https://soundcloud.com/user-311470525/aunindyo One of the great miracles in Indian television is that every new news channel manages to overtake the incumbent market leader in a matter of weeks. First NDTV overtook Headlines Today soon after launch. Then CNN-IBN overtook NDTV. Later Times Now overtook CNN-IBN. And finally Republic overtook Times Now within days. The reason for…
Tag Archives: Aaj Tak
‘Gulf News’ bells the “preachers of hate”, demands action against Aaj Tak, ABP News, India TV, Republic, Times Now, Zee for spreading Islamophobia
As the Gulf countries pile up pressure against the growing Islamophobia in India, Dubai’s top English newspaper Gulf News has an editorial demanding action against Indian TV news channels which are spewing hatred. The editorial names Republic TV, Zee News, India TV, Aaj Tak, ABP and Times Now, calling them the “preachers of hate”. Gulf…
Even a mad ‘Fox News’ anchor like Tucker Carlson says Coronavirus didn’t happen because the Chinese ate bats. So why do Rahul Kanwal and Vineet Jain want them to eat ‘khichdi’ and ‘papdi chaat’?
Even in the best of times, Indians are never short of sanctimony and self-righteousness but there has been an oversupply of both since the outbreak of #Coronavirus. The virtues of ‘Namaste‘ as a form of greeting—folded hands as opposed to a physical hug or handshake—has been extolled ad nauseam, even briefly inspiring a BJP IT…
Narendra Modi and Amit Shah brutally divided Jammu and Kashmir. Now, the media have neatly divided themselves: foreign vs ‘desi’; local vs Delhi; Kashmiri vs Pandit—journalism vs propaganda
Like so much else since the dawn of civilisation in 2014, journalistic coverage and assessment of the situation in Kashmir after the removal of Article 370 in the Valley has been severely polarised. On the one side is a contest between the establishment view of the Narendra Modi government, and the independent view of foreign news…
The investigative TV journo who now sells sarees
The state of mainstream Indian journalism, it can be argued, is somewhat reflected by the number of journalists churning out books; leaving for greener PR, corporate communications and “policy”) pastures; joining thinktanks; going on sabatticals, etc—and it is probably no different from the rest of the world. But nobody drives home the issue better than…
Bangalore reporter who became a ‘RAW agent’
In Lounge, the weekend section of the business paper Mint, the columnist Aakar Patel doffs his hat to Prakash Belawadi, the Bangalore engineer who became an Indian Express reporter, who became a magazine correspondent, who became a television chat show host, who launched a journalism school, who launched a weekly newspaper… Who made a national-award…
Sex, godman & a very hard product placement
Long years ago, when the divide between church and state was better protected in journalism and the business side had no inkling what was happening on the other side, the editors at Time magazine ran an interview with Mother Teresa with the quote-headline, “I’m just a pencil in the hand of god.” When the issue…
Where was Priyanka Chopra going with Bob?*
There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip in the era of fast-breaking news and even well-equipped organisations like CNN and BBC are not immune from howlers in the “supers”. On Tuesday, when the Congress president Sonia Gandhi was rushed to hospital, look who was momentarily accompanying her son-in-law Robert Vadra to look…
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…
What Uday Shankar learnt from a Delhi widow
Star India CEO Uday Shankar, a former editor at Aaj Tak, on the defining moment of his journalistic career, from the 8th anniversary special issue of Impact. By UDAY SHANKAR I remember an incident almost 10 years ago, that brought home to me the power of the media and its ability to impact people’s lives.…
Salman Khurshid, India Today & Sunday Guardian
Salman Khurshid, the Oxford-educated Union law minister, has taken the India Today group to court in Delhi, Bombay, Lucknow and London claiming damages of Rs 243 crore following Aaj Tak‘s sting operation that accused the trust run by his wife, former Sunday magazine journalist Louise Khurshid nee Fernandes, of a discrepancy of Rs 71 lakh.…
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…
The curious case of Karan Thapar & a flyover-II
After 17 articles on the City pages of The Times of India, Delhi, the 14 owners and residents on Palam Marg—including the media baron Aroon Purie and the TV anchor Karan Thapar—respond to the allegation that they objected to the expansion of a flyover becasue it threatened to eat into the service road in front…
The curious case of Karan Thapar and a flyover
One of India’s top voices, Lata Mangeshkar, earned a fair bit of negative publicity for opposing the construction of a flyover on busy Peddar road in Bombay because it threatened to disturb her peace of mind. Now, one of India’s top TV faces is threatening to follow in her footsteps in Delhi. On July 29,…
‘Yeh thi khabrein Aaj Tak. Intzaar kijiye kal tak’
Fourteen years ago today, Surendra Pratap Singh aka S.P. Singh, the founder-anchor of Aaj Tak, the 30-minute Hindi news bulletin that became a 24×7 news channel, breathed his last after a fortnight-long battle for life. “SP” was one of the first print journalists to successfully graduate to television—he had edited the Hindi daily Navbharat Times…
When Prabhu Chawla called up Amar Singh…
The Supreme Court has lifted a five-year ban on the airing of the infamous Amar Singh CD which, along with the Niira Radia tapes, must be made required listening in journalism schools for the unvarnished view it offers of how politicians, industrialists, bureaucrats, film stars, celebrities, middlemen and journalists operate. Among the two-dozen conversations on…
Radia effect on PM’s invitees for TV pow-wow?
Prime minister Manmohan Singh‘s much ballyhooed pow-wow with “editors” of television channels to clear the air over the scams dogging his government, was, as was to be expected, a typically tepid, bureaucratic affair. Only the national English TV channels—Headlines Today (represented by Aroon Purie), CNN-IBN (Rajdeep Sardesai), NDTV 24×7 (Prannoy Roy), Times Now (Arnab Goswami)—were…
Prabhu Chawla: A post-dated announcement
A front-page notice appearing in The New Sunday Express, the Sunday edition of the Madras-based The New Indian Express, on 23 January 2011, announcing the arrival of former India Today editor Prabhu Chawla as the editorial director of the paper. Chawla, who also hosted the Seedhi Baat show on the Aaj Tak channel, has launched…
Four lessons in journalism from Tata’s chief PRO
Christabelle Noronha, corporate affairs chief of the Tata group, in a letter to the editor of the business daily, Mint, which had carried a story on the Tatas blacklisting The Pioneer, Outlook*, Open, India Today group and The Times of India group for their “biased reporting” of the 2G spectrum allocation scam: “Is it not…
For a few TV rating points more, a life was lost
Mail Today, the tabloid newspaper owned by the India Today group (which also owns the Hindi TV channel Aaj Tak), reports that two TV journalists have been arrested named in Ahmedabad for coaxing a man to immolate himself outside a police station in front of their cameras. The journalists—Mayur Raval and Kamlesh Raval—belonging to TV9…
IJR 