Editorial in the Economic and Political Weekly: “July and August are the months of the “silly season” for the newspapers in the United Kingdom; with everyone on a summer holiday the papers are compelled to look for silly stories to fill the pages. The Indian media – especially the financial press – seems to be…
Monthly Archives: July 2013
The reporter who scooped Olympic dope scandal
In his weekly column National Interest, Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta writes on a pre-internet era incident from the 1988 Olympic Games at Seoul, which he covered for India Today magazine: On one sleepless night, after India had had one more disastrous day at those medal-less Olympics, my friend Lokesh Sharma (then reporting for The…
Vir Sanghvi, Modi, 1984 and Hindustan Times
In the latest issue of Open magazine, its political editor Hartosh Singh Bal writes on the re-appearance of former Hindustan Times editor Vir Sanghvi on the pages of the newspaper, to underline the the media’s janus-faced approach to the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984 under Congress watch and the 2002 Gujarat riots under BJP rule: “Narendra…
Journalism, PR and the reversal of roles
With journalists hopping over to the “dark area”—public relations, corporate communications, etc—once they have had enough of the profession, it can often lead to quite paradoxical situations. Like this advertisement released by Jaiprakash Associates to counter a story published by The Times of India on Thursday. It’s signed by Askari H. Zaidi, a former member…
POLL: Should FDI in media be enhanced?
With the economic downturn threatening to turn into a full-blown recession and with the finance minister reduced to going around the world with a hat in hand, the Congress-led UPA government last week increased foreign direct investment (FDI) in telecom, defence, petroleum refining, etc, but… But, not the media. On the issue of enhancing FDI…
How Narendra Modi buys media through PR
In the latest issue of Open magazine, its deputy political editor Jatin Gandhi lays his hand on a “Request for Proposal” (RFP) document of the Gujarat government that shows how “almost every day, the Indian media—and sometimes the foreign media too—is tricked or influenced by Narendra Modi‘s public relations machinery”. Exempli gratia: “Modi’s Rambo act,…
The anti-Congress journo who fell for Priyanka
From the gossip column of the Hindustan Times: “Congress president Sonia Gandhi did not think for a second before announcing that she would be contesting from Rae Bareli again in 2014, while speaking to reporters at the UPA anniversary dinner in May. “Ask her,” she had responded to a question as to whether Priyanka Gandhi…
‘A cricket writer as loved as any great cricketer’
In The Telegraph, Calcutta, Amit Roy reports on the funeral for the Bombay-born cricket and squash writer Dicky Rutnagur who passed away last month at the age of 82. After the funeral, Rutnagur’s friends, colleagues and relatives proceeded to the Writing Room at the Lord’s, where John Woodcock, the legendary cricket correspondent of The Times,…
The nation’s moral compass before Mr Goswami
Priya Ramani, editor of Lounge, the Saturday section of the business paper, Mint: “For residents of south Mumbai, in a faraway time before Arvind Kejriwal and Arnab Goswami, the taxi driver was this somnolent constituency’s only link to national politicking. “In the short drive from Nariman Point to Malabar Hill, the Navbharat Times and Yashobhoomi…
Reuters’ Modi interview: “Sensational tokenism”
Reuters‘ scoop interview with Narendra Modi published yesterday by the news agency, but apparently given 17 days ago on June 25, has created headlines for the Gujarat chief minister’s continuing lack of contrition for what happened under his watch in 2002. And for his faux pas of comparing the victims to “kutte ka bachcha” (puppies).…
Shalini Singh bags 2013 Prem Bhatia award
Shalini Singh, deputy editor of The Hindu and a former assistant editor with The Times of India, who did stellar reporting on the 2G spectrum and coal allocation scams afflicting the UPA government, has bagged the Prem Bhatia award for political reporting for 2013. S. Nihal Singh, chairman of the four-member jury that decided on…
How a TV news presenter fought her cancer
The actress Angelina Jolie made global headlines a couple of months ago for revealing her double masectomy through a signed article in The New York Times. This week, in The Sunday Times, London, Bridgid Nzekwu, a Channel 4 news presenter reveals her own heroic battle against cancer after she discovered a malignant lump in her…
Why Arun Jaitley is called ‘Bureau Chief’ in BJP
One impossibly apocryphal story from the 2004 general election election is of a major newspaper group getting sucked in by the India Shining hype and making key editorial leadership changes on its reporting side, in anticipation of the BJP-led NDA returning to power, and falling flat on its face with the UPA’s surprise win. An…
Udayan Mukherjee out, Shereen Bhan in at CNBC
The following is the full text of the press release issued by Network 18 of leadership changes at the group’s flagship channel, CNBC-TV18. This comes just a few weeks after four Forbes India editors were forced out of the group. Insiders say there is more coming as new owner Reliance Industries (RIL) seeks to stamp…
‘Shekhar Gupta has done a fantastic job at IE’
A new son rises in the west. Anant Goenka, the scion of the Indian Express (Bombay) group of Viveck Goenka, and the grandson of Ramnath Goenka, has given an interview to the Mint on the digital future he has envisioned for the paper. The 27-year-old talks about his father’s superstitions, about growing up in a…
Kashmir valley remembers a newspaper Editor
They also serve who only stand and wait. An obituary advertisement for S.D. Rohmetra, the founder-editor of the Jammu and Kashmir newspaper Daily Excelsior, appearing in the Hindustan Times. His sons Kamal Rohmetra and Neeraj Rohmetra pay tribute in today’s paper: “Besides being the ace journalist of the State, our father had laboriously built enviable…
When Madhuri Dixit’s ghagra is ‘breaking news’
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar in the Business Standard: “When Madhuri Dixit danced to the song “TV pe breaking news hai re mera ghagra,” I wanted to hide. Her sizzling dance number in a red-light area from the latest hit Yeh Jawaani hai Deewani roughly means, “My skirt is the breaking news on television.” “…Many Hindi films now…
The 10 bravehearts who stood up for Charu
Other than when engineering pathetic palace coups or other execrable exercises, much of modern Indian journalism (and indeed corporate life), is increasingly about I, me, myself. Journalists, otherwise flatulently pontificating on what’s wrong, are willing to stomach the gravest injustices under their cavernous noses as long as their positions, pay packets and other perks are…
Tatas deny they tried to sully Charu’s name
Tata Sons and Tata Steel have swung into damage control mode following the extensive media reporting of the murky circumstances surrounding the alleged suicide of Charudatta Deshpande, the journalist turned corporate communications head of Tata Steel, on Friday, 29 June 2013. *** Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry has reacted to the impassioned letter addressed to…
Tata Steel & the suicide of Charudatta Deshpande
The circumstances surrounding the alleged suicide of journalist-turned-corporate communications expert Charudatta Deshpande in Bombay last weekend, has exposed the dark underbelly of one of India’s biggest corporates, and the stress, pressure and threats that hacks face when silence is no longer a conscionable option. Deshpande, 57, had resigned in April as chief of corporate affairs…
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