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: COVID
“I was asked to leave my phones outside. I was told, ‘resign now or be terminated’. The HR manager held the relieving letter. By the time I got home an hour later, I’d been locked out of my official email”: a brave note from a “journalist of courage”
Hundreds of journalists have lost their jobs in India in the middle of the COVID pandemic with barely a squeak. The haemorrhaging has hollowed out newsrooms at the very moment news consumers expect more (and better) from journalism. But it is all hush-hush. Chhupa rustom. Unlike more civilised parts of the journalistic world, where the…
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
https://soundcloud.com/user-311470525/j-pod-tech-has-changed-what-we *** 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…
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
https://soundcloud.com/user-311470525/j-pod-fear-and-the-future-prof/s-wjjY2lqReCf *** 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…
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
https://soundcloud.com/user-311470525/j-pod-n-ram-former-editor-in *** 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…
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…
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…
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…
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 