Fooling themselves

Worldwide, the media has a long history of putting out April Fools' pranks on April 1 - starting with the legendary BBC TV broadcast on April 1, 1957 that purportedly was about the bumper "spaghetti harvest" that year - Italy's pasta bushes, the programme claimed, had done spectacularly well. The Guardian, for example, this year parodied the recent Google Glass launch by pretending they had released Guardian Goggles, an "immersive experience" in the venerable British newspaper's content "because life's too short to think for yourself". The Indian media did less well this year. Sure, Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN fooled a few on Twitter when he announced Narendra Modi would debate the publicity-shy Rahul Gandhi on his news show. And Anant Rangaswami, on Firstpost.com, won over a few with his spoof report that the all-knowing Justice Katju would be moved from the Press Council to the Research and Analysis Wing. But Firstpost.com's attempt to pretend that Modi had apologised for the 2002 Gujarat riots was widely complained of as being in poor taste, and most of the media's other offerings were not much better. The funniest Indian media-related April 1 joke, in the end, belongs to South African foreign ministry spokesman Clayson Monyela. On being told of a newspaper report in India that New Delhi was angry that Manmohan Singh had not had a one-on-one with South African President Jacob Zuma, he said: "Must be an April Fools' Day joke."