As Indian journalists come to terms with a Narendra Modi dispensation that doesn’t want to court them or take them on foreign junkets, K.P. Nayar, the former Washington correspondent of The Telegraph, Calcutta, writes that the US administration is no better. Each correspondent who accompanied US president Barack Obama on his trip to India had…
Tag Archives: Barack Obama
Will Barack Obama be page one news tomorrow?
Will Barack Obama‘s reelection be front-page news in your newspaper tomorrow? Not if your paper has a “jacket advertisement” in this Diwali season, in which case it will technically be on page 3. Not if your paper two jacket ads, in which case it will be on page 5. In many ways, Indian newspapers have…
Would our media spend Rs 20 lakh on a ‘junket’?
A PTI story estimating US President Barack Obama‘s India trip at $200 million a day prompted CNN anchor Anderson Cooper to do some number-crunching, and elicited a column from Pulitzer prize winning New York Times foreign affairs columnist Tom Friedman, and a response from PTI editor-in-chief M.K. Razdan. Now, the Indian Express has a diary…
‘Indian Media lost all balance during Obama trip’
E.R. RAMACHANDRAN writes: The visit of the 44th president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, and his wife, Michelle, was covered by the Indian media in a way reserved historic occasions like the sinking of the Titanic or the invention of penicillin would have been, if only there was 24×7 television. Everything else…
Strangely, readers don’t spot the dollar sign
The interpretation of news and views by readers is a pretty straightforward affair. But how do they “read” images? Above is the cartoon that The Hindu‘s Keshav drew at the end of US president Barack Obama‘s three-day visit to India on Tuesday, 9 November. Below, are a set of three responses to it, published by…
The PTI journo who scooped Obama interview
For weeks ahead of US President Barack Obama‘s full visit to India in his first term in office, speculation was who would get the prized pre-tour interview. The buzz was that The Times of India would get the print interview given its reach, while NDTV would get the television interview. NDTV’s Prannoy Roy was said…
Could the media end up killing Barack Obama?
Al Jazeera’s media show The Listening Post on how 24×7 media is dangerously inflaming passions against US President Barack Obama with lies, untruths, rhetoric—a little like the way a newspaper advertisement greeted John F. Kennedy the day he arrived in Dallas in 1963. Also read: How global media covered Barack Obama inauguration ‘The media’s obsession…
Who, why, when, how, where, what, what the…
The new, redesigned Newsweek has had plenty of what can only be mildly termed “negative fan following”. The designer Juan Antonio Giner wrote recently that it was time to “forget Newsweek“. “It’s irrelevant. Awful design. Cheap opinions. No reporting. No news. No quality. No necessary content. And… a newsroom of hundreds. For what? Fat newsroom…
How to wish ‘Happy Birthday’ without a script
On his 48th birthday, US President Barack Obama wishes the grande dame of the White House press corps, Helen Thomas, on her 89th. Let history record that the Wisher-in-Chief did not use a teleprompter when he wished her Happy Birthday. Link via Juan Antonio Giner/ Innovation in Newspapers Also read: The fastest 100 days in…
‘The media’s Obama infatuation is worrisome’
The Pew Research Center’s project for excellence in journalism shows that US president Barack Obama has received more positive media coverage (42 per cent) in his first months in office, more than either Bill Clinton (27%) or George W. Bush (22%). *** Robert J. Samuelson in Newsweek: “The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story…
The fastest 100 days in the last 72 days
US President Barack Obama‘s hilarious White House Correspondents’ dinner speech in Washington DC. Video: courtesy MSNBC
Is Barack Obama an Indian politician in drag?
Not AIDS, not DRTB, not even XDRTB. Blaming the messenger/ blaming the media is the fastest growing pandemic, and US president Barack Obama too seems to have succumbed to it. Well, at least that’s what The Economic Times suggests in its headline “Obama blames 24-hour news cycle for US woes“. “For too long, too many…
The Times of India’s Barack Obama moment
SHOBHA SARADA VISWANATHAN, in New Delhi, forwards a self-explanatory YouTube video of US President Barack Obama taking a question from Simrat Ghuman, a reporter from The Times of India‘s television channel, Times Now, at the G-20 summit in London, on Thursday. Notwithstanding the “exclusive”, the hilarious exchange opens up all the usual questions over the…
How global media covered Obama inauguration
“Over two days, newspapers around the world published 1.2 million articles. Over one 24-hour period, the global radio and television coverage combined added up to 20 million minutes; to watch it all it would have taken a human being 38 years,” reports Richard Gizbert of Al Jazeera English on the inauguration of Barack Obama as…
Why journalists like Barack Hussein Obama
In his last press conference in Baghdad, George W. Bush received a pair of size 10s from a member of the press corps. But why does his successor seem to get a ’10’ from most journos? “Journalists like Obama because he’s the ultimate America success story, photogenic and has that perfect family. And because he…
The top-15 media stories (& viral videos) of ’08
The strange thing about the so-called Global Village is that it has turned us all provincial. We relate to, are interested in, connect with, and remember news events with an insularity that would befuddle Marshall McLuhan. And in the process, we forget that stuff happens outside of the bubble we inhabit. The Listening Post, the…
‘American media misleading the American public’
A journalist’s twin points of references should be the real and the important. But, for months, the focus of the coverage of the presidential elections in the United States has been on trivia, writes Gabor Steingart in Der Spiegel, thus misleading the American public. Instead of addressing important issues of war and peace, health and…
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