Union home minister Amit Shah admitted that he had turned COVID positive through a tweet on Sunday. Across the country, the news is the lead story in most newspapers, if not second lead, but the display in some newspapers is revealing of how sections of the media are increasingly mindful of how they are perceived…
Tag Archives: Coronavirus
J-POD || Podcast || “Every year over 20,000 students pass out. Where are the jobs? || Big media is trapped. J-schools should produce entrepreneurs, one-man armies” || Prof Kanchan Kaur of IIJNM, and Prof Anand Pradhan of IIMC
*** In a nation where more than half the population is below 25 years of age, professional education has boomed in the last couple of decades—to make the most of the so-called “demographic dividend”. Journalism education—in particular—has seen gravity and logic-defying growth. As liberalisation freed up the air waves and wallets, and TV channels made…
J-POD || Podcast || “Coronavirus has made us realise how networked we are. Even the ‘News-Finds-Me’ generation is seeking out news now” || PSU media effects research don, Prof Shyam Sundar
*** Media education in India is the bright sun on an otherwise dark horizon, but it’s a bit of a blur. Although there are hundreds of journalism schools across the country, some of them as expensive as B-schools, serious academic research is an exception. Nothing is measured professionally, consistently and independently. Only the most banal…
J-POD || Podcast || “Media freedom in India has sunk even lower after COVID. Social media has smashed our notion of what is news. The time has come to reconsider the valorisation of news media”|| ACJ chief Sashi Kumar
*** Largely because of the low road it has taken in the last couple of decades, and directly as a result of the challenges thrown up by the COVID pandemic, the time has come for Indian news media to press the reset button once again. A hard reset actually. Force-Quit. No one knows what…
J-POD || Podcast || “Jair Bolsonaro is a bad version of Donald Trump. Social media has ruptured the narrative. Steve Bannon is the common thread” || Shobhan Saxena on Brazil, India & the US
*** There are many politically incorrect things Narendra Modi has done in office and gotten away with. But none has been more questionable than inviting Brazil’s loathsome president Jair Bolsonaro as chief guest at the Republic Day in January 2020. Bolsonaro, a retired military officer, had been in office for less than a year, but he…
J-POD || Podcast || “A good newspaper is a companion in life’s shared journey. It prepares you to live in a diverse, contentious society. Social media gives you a hollow sense of control” || philosopher Prof Sundar Sarukkai
*** All through history, the rise of the right wing has seen a rage against intellectuals in public life. In India where politics sets the pace and everything else follows in its wake, this is especially evident in the news media. Rare is the newspaper or news magazine today which values experience and expertise of the…
J-POD || Podcast ||”Pakistan media has not tried to find a scapegoat for #Coronavirus like Indian media. Imran Khan has handled media better than Narendra Modi” || Mehmal Sarfraz on what No. 142 can learn from No. 145
*** Coronavirus has had a strange effect on Indian media. Pakistan has vanished off the radar. Well, not entirely but substantially. A sudden intimation of mortality has distracted desktop dvesh bhakts from their core group activity, of protecting India’s borders—by building walls in the minds of Indians; by spitting hatred at their neighbour so that it…
J-POD || A podcast on journalism || “The newspaper business is in danger. It’s an unprecedented challenge for survival. We were in denial till Coronavirus struck” || N. Ram, Chairman, ‘The Hindu’ group
*** To look at the deep and debilitating impact #Coronavirus has had on jobs and salaries and workplaces merely through the prism of journalists and editors in India, would be to take a very limited view of what is a larger, systemic problem, one that haunts those way above the payscale of employees. Barring the…
J-POD || “Kannada newspapers’ circulation is down from 25 lakhs to 5 lakhs due to #Corona. No ads, no sales, no newsprint. It’s unimaginable; a grave existential crisis” || ‘Vishwa Vani’ editor and owner, Vishweshwar Bhat
Media management in India doesn’t present a pretty sight on a day when the “Old Lady of Bori Bunder” rides on little #Corona to announce salary cuts and defer increments, opening the floodgates, as it were, to less-endowed groups lower down the food chain. As each day dawns, the full scale of the havoc wrought…
“Advertisers are reluctant to spend on Marketing right now”: 10-40 per cent salary cuts at NDTV for those earning over Rs 50K per month
Hi, Together we have withstood formidable crises that would have left most groups ducking for cover. Our courage and our resilience is drawn from our commitment to free and fair journalism, from our determination to side only with the Truth. Most importantly, as we have demonstrated over and over, our strength and our courage is…
“To do more for less is the new normal”: Times Group says #COVID crisis needs a “start-up mindset”, as it announces 5-10% salary cuts, defers variable pay and increments
Below is the full text of the note by Sivakumar Sundaram, chairman, executive committee, Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL) *** Dear Colleagues, The last one month has been unprecedented in terms of the disruption it has caused in our personal and professional lives. I recognise it must be extremely stressful for all, worrying about…
“All you need is a mobile phone and a computer to offer your content to the whole world”: Star-Disney boss Uday Shankar on why media will be a worthy career despite #Corona
In the short term, media appears to be a treacherous minefield to cross, for working professionals and wannabe journalists, as jobs and salaries shrink, and the workplace undergoes a metamorphosis. But in the medium to long term, once the COVID cloud passes over, is a career in the media still worth the effort? Yes, says…
J-POD || Podcast || Three things journalists can do in #Coronavirus season to save their jobs || Must-hear advice from Mumbai Press Club president Gurbir Singh
Journalistic solidarity in India began to crack when media managements started using the contract system of employment to break unions at the cusp of liberalisation in 1991. With newsrooms increasingly split between secure “wage board” employees and higher-paid contractual staffers, journalists became islands. To each her own. #Coronavirus has had many effects, but it has…
Global headlines say ‘Great Depression 2.0’ is here. Ratings agencies say India’s GDP will grow at -1% and 0%. For 13 out of 15 newspapers, it is not front-page news.
The banner headlines of newspapers across continents today are uniformly grim: Virus threatens to hit economy harder than war and flu 1918; Biggest economic shock in 300 years; Great Depression 2.0. *** Indian newspaper headlines today, by contrast, are understandably all about the extension of the “lockdown”. In all but two mainline dailies, IMF’s forecast…
BUJ calls job losses and salary cuts of journalists during #Coronavirus “patently illegal, grossly unethical, unbelievably inhuman”; wants rollback
The Brihanmumbai Union of Journalists has demanded that all termination and closure notices issued after 15 March 2020 be withdrawn, and the Union government ensure there are no job losses or salary cuts during the COVID crisus and its run-up.
J-POD || A podcast on journalism || ex-Rediff and Yahoo editor Prem Panicker on what journalists facing an uncertain future due to #Coronavirus can try to do on the digital front
Indian journalists have been doing a heroic job of reporting the #Coronavirus pandemic even though it has thrown the print media sector into a massive tizzy. The “lockdown” has caused havoc to advertising, transportation and distribution of newspapers and magazines—and ignorance has spread the fear of contamination among the “educated”. Job losses and salary cuts…
156 stories, eight editorials, and five cartoons over 15 days: how ‘Dainik Jagran’ kept up the constant Islamophobic dog-whistling on ‘Tabhlighi Jamaat’, as if India would be free from #Coronavirus if only…
The communalisation of the #Coronavirus pandemic in the media, just when the humanitarian crisis sparked by Narendra Modi‘s imposition of the 21-day “lockdown” with a 4-hour notice on March 25 was taking shape, is much too much of a coincidence. As the sight and plight of thousands of migrants walking back home from the big cities…
Journalism in the time of COVID: why some Indian TV anchors and reporters need to read up on what Article 51 (a) (h) of the Constitution stands for
Campaign for Ethical Media Reporting, a Bangalore-based group of activists, parents, lawyers, and academicians who are working towards making media more accountable to journalistic standards, ethics and principles, has drafted an appeal against the communalisation of the #CoronaVirus outbreak by sections of the media. Below is the full text: *** *** “The approach to a…
J-POD: a podcast on journalism. Will our writing on #Coronavirus stand the test of time? Will it have value a 100 years from now?
11 sexy front-pages of the French daily ‘Liberation’ which show journalism needn’t be deathly dull even in the time of a raging pandemic
Front pages of newspapers across the world have the same, sombre look and feel in the time of disease and death. Not the French daily Liberation, which continues to keep the shopfront stylish and inviting. The piece de resistance came on the day after Asterix illustrator Uderzo passed away: Obelix carrying Coronavirus.
IJR 