this story<\/a>, it didn\u2019t pass the sniff test, even after applying some fuzzy math<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Well, on the eve of Obama\u2019s India visit, PTI trumpeted that the US President\u2019s trip to India will cost $200 million a day. But was there any basis in fact for the reports? I felt cheated.<\/p>\n

Even history suggests the news was false. First, the source of the news report was an unidentified Indian government official. Then the news agency also reported that the United States was sending 34 warships to protect Obama. Both the news stories were declined by the White House as greatly exaggerated.<\/p>\n

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said, \u201cThe numbers reported in this article have no basis in reality,\u201d and are \u201cwildly inflated,\u201d but \u201cdue to security concerns,\u201d he would not offer an alternative price tag.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon also addressed the story. \u201cI will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd this notion that somehow we were deploying 10 per cent of the Navy, some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier, in support of the president\u2019s trip to Asia,\u201d Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.<\/p>\n

A myth busting website \u2014 snopes.com<\/a> \u2013 noted that even if the Indian press had correctly reported the size of the president\u2019s entourage \u2013 3,000 \u2013 the cost would work out to $66,000 per person per day, \u201ca figure that stretches credulity to the breaking point.\u201d The website factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, noted that the entire war in Afghanistan costs $190 million a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe claims appear to be wrong. The numbers evidently originate with the Press Trust of India, whose report was linked on the Drudge Report and picked up by Fox News host Glenn Beck. The news agency also wrongly said that the White House had blocked off the entire Taj Mahal Palace hotel for Obama\u2019s visit and that the US was stationing 34 warships\u2014roughly 10 per cent of the naval fleet\u2013off the coast of Mumbai for security reasons. The agency attributed the $200 million figure to an anonymous Indian government official. It didn\u2019t attribute the warships claim to any source,\u201d wrote Holly Bailey on Yahoo news blog The Upshot.<\/p>\n

James Gerstenzang, a former reporter who has covered numerous foreign trips by presidents for the Los Angeles Times, actually laughed at the $200 million a day figure, which he guessed was probably inflated by a factor of 10. \u201cIt really bothers me when numbers like that get thrown around by both sides for political reasons, without it being backed up,\u201d Gerstenzang said.<\/p>\n

Writing for the USA Today<\/a>, veteran reporter David Jackson, who has travelled on a number of foreign trips by presidents, said, \u201cNo, President Obama\u2019s trip is not going to cost $200 million a day. That figure \u2014 first thrown out by a single Indian media outlet and now viral on conservative talk radio \u2014 is wildly, wildly off the mark.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then why did the news agency file flatly false or misleading reports about Obama\u2019s trip? And I am doubly shocked now to find PTI editor-in-chief M.K. Razdan self-patting on PTI\u2019s role during Obama\u2019s India visit, as his latest House Journal boasts that \u201cPresident Barack Obama\u2019s visit to India grabbed world attention. It expectedly generated huge media buzz in India\u2026\u201d. Certainly the visit could have grabbed the world attention for better reasons, Mr. Razdan.<\/p>\n

And by the way, how much actually did President Obama\u2019s trip to India cost, Mr. Razdan? No, no. I won\u2019t ask you again.<\/p>\n

\u0915\u0908 \u092c\u0921\u093c\u0947 \u092e\u0940\u0921\u093f\u092f\u093e \u0939\u093e\u0909\u0938\u094b\u0902 \u092e\u0947\u0902 \u0935\u093f\u092d\u093f\u0928\u094d\u0928 \u092a\u0926\u094b\u0902 \u092a\u0930 \u0915\u093e\u092e \u0915\u0930 \u091a\u0941\u0915\u0947 \u0928\u0940\u0930\u091c \u092d\u0942\u0937\u0923 \u0907\u0928 \u0926\u093f\u0928\u094b\u0902 \u0938\u094d\u0935\u0924\u0902\u0924\u094d\u0930 \u092a\u0924\u094d\u0930\u0915\u093e\u0930, \u092e\u0940\u0921\u093f\u092f\u093e \u090f\u0915\u094d\u091f\u093f\u0935\u093f\u0938\u094d\u091f \u0914\u0930 \u0935\u0947\u092c \u091c\u0930\u094d\u0928\u0932\u093f\u0938\u094d\u091f<\/a> \u0915\u0947 \u0930\u0942\u092a \u092e\u0947\u0902 \u0938\u0915\u094d\u0930\u093f\u092f \u0939\u0948\u0902.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Neeraj: Truth on Obama\u2019s India trip<\/strong> : $200 million. That\u2019s roughly the amount the US spends each day on the war in Afghanistan. But India\u2019s \u2018premier news agency\u2019 Press Trust of India (PTI) chose to put this price tag on US President Barack Obama\u2019s November visit to India, a claim quickly dismissed by the White House as wildly inflated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1081,1082],"class_list":["post-8002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vividh","tag-neeraj-bhushan","tag-niraj-bhushan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}