*** A leading Kannada newspaper owned by a former three-term BJP MP and a serial fake news peddler followed by Narendra Modi on Twitter, have been embroiled in a forged letter scandal, following the arrest of a “journalist” owing allegiance to the RSS. # The newspaper is Vijaya Vani owned by former Dharwad (North) MP Vijay Sankeshwar. #…
Monthly Archives: April 2019
“The ‘Golden Hour’ is the most important hour in your life”: On the third anniversary of his second life, six lessons Sachin Kalbag learnt when he collapsed in ‘The Hindu’ newsroom
Journalists strut around as if they are masters of the universe. As if nothing can happen to them. As if nothing can stop them. As if the Chief Editor Up Above (or down below) has different plans for them, unlike other mortals. Not so, of course. Sachin Kalbag was just 42 and in the prime…
“Did Reuters evaluate or examine the practices, political affiliations, and reputation of ANI prior to expanding its strategic partnership in June 2018?”: Full text of veterans’ complaint
A “group of retired officers of the Indian armed forces” has written to Thomson Reuters, flagging concerns over the political motivations of its “India partner”, Asian News International (ANI), in its coverage of a veterans’ memorandum to the President of India. Below is the full text of the email, sent on April 23, with the…
“ANI acted at the behest of [BJP] to manipulate quotes and defame our honourable intentions. Its conduct tantamounts to being perfidious”: military veterans’ complaint to Thomson Reuters, Press Council, Editors Guild on “motivated misreporting”
The video news agency ANI’s role in manufacturing consent for the Narendra Modi government has been blazingly obvious. Craven interviews with the prime minister; dubious tweets by its staffers; and a host of other incidents have turned ANI into a partisan and “pliable” purveyor at the forefront of the BJP propaganda machine. Barring a couple…
“Slide in media freedom coincides with rise of right-wing groups and governments”: ‘Deccan Herald’ on India’s fall on World Press Freedom index, to 140
The Bangalore-based daily Deccan Herald has an editorial on India’s continuing slide on the World Press Freedom (WPI) index. The index, compiled by the Paris-based advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders, shows India’s position slipping from 133 to 136, to 138, to 140 in the last four years, out of 180 countries in the world: “There…
Everybody’s favourite MP, P.Rajeev—the Chief Editor of ‘Deshabhimani’—is digging deep in Ernakulam to find out which side of the brain makes voters decide: left, or right?
Drawing room chats on the state of Indian politics almost always end up in collective kvetching, before everyone drowns their miseries in a glass of hypocrisy—and returns to forward the latest WhatsApp bile with their signature emoji. 🙏 “Wish we didn’t have to choose the best from among the worst.” “Wish our parties would stop…
Nine journalists arrested in Telangana for reporting and recording EVMs being shifted in the middle of the night in private vehicles
Mohammad Mohsin, an IAS officer of the Karnataka cadre posted as an election observer in Odisha, has been suspended for “dereliction of duty”. His offence: checking the helicopter of Narendra Modi, days after a black box had been hurriedly carried off the PM’s chopper in Karnataka. *** Now, nine journalists in Telangana have been arrested…
In India’s glorious dance of democracy, why are regional language newspaper groups so eager to send their owners, not Editors or reporters, to “interview” Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi?
Publicity is the mother of election. So, in a seven-phase poll Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi are gaming their “interviews” to big-circulation publications in states heading to the hustings, phase by phase. Modi spoke to the Kannada daily Vijaya Vani before 14 constituencies in the southern part of Karnataka voted on April 18. And Gandhi spoke to The Hindu…
Out of 180 countries in the world, only 40 have worse media freedom than India. And all South Asian countries are ahead of us except Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Media freedom in India has slipped a further two points to 140 and is back at 2014 levels when Narendra Modi‘s government took charge. India is behind Afghanistan, Bhutan, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka on the 2019 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by the Paris-based media advocacy group Reporters sans Frontiers (RSF). The only…
Pinch yourself: BJP’s Mysore candidate Pratap Simha—a well-read newspaper columnist—had taken out a pre-publication gag order against 49 media organisations two months before “sex audio” went viral today
*** The BJP candidate for the Bangalore South constituency in the 2019 general elections Tejasvi Surya hit national headlines on March 29 when he secured an ex-parte temporary injunction against 49 media organisations from a Bangalore court, after allegations of sexual assault and misbehaviour against him began doing the rounds on social media. After editorials in The Indian…
EC’s poll code bars ‘The Times of India’ from displaying an interview with Narendra Modi. But the rule does not apply to ‘Vijaya Vani’ and ‘Dighvijaya News’, the Kannada newspaper and TV channel owned by former BJP MP Vijay Sankeshwar.
The Times of India has an “interview” with prime minister Narendra Modi on the eve of the second phase of #GeneralElections2019, but it is only available in hard copy, in the print editions of the newspaper. On its website, ToI has blanked out the PM’s interview with the line: “In view of the 48-hour silence…
“We have very few checks and balances. Almost none. That is a dangerous, and depressing, situation to be in”: Tony Joseph, author of the most important book ever written by an Indian journalist
There was a time when young journalists in Bombay used to hear, in awe, that Aveek Sarkar, the paterfamilias of the Anandabazar Patrika (ABP) group, secretly considered Tony Joseph as the “ideal journalist”. That was high praise coming from the sophisticated owner of Anandabazar Patrika, Business Standard, and The Telegraph newspapers, and Sunday, Business World, and Sports World magazines.…
“99.99 per cent of Indian media is ‘Godi Media’, doing ‘chamchagiri’ of Narendra Modi, showing ‘bakwas’…. TV is making a fool of you, brainwashing you with bogus debates and propaganda”: Ravish Kumar
NDTV India Ravish Kumar has a fan base all his own in modern Hindi journalism, despite the negligible viewership of his channel, primarily because heartland journalists have been en masse neutered and turned into evangelists for Hindutva’s crudest causes by their twisted owners, managers and minds. Kumar’s earthy, blunt, no-nonsense Bihari drone can be gnawing…
The thread that ties the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, a BBC correspondent posted in India, and the lifeblood of good journalists, Old Monk rum
Of the hundreds of thousands of people who have peered into this well in Amritsar over the last 100 years—a mandatory patriotic pause on the way to (or back from) the more spiritual experience next door at The Golden Temple—few have been more moved than a journalist who served three years in India. Justin Rowlatt,…
‘Raavali Jagan, Kaavali Jagan’: 14 pages in today’s ‘Sakshi’ on its owner Jagan Reddy and his rival Chandrababu Naidu prove the old adage: freedom of the press belongs to the politician who owns one
The model code of conduct of the Election Commission of India has been mostly reduced to a joke by pliant officers, cunning chartered accounts, and contemptuous politicians cocking a snook at the fundamental decency of democracy. It is most evident in the manner among political parties and politicians which own media as India heads into…
How N. Ram’s reporting of the #Rafale scandal in ‘The Hindu’ sped across the digital world and into the phones of readers before the Narendra Modi government could put its pants on
Behind the investigation of India’s two biggest defence scandals—the Bofors deal under Rajiv Gandhi and the Rafale deal under Narendra Modi—is one common newspaper and one common byline, The Hindu and N. Ram. But with one big difference: the first scandal was reported when hard-copy, ink-and-paper journalism was king; the latter in the digital age, when…
Red Ink Awards for excellence in journalism: Mumbai Press Club extends last date for entries to April 15
PRESS RELEASE: The last date for submission of entries for the Red Ink Awards 2019 handed out by Mumbai Press Club has been extended to Monday, April 15. Visit mumbaipressclub.com for further details.
‘Imphal Free Press’ editor demands Rs one crore “reparation” for TV journalist Kishorchandra Wangkhem for loss of reputation, health, income—and a monumental miscarriage of justice
Kishorchandra Wangkhem, the Manipur cable news TV journalist who was jailed in November 2018 for 12 months under the National Security Act (NSA) for Facebook posts that mocked the state’s chief minister, has been ordered to be released. To no one’s surprise, Wangkhem’s incarceration on bogus charges was received coolly by mainland Indian journalists and…
“If we don’t have the facts, we don’t print the news”: Four big newspaper groups with 12 titles between them join hands to show the power of print journalism
Indian media houses rarely see eye to eye except when their shared commercial pursuits are in peril: like foreign direct investment (FDI) in newspapers, or the goods and services tax (GST) on newsprint, or wage board recommendations eating into their bottomline. For a change, as elections loom and the fake factories start whirring into motion, The…
How an ‘Economic Times’ reporter’s tweet enabled a 68-year-old Wayanad woman, who survives on Rs 36 a day, to get the photo (and a hug) of a lifetime
On Wednesday, April 3, Indulekha Aravind, a feature writer with The Economic Times, was in Kalpetta town, in Wayanad in Kerala, meeting people a day before Congress president Rahul Gandhi was to file his nomination papers from the constituency. It is the cliched election vox-pop—a big-town reporter in a small town trying to gauge public opinion,…
IJR 