William F. Buckley Jr, the founder of the National Review “who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the centre of American political discourse”, has passed away at the age of 82, and David Brooks has a warm op-ed piece on his mentor, in the New York Times:…
Monthly Archives: February 2008
How media demonises Muslims in war on terror
GAURI LANKESH writes from Bangalore: Recently, three young men were arrested in Hubli and Honnali towns in the southern Indian state of Karnataka on charges of vehicle theft. Since all of them happened to belong to the Muslim community, within a day of their arrests, police sources leaked to the media that they suspected the…
God moves in mysterious ways for a 3-year-old
While media mavens feverishly debate whether journalists should abandon their professional duties and lend a hand in moments of crisis, a three-year-old Afghan girl born with a deadly skin disorder that could claim her life if left untreated, is being operated by Western surgeons, thanks to the efforts of an Italian photojournalist, reports the BBC.…
Reading a paper without getting your feet wet
The 15th international yoga festival was held in Pondicherry last month, and blogger Ursi showcases one of the many brilliant posters on view. Link via Boing Boing
Wedding report lands newspaper in trouble
A newspaper in the northeastern Indian state of Assam faces a “ban” in four Bodo-dominated districts after it reported the extravagant wedding of a former militant who now heads the Bodoland Territorial Council. The news report of around Rs 4 crore (approximately $100,000) being spent on the wedding of Hagrama Mohilary came less than a…
MUST READ: 10 rules keep a lawsuit away
Blogs, social networks and citizen media sites have created a myriad new avenues for citizen participation. But it’s not all ha-ha-hee-hee; the sword of lawsuits with scary damages hangs over journalists and citizen journalists. How can CJs protect themselves? The Knight Citizen News Network lists ten rules for limiting legal risk, and gets Jeff Jarvis…
Look, who inspired R.K. Laxman’s Common Man!
As India gets ready for its annual budget exercise, amid hints of its likely to be a populist one on the eve of a general election, M.J. Akbar, editor-in-chief of The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, writes in the Khaleej Times: “The Common Man is getting a budget; does the Common Man have a face?…
Should Hitler have been asked to explain?
The media has been a key player in Raj Thackeray‘s hate campaign against “outsiders” in Bombay. In giving him the oxygen of publicity, in editorialising news, in fanning the flames by repeatedly showing file pictures, in not dealing with the issue with balance and proportion, the media has come under scrutiny from the Union cabinet,…
‘Horse carriage makers didn’t make the cars’
Netscape founder Marc Andreessen in an interview with Frank Hornig of Der Spiegel: “The Internet is becoming real now in a way it has never been before. It’s becoming the main medium in which consumers engage to get information and to communicate. You can see this happening in advertising, you can see it happening in…
In a dark subway, an unlikely grammar figure
Louis Menand, an English professor at Harvard, has called its use “impeccable”. Lynne Truss, the author of Eats shoots and leaves, has called it a “lovely example”. Geoffrey Nunberg of the University of California at Berkeley sees it as a burgeoning sign of “punctuational literacy”. On the pages of The New York Times, Neil Neches,…
Will paper tigers last longer than real ones?
In The Vanishing Newspaper, Philip Meyer says the last newspaper will be printed, sold, (hopefully) read and then crumpled and thrown into the dustbin sometime in the first quarter of the year of the lord 2043. In other words, even if this dire prognosis turns out to be true, paper tigers will roam the urban…
The perils of an Indian correspondent in the US
K.P. Nayar in The Telegraph, Calcutta: “For an Indian journalist based in the United States of America, the worst professional nightmare these days is the sudden appearance of a red “Breaking News” banner on the CNN screen, announcing yet another university shooting. “It invariably sends me and my colleagues from other Indian newspapers in Washington…
Business journalism or the journalism of business?
The quality of Indian journalism has been under question for as long as Indian journalism has been around, especially by those who found the news and views contrary to their own closely-held beliefs, assumptions and ideologies. Quibbles like the agendas of publishers and editors; the bias and prejudice of journalists; the unethical trade and professional…
‘Did we fight Emergency for this kind of media?’
The media coverage of the verbal and physical violence in Bombay over the influx of outsiders continues to draw attention. Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) reports that at the Union cabinet meeting on February 14, senior ministers “expressed their outrage” at the reporting which some of them felt sparked panic and led to a mass exodus…
Does television create the ‘reality’ it reports?
As naturally as night follows day, the television coverage of the recent upsurge in linguistic chauvinism in Bombay has come under scrutiny. A bit like the violence in Rajasthan in the war between the Meenas and Gujjars two years ago. The rolling coverage, the endless replay of made-for-TV incidents to make it seem like a…
How Shilpa Shetty halted the Chinese incursions
China apparently made 146 incursions into Indian territory last year. The Chinese are preventing locals from going up to regions where they had been taking their animals for grazing. Even a statue of Buddha is off-limits. And “cartographic aggression”, in which Arunachal Pradesh is shown as Chinese territory, is assuming epidemic proportions. When two BJP…
What if that logo had looked like this?
On Wired, Sonia Zjawinski writes of how Ruth Kedar came up with what has now become one of the world’s most easily recognised logos. Kedar met Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page through a mutual friend nine years ago at Stanford University, where she was an assistant professor. Page and Brin, who were having…
How a world-class yoga photograph was shot
This breathtaking black-and-white photograph of yoga artistes from the yoga capital of the world (Mysore), shot by Tomasz Gudzowaty and Judit Berekai of Poland at an akhada in the religious capital of India (Benares), has just won the third prize in the World Press Photo Contest 2008 in the “Sports Features-Single Photo” category. The intercontinental…
The World Press Photo of the Year for 2007
British photographer Tim Hetherington’s image of an American soldier resting at Restrepo bunker in Afghanistan, taken on assignment for Vanity Fair last September, has been named the World Press Photo of the Year for 2007. “In capturing the exhaustion of a single man, the image reflects the exhaustion of an entire nation,” writes the magazine.…
‘There’s no place for emotion in an anchor’s life’
The BBC anchor Nik Gowing in an interview with Krishnakumar P. of rediff.com: You were the one who brought the death of Princess Diana and you were on air for more than seven hours after the 9/11 attacks. Can you describe how you felt when you had to do it? I have likened it to…
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