Prime Minister Manmohan Singh‘s televised address to the nation on 21 September, the day the Trinamul Congress withdrew support to his Congress-led UPA government over the hike in diesel prices and FDI in retail, has set tongues wagging about its authorship. In her column in the Indian Express, Coomi Kapoor suggests that the media advisor…
Monthly Archives: September 2012
How Shekhar Gupta busted the ISRO spy ‘scam’
The ISRO spy scandal of the early 1990s has come to an end with the exoneration of S. Nambi Narayanan, the scientist (wrongly) accused by the Malayalam and later national media of selling secrets of the satellite organisation to a couple of Maldivian women. The son of the then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao‘s son…
How Tinkle magazine came to be called ‘Tinkle’
Tinkle, India’s English first magazine for children, has just published its 600th issue. Rajani Thindiath, who took over as the magazine’s editor after the demise of Anant Pai, speaks to the New York Times‘ blog, India Ink: Q: First things first. Why is Tinkle called “Tinkle”? A: Subba Rao, who was the associate editor of…
Why the SC tried to frame media guidelines
What was behind the Supreme Court of India’s urge and urgency to frame guidelines for media coverage? The thinly veiled insinuations on the Chief Justice made by public interest litigants and dutifully carried by the media? The veteran journalist, columnist and author Kuldip Nayar givesa couple of conspiracy theories some oxygen, in The Tribune, Chandigarh:…
The new kid on the block announces an eclipse
The front page of Ei Bela, the new Bengali tabloid launched by the Ananda Bazaar Patrika (ABP) group in Calcutta, as a “buffer” to counter the launch of a Bengali newspaper from The Times of India group, on the day Mamata Banerjee‘s Trinamool Congress walked out of the Congress-led UPA. This is the second tabloid…
Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses & India Today
The launch of Salman Rushdie‘s memoirs, Joseph Anton, written in third person, has seen a flurry of TV interviews, and profiles, reviews and soft stories in the newspapers. Hindustan Times runs this short excerpt from the book which chronicles how The Satanic Verses ended up getting banned in India: On the day he received the…
Hindu’s longest serving editor G. Kasturi: RIP
sans serif records the demise of Gopalan Kasturi aka G. Kasturi, the longest-serving editor of The Hindu in Madras, early today. He was 87. Although he was the helmsman of a supposedly “orthodox, conservative” newspaper, Kasturi was renowned in the industry as a torchbearer, showing the way with his knowledge of fonts, photography and printing…
Ex-Outlook journo is new Hindu readers’ editor
The Hinduhas a new readers’ editor: A.S. Panneerselvan. A former Madras correspondent for Outlook* magazine, Paneerselvan, 49, was with Sun TV as managing editor before moving on to be executive director of Panos South Asaia. He was also with Indiaweek, the now-defunct weekly newspaper launched by Business India. * Disclosures apply Image: courtesy The Hindu External…
Everybody loves a good FDI announcement
The announcement by the Congress-led UPA government to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail has resulted in two Delhi newspapers—the Hindustan Times (left) and Mail Today—claiming credit on their pages for breaking the story first. The former on August 19 and the latter on September 11, 2012. Image: courtesy Hindustan Times, Mail Today
Aaj Tak bites into a nice piece of Barfi
Historically, product-placement has usually meant a newspaper or magazine strategically placed in a movie shot to give the title some airtime. Or a TV star or studio artfully used as a prop. In both cases, it is big media (movies) pushing smaller media (print or electronic). With the new Ranbir Kapoor flick Barfi, product-placement comes…
ToI, Narendra Modi & balls for Vivekananda yatra
Nothing is safe these days at the hands of the supersensitive—not even a simple headline. The Times of India ran an innocuous page one anchor on Thursday of footballs for Gujarat chief minister Narendra Damodardas Modi‘s “Vivekananda yuva vikas yatra” being made in Jalandhar. On Friday, the newspaper had to run this by way of…
‘Darkest hour for media since the Emergency?’
Is it a good thing that the Supreme Court of India has not announced guidelines for media coverage of court cases? Or has it opened the floodgates by introducing a “neturalising device” that underlines the right of the accused to seek postponement of coverage on a case-by-case basis? And, by introducing a “constitutional principle” has…
South media baron among top political donors
Mobile phone turned media baron and member of Parliament, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, continues to be a prominent donor to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, according to a list compiled by the asociation for democratic reforms (ADR). Chandrasekhar, an independent member of the Rajya Sabha elected with BJP support, who owns the Malayalam news channel…
How Pakistan helped ‘The Hindu’ save $800!
A giant pack of 61 journalists—each told to carry at least $800 in foreign currency for their hotel stay—is accompanying Indian minister of external affairs, S.M. Krishna, on his much-ballyhooed visit of Pakistan. But Praveen Swami, the deputy chief of bureau of The Hindu in Delhi—who did a brief stint as diplomatic editor of The…
Manmohan, Washington Post & The Caravan
The Washington Post article on prime minister Manmohan Singh, by its India bureau chief Simon Denyer, has stirred up yet another media tsunami, after Time magazine’s “Underachiever” cover. The government’s media handlers have gone into a tailspin, demanding an “apology” from the Post, even labelling it “yellow journalism”, while the government’s detractors are celebrating another…
Buy our paper, get a Harley-Davidson: Free!
It’s raining gifts in the Bengali newspaper wars. And gone is the age of free flasks, timepieces and tee-shirts to woo subscribers. Ei Bela (the moment), the soon-to-be-launched tabloid from the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group (which also owns The Telegraph and ABP News) to counter The Times of India group’s morning broadsheet Ei Samay (Times…
The Hindu’s readers reveal Katju’s infinite bluff
The chairman of the press council of India, Justice Markandey Katju, wrote an article in The Hindu on September 3 on education. Titled ‘Professor, heal thyself’, it contained this paragraph: The level of intellect of many teachers is low, because many of them have not been appointed on merit but on extraneous considerations. To give…
Times, Telegraph and the Bengali paper wars
A newspaper war is looming in Calcutta as The Times of India group prepares to launch a Bengali broadsheet, Ei Samay (literally, Times Now) ahead of the Puja season. Market leader Ananda Bazaar Patrika (ABP) has announced the launch of the tabloid Ei bela (literally, this moment) to protect the mothership. Saturday’s Telegraph carries a…
Anti-minority bias behind foiled bid on journos?
For the second day running, most newspapers in Bangalore refrain from naming the editor, columnist and newspaper publisher who were allegedly the target of a failed assassination attempt, “masterminded”, according to the police, by a reporter working with the Bangalore-based Deccan Herald. (The first information report (FIR) filed on the arrests names the three targets:…
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