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…
Tag Archives: Amitabh Bachchan
The 5 stereotypes of journalists in Bollywood
Much as the role of the hero and the heroine has morphed in the Hindi film industry, so has the depiction of the villain and the vamp—and, of course, the journalist. From a pure print person till well into the late 1980s, the journalist on film is now largely a TV person. From a poorly…
2,450 journos lost jobs in Chitty Chitty Bong Bong
Mail Today, the tabloid daily owned by the India Today group, reports that an astonishing 2,450 journalists (including non-editorial staff) may have lost their jobs after the meltdown of Bengal’s chitfund driven, politically backed newspapers and TV stations. Employees of Saradha group owned 24-hour TV news station, Channel 10, are reported to have filed a…
A newspaper ad without SRK, MSD or AB
Brand ambassadors for media companies usually tend to be celebrities—a Shah Rukh Khan for Zee, a Mahinder Singh Dhoni for NDTV, an Amitabh Bachchan for The Times of India, etc—or faces of newsmakers. In other words, usually upper class or upper caste. Loksatta, the Marathi daily from the Indian Express group, bucks the trend with…
An Angry Young Man gets good media @ 70
Amitabh Bachchan, the BBC’s “star of the millennium”, peers through a front-page of the Europe edition of The Wall Street Journal, in photographer Daboo Ratnani‘s calendar for October 2012. Libran Mr Bachchan, who has had a stormy relationship with the Indian media, turns 70 today. Also read: Amitabh Bachchan versus the Mumbai Mirror Look, who…
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…
‘Bollywood journalism is about PR & pimping’
Nandita Puri, journalist and wife of actor Om Puri, in an interview in Tehelka magazine: Q: What are the biggest problems in Bollywood journalism today? A: Bollywood journalism is about PR and pimping. Of course, stars have glamours personal lives everyone wants to know about, but now that has become the core of film reportage.…
Anybody here who’s Dalit and speaks English?*
The UPA government’s reported inclination to include an extra column in the 2011 census to enumerate caste, for the first time since 1931, has seen politicians and political parties close ranks, although the Union cabinet is said to have been divided on the issue. But there has been an avalanche of criticism in the media.…
Amitabh Bachchan versus the Mumbai Mirror
Amitabh Bachchan, who only eight months ago confessed he wanted to be a journalist in his next life, continues to have problems with those practising the craft in their current life. Four months ago, the BBC’s star of the millennium” was in a tug-of-war with Abhijit Mazumder of MiD-DaY. Earlier this week, he had problems…
Hit and Rann: ‘I want to expose the media’
A television promo for the next Amitabh Bachchan starrer Rann, a movie “about the highly competitive world of television news reporting in India“. Directed by the maverick Ram Gopal Varma, Rann is reportedly an insider’s account of how TRP-thirsty news channels manipulate and sensationalise stories. “I am going to expose the media in this film…
Sting camera that Amitabh Bachchan didn’t see
The BBC’s “star of the millennium”, Amitabh Bachchan, has always had a hate-hate relationship with the media, except when he has had to love it to push a product or push himself, which is usually the same thing. In the first week of his 67th year in the solar system (birthday: October 11), Mr Bachchan…
Jug Suraiya takes on the mighty Big B
The reverberations of Amitabh Bachchan‘s blog comments on the Academy Award-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire are now being felt in the “cesspool” of Indian journalism. In his reaction to the movie, Bachchan wrote in January: “If SM projects India as [a] third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let…
Look, who wants to be a journo (after rebirth)
Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan, 66, who has had a tempestuous relationship with the media: “I would like to be a journalist. In fact in my interviews that I had given in the 1970s, I mentioned during most of them that I want to become a journalist in my next life. “I say this because I…
‘Media shapes, sexes up, manipulates, distorts’
Is the media playing with the tiger’s tail? Or is the tiger cub riding the media? In other words, just how much is the media responsible for the Raj Thackeray bogey? Is the “demonisation” of Thackeray junior entirely the handiwork of sensation-seeking journalists trying to fill up the airwaves in the era of 24×7 news?…
Khushwant Singh on his last day at the Weekly
The dirty old man of Indian journalism, Khushwant Singh, has used the occasion provided by M.J. Akbar‘s unceremonious exit from The Asian Age to describe his own departure from The Illustrated Weekly of India in the latest issue of Outlook: “The journal, like all others published by Bennett Coleman, including The Times of India, had…
Amitabh Bachchan’s advice to a media CEO
Indian cinema’s biggest star—the BBC’s star of the millennium—Amitabh Bachchan has had a more-hate-than-love relationship with the media, except when the demands of public relations on the eve of a movie release weighed heavy on him. But in a surprising intervention, Bachchan has spoken out in favour of the beleaguered CEO of Bombay’s Afternoon Despatch…
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