Paid news has become a scourge for us. Particularly now, when the country is in the grip of election fever, we are having a surfeit of it Generally the human tendency is to believe everything that is published in a news paper or magazine. Nowadays, the TV is getting a lot of eyeball space. Channel surfers are in a quandary as to what is to be believed and what is not... Every channel has its own persuasive presenters, and what is shown is very believable. Some discerning readers have analyzed the matter and come to the conclusion that it is not the news gatherers only that are at fault. They realized and confirmed that it is the money power that is corrupting news papers and TV channels to a certain extent. The ordinary reader/ viewer cannot make out what are fakes and what is not. We are daily presented with several spurious drugs or other manufactured items, attractively packed. Taken in by the glistening packing we believe that what we see and buy is genuine. We hear of so many deaths caused, for example, by spurious liquor, so many farmers taking their lives because of destruction of their crops by spurious pesticides. These are only examples The paid news which is nothing but spurious news is much more devastating. We hear that Andhra Pradesh tops with the most number of cases filed. Is this scourge confined to India alone? We begin to ponder over whether news and articles about India appearing in foreign media are because the writers are swayed and mesmerized by their top level political sources in India . The sources will have their own axes to grind, and when an obliging media man lends his ear, the result is some distorted or biased interpretation of the situation in India. Recently some anti-Modi pieces have appeared in The Economist, Wall Street Journal, etc, and some intellectuals have joined hands to issue a statement against Modi as PM. Were these all the result of genuine analysis by them, or were they guided by our own top people who influenced the thinking of the writers??