Karan Thapar has a well-cultivated image of a tough, snarling, bulldog of a interviewer a la Jeremy Paxman. All the aggressive, relentless questioning and eyeball to eyeball gazing with the crooked and the wicked of the world might leave viewers wondering if the man has a heart at all. But the Devil’s Advocate has a…
Tag Archives: Benazir Bhutto
Since promises are meant to be broken…
… India’s premier television anchor Karan Thapar makes one in his Hindustan Times column: “This year I’m taking on a bigger challenge. I’ve decided to give up interrupting my guests. Instead, I shall let them waffle and drone on, regardless of what they’re saying and how off target they may be, till you, the audience,…
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…
‘Indian journalists take themselves too seriously’
‘A case of exploding mangoes,’ the fictional account of the mysterious death of Pakistani president General Zia-ul-Haq by Mohammed Hanif (in picture), the air force man turned journalist who now heads the BBC’s Urdu service in London, has been acclaimed as the fiction debut of the year. So far. In an interview with Nikhil Lakshman,…
Neena Gopal to edit Deccan Chronicle, Bangalore
Neena Gopal, the former foreign editor of the Dubai-based Gulf News who was in conversation with Rajiv Gandhi just minutes before he was blown up by a suicide bomber in 1991, is to be the editor of the Deccan Chronicle edition from Bangalore. A DC edition in India’s most crowded newspaper market has been on…
Did this man stand a chance with a future PM?
Death is a pretty grim business in Asian media. Unlike in Britain, where obituaries have been turned into a juicy art form, Asian tributes generally play it safe, spiking all the spice out of a false sense of deference. Last night, however, Karan Thapar, India’s premier television interviewer, who cut his teeth on Channel 4,…
IJR 