The often asked question is why if we voluntarily surrendered the Mercedes Benz dealership in 2009 , have we now started the campaign to expose Mercedes Benz. The answer does not lie with us but with the media.
The Indian public has to realize that the media today in India can be termed a “purchasable commodity”. Why do we say this? Every single part of the automotive press, the national press, printed media and electronic media to whom we have repeatedly addressed our appeals for an impartial review of the complaints on not only our vehicles but whom we have supplied with incontrovertible written evidence in MBIPL’s own papers, documents and instances of loss of life & limb by owners of Mercedes Benz vehicles has alongwith MBIPL adopted a systematic practice of ignoring all calls from us.
It really makes us wonder as to what we can believe each day when we open our morning papers or read our auto magazines or listen to what is shown to us on TV.
From our own experience, we can definitely say that we can choose between calling all their so called reporting as pure hogwash or down right lies or half truths.
It is an open guess as to why their souls are sold to the more powerful bidder and truth and independent opinion take a back seat.
We are not talking about the average man on the street or locally published single sheeters. We are talking about national newspapers, electronic media and so called “largest circulated vernacular press”.
Beginning from 2009, we have provided to those who claimed to form public opinion in this country, hundreds of documents pertaining to illegal activities as evidence of malafide suppression of information by MBIPL. We presume that these same stalwarts of the media were so busy reporting minor house breaks and normal police complaints, that they did not even have time to spare to investigate and form an independent opinion on anything to do with Mercedes Benz cars in India.
What is a sure sign of our power over these sold out media organizations is their total refusal to even accuse us of spreading false information either. They have been prepared so well that after filing the flimsy and diversionary response of Mercedes Benz they do not ever follow up with the most obvious question which is “Why does Mercedes not respond to the allegations of secret recall campaigns and cover up of life threatening defects“.
The coordinated silence of both speaks loud and clear.
Does it really surprise you that this list begins with NDTV and ends with the DNA in Ahmedabad and includes such great “institutions like those sampled here“.
The automotive press, of course, we have found to be so busy traveling presumably at the expense of these same companies and writing such fantastic and glowing reports about fantastic Mercedes Benz vehicles that perhaps they have failed to understand the meaning of all the service circulars and cover up stories which have been given to them by us for many years which are written in ordinary plain English. May be they can understand the languages of press releases and PR brokers better, overlooking the fact that in our own area, two young people have lost their lives to the best of our knowledge due to system failure of engineering in Mercedes Benz vehicles, where the families are either denied technical data or forged versions have been supplied.
You, as buyers and users, would really be the beneficiary if this question was asked of magazines like Autocar, Overdrive, Zig Wheels, Motoring, Topgear, Autobid etc. and their national level editors and correspondent like Mr.Hormaz Sorabji, Mr. Bhavesh Thakur, Mr. Sandeep Khosla, Mr. Adil Jal Darukhanawala, Mr. Krishnan Srinivas, Mr. Aseem Kapoor etc. as to why they have never brought these failures to your attention or offered a satisfactory technical response from Mercedes Benz. As the supreme court has clarified for the sake of legal processes “mere denial is no defence”, so to does the common man believe this.
It is only the media for which this rule does not apply. Here the rule seems to be “Repeat anything perpetually without shame and it becomes true”.
Only one independent minded lady Journalist Ms. Sucheta Dalal dared to ask direct questions in Moneylife “The truth about Mercedes Benz India-1 : Sneakily replacing dangerously defective parts!” as on 13/08/2012 and “The truth about Mercedes India-2 : Absence of regulation” as on 14/08/2012.
Promptly they were informed by a letter on a blank piece of paper that it was being “considered to file a defamation case against Cama Motors Pvt. Ltd. (CMPL)”. These famous last words have been quoted to the press in the case of every dissenter. The press obliges the company by printing these lines and puts the whistleblower in a basket of “disgruntled parties” with an axe to grind. Now the credibility of the whistleblower is eroded while hard evidence is slowly brushed under the carpet.
This is the partnership of the press and big money.
In our case the so called “defamation case” was filed in the Ahmedabad courts after we had filed a case for life threatening defects being covered up and warning lights being disabled across the board for common life threatening defects. We also filed for damages for a sum of Rs.211 Crores for the vengeful destruction of our 80 year old business and an attempt to damage our business ethics and reputation. However this defamation case filed as an afterthought is against our constitutional rights. Not one member of the press has asked for this “defamation case” and studied it or they would be obliged to point out that it also violates the constitutional rights of the citizens of India.
It must be added that a microscopic minority of the online media such as Rushlane.com(article 1),Rushlane.com(article 2), Team-BHP, Nabanita Singh Roy’s Blog etc. have stood by their professional ethics and asked the right questions from both sides.