The idea came from Saurabh Bakshi, who on the very first day(Monday,29th March) of our College Campaign, suggested me that if we could somehow get Rahul’s case broadcast on a NEWS Channel then it would make the things lot easier. So I put up this idea in front of other members of the team. It was considered but couldn’t be implemented may be due to the fact that at that time, everybody was focussed at College level Collection.
So ultimately it came up to us(me and Harpreet) to implement it. I had already put up my efforts and plans to get it published in print media but there was some mis-communications and I was told to stop dealing with print media.
It all started on April 2nd, the first day of our Public fund raising Campaign. We(me and Harpreet) went to meet the officials of E TV. There we met Mr. Amit Srivastava who listened with concern and advised us to visit other News Channels too in this regard. Had he not encouraged our efforts and advised us on this, we might have dumped any further efforts in this direction.
So, then we visited SADHNA News Channel. There we got positive response from Mr. Ajay Tripathi. He told us to organise a fund raising Campaign. He assured us that he will get it covered and broadcast a story based on that on his Channel. We were very encouraged by his response. He showed us the way forward. Thereafter we visited Azad News Channel, there too we got very encouraging response.
And at last, we hit the JACKPOT- SAHARA SAMAY News Group. We knew that if we are able to convince these guys for broadcasting our story then our media target is almost achieved. So we entered fully prepared to lay our hand on the big fish. We met the Bureau Chief there. I talked to him with all my Communication skills at the best. My aim was to impress him with my talk and try to involve him emotionally by telling the facts, so that he agrees on running a story on us. After listening to us for about 5 minutes he put his hand on the Buzzer, a reporter came and he was instructed by the Bureau Chief- “इनके बाइट्स ले लो”.
So our work was done. Then we gave our bytes and left the place.
Thereafter we planned the Fund Raising Campaign in front of Jyoti Cineplex in the evening. I told Mritunjay to inform everybody to come for the Campaign.We got late by about half an hour.We called three News Channels and requested them to Cover our Campaign. By the end of our gathering there, more than 6 media houses had come to cover our Campaign. Our first Public fund raising Campaign was hugely successful. We hogged the media limelight and the Collection from this day’s Campaign alone touched 70k. It inspired us to work harder.
The next day(April 3rd, Sunday), we were called by SAHARA SAMAY News Group. We were required for a Live session. There Ravi and Harpreet sat in the broadcasting room and they were interviewed by a TV anchor who was talking from the studio in Noida. Our session went live at 11 am. A youtube link to that recording here-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W75pCa0lm8
I was in seventh heaven after this. Besides they told us that a similar story will be broadcast in Bihar-Jharkhand region too(which we later found out to be true).
With this, other News Channels(like Time Today TV) too started broadcasting our story. Print media now had no option but to publish our Campaign with prominence as it was already being aired on all the major News Channels. So we started getting full media coverage and it helped a lot.
Our vigorous media Campaign helped us in three major ways-
1) It fetched us some monetary help that we needed most.
2) It created a lot of Public awareness about our campaign and about Rahul’s plight, thus making our target much easier to achieve.
3) The media attention that we got, inspired us to work harder. Watching media persons lapping up our story actually invigorated us.
If you have to see the effect of media, just have a look at the ongoing IPL controversy. Apart from that, if you go a little back, just try to remember Manu Sharma’s Conviction(in Jessica Lal case), Ashok Todi’s CBI investigation(in Rizwan and Priyanka case), and in the recent past- SSP Rathore’s investigation(in Ruchika Girhotra case). These are just some cases to prove that media do play a major role in helping us achieve our target. And the case was no different here, we did get lot of help due to our media campaigns. Personally I would peg the combined commercial value of media campaign at more than 1 lac(though it is debatable). But anyway, our task was made lot easier due to support from electronic and print media.
So I think our media Campaign played a major role in achieving our target and I feel so proud that we just two persons(me and Harpreet) were able to handle the media(specially the News Channels) without any small help from any influential person.
Proud to get the big thing done !!!!
to be continued..........
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