British Blackberry article changed to SMS in India
By Techgirl

The Daily Telegraph is the largest circulating newspaper in the UK and its website is one of the most popular news sites in the world.  Press Trust of India (PTI) is the leading news agency in our country.  A Daily Telegraph article about how Blackberrys were predicted 100 years ago has been changed for an Indian audience.

Press Trust of India has picked up the Daily Telegraph article and rewritten it for its Indian audience. The articles are exactly the same in large parts, but for some reason best known to PTI, the Indian news agency has changed all references of Blackberry to SMS. This is another example of how few new things are there to report in technology. So many journalists are forced to rehash.

The Daily Telegraph article is titled ‘The Blackberry was first predicted more than a century ago’ and was published on May 3, 2010. It reads in part.

“
Tesla wrote that, one day it would be possible to transmit wireless messages all over the world. US President Barack Obama, a fan of the Blackberry, uses the device a lot.

The invention of the Blackberry was predicted over a 100 years ago by Tesla. Tesla, a pioneering American physicist, made the prediction about the portable messaging service in the Popular Mechanics magazine in 1909.

Tesla, whose name lives on at Tesla Motors, the electric car manufacturer, saw wireless energy as the only way to make electricity thrive.

He wrote in the magazine that, one day it would be possible to transmit wireless messages all over the world.

He imagined such a hand-held device would be simple to use and that, one day, everyone in the world would communicate to friends using it.

This, he added, would usher in a new era of technology.

The "Crackberry" as it has been dubbed for its addictive qualities, is popular with business executives and US President Barack Obama, but has struggled in Britain to widen its appeal to a younger demographic.

Seth Porges, the magazine’s technology editor, disclosed Tesla’s prediction at a presentation, titled “108 years of futurism”, to industry figures recently in New York.
“

India’s Press Trust of India, which employs 400 journalists and 500 stringers, picked up the article and changed the heading to ‘U.S. physicist visualised the concept of SMS in 1909’.  The PTI article was picked up by Hindu and a number of other national newspapers.

While Press Trust of India credited the Daily Telegraph in one paragraph, it dropped all references to Blackberry and instead presented it as if the American physicist had predicted the widespread use of SMS.  If you read the Telegraph and PTI article, you will see some paragraphs are exactly the same.

In terms of news value,  The Telegraph article is more holistic as it talks about a hand held portable device like Blackberry which can perform a number of functions.  The PTI article only talks about one function – SMS.

Such is the nature of technology journalism. There are few scoops and only a handful of original ideas every day.  Some in the tech media pick up ideas from other sites and try to add value for their readers. In this case, PTI may have lost value in its article.

Techgoss note: Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com