As the old saying goes, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action. Or, as we say in journalism, a trend. In the space of just 20 days, two Members of Parliament have been found dead. The first, 7-time MP Mohan Delkar, was found hanging in his hotel room in Bombay in February.…
Tag Archives: Dainik Bhaskar
Sending rejoinders and clarifications to media outlets is old hat. Booking cases against journalists is the norm in #NewIndia.
The front page of the Gujarati language newspaper Divya Bhaskar, published by the Dainik Bhaskar group, after four of its journalists were booked by police in Rajkot for a sting operation at a police station. The journalists were accused of trying to defame the police and compromising the investigation. The paper, however, contended it was…
TV news channels are a gone case. But why are India’s vast and influential language newspapers burying India’s staggering economic collapse?
On the last day of August 2020, India and China were once again locked in horns at the border. As India’s COVID graph spiralled upwards, India’s economy plunged, contracting 23.9% year-on-year. Jobs, lives, livelihood, families, businesses have been ruined after months of a poorly thought-through lockdown, even as crony capitalism of the Ambani and Adani…
In the gushing waters of majoritarianism, there are only a handful of media outliers on the day after
“The book that begins with ‘We, the people of India’ is the God that we failed” “Raja and rishi are no longer” With a picture of the Constitution, and a white-on-black headline, ‘The Telegraph’ (above) says India witnessed a “ritual merger of the Church and State” in Ayodhya, at the ground-breaking ceremony on August 5.…
Unlike gau-belt newspapers, Tamil and Malayalam newspapers are more sober and less triumphalist on the Ayodhya judgment on their front pages. Kannada is a gone case; Telugu is on the way.
The symbiotic relationship between the Hindi language press and the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, each feeding off the other, has been much documented. Today’s front pages, the day after the Supreme Court delivered its verdict, shines a mirror on it. As opposed to the safe, anodyne headlines of English newspapers, which for the most part are sober,…
“If we don’t have the facts, we don’t print the news”: Four big newspaper groups with 12 titles between them join hands to show the power of print journalism
Indian media houses rarely see eye to eye except when their shared commercial pursuits are in peril: like foreign direct investment (FDI) in newspapers, or the goods and services tax (GST) on newsprint, or wage board recommendations eating into their bottomline. For a change, as elections loom and the fake factories start whirring into motion, The…
Kashmir’s small English dailies show more balance and sobriety than mainland India’s gung-ho newspapers in putting out the casualty figure in the air strikes on Pakistan
Verification is a vital function of the news media, especially when the reader-viewer-surfer is exposed to relentless propaganda via electronic and social media. India’s air strike on Pakistan on February 26 posed a test of the newspapers and television against the backdrop of opposing claims made by the two countries. As if to prove the…
How India’s newspapers are covering Narendra Modi’s transformation—from a ‘Nero’ who was fiddling when Gujarat was burning, to a ‘Narcissus’ who was filming when CRPF jawans were dying
“Speaking truth to power” is said to be the raison d’être of journalism. “Comforting the afflicted; afflicting the comfortable,” is another variation of it. How well Indian media is performing those duties is evident on the front pages of today’s mainline dailies. On February 14, the day of the deadliest attack on Indian paramilitary forces…
“Since Shujaat Bukhari’s murder we have been dying a little everyday, slowly and bitterly. Did his killers celebrate? Did they get what they took away from us?”
Shujaat Bukhari, the longtime Kashmir correspondent of The Hindu and Frontline, who launched Rising Kashmir, was assassinated in Srinagar, in June 2018. In the Sunday magazine section of The Hindu, his wife Tehmeena Bukhari, a doctor, writes of her and the family’s trauma. *** “Since his murder — unsolved to this day — we have been…
The media Marwari who’s a ‘proper Tam-Brahm’
After a long period away from the arclights, Viveck Goenka, the scion of one of India’s most influential newspapers, The Indian Express, is slowly bouncing into the main frame. He is now playing an increasingly hand’s-on role at his own paper, making key decisions; is seen at media events, is making his presence felt on…
A Kannada paper breaks RG’s code of silence
Even before he sat down last month with Kalpesh Yagnik of Dainik Bhaskar and Arnab Goswami of Times Now for one-on-one interviews, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had met Editors in Delhi off and on, more off than on. These meetings were long, relaxed, informal but strictly off the record. Smart phones and cameras had to…
Not just a newspaper, a no-paid-news newspaper!
It speaks for the level of distrust that the media has managed to earn for itself that the front page of the Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar carries an emblem in Hindi (right) alongside the masthead, in the space usually reserved for ear-panel advertisements, proclaiming “No Paid News”. Two years ago, the Bombay newspaper DNA, in…
Look, who’s putting up a statue for press freedom
Of all the noxious fumes that emanated from the coal allocation scam that hit UPA-II in 2012, was the perils of political and business interests of media owners and groups, which extend beyond the media. For, among the impressive list of beneficiaries of “Coalgate” was the name of Vijay Darda, the Congress MP who runs…
Shekhar Gupta storms into India Today powerlist
Thirteen out of India Today magazine’s 2013 ranking of the 50 most powerful people in India have interests in the media, but only two of them (former Indian Express editor Arun Shourie, Times Now editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta) are pure-play journalists. The chairman of the press council of India, Justice Markandey…
12 media barons worth Rs 2,962,530,000,000
Twelve media barons in Forbes India‘s list of the 100 richest Indians are worth $54.6 billion, in other words Rs 2,962,530,000,000. There are five pure-play media barons in the Forbes list: Subhash Chandra of Zee (total worth $2.9 billion) at No. 22, Kalanidhi Maran of Sun ($2.8 billion) at No. 24, Indu Jain of The…
How media misuses subsidised land: Episode 324
The misuse of land allotted for media houses is rampant. In Chhattisgarh, several newspapers—including Dainik Bhaskar—have now been slapped with notices for violating the deed under which they were given government land at a concession. An audit found these premises being used for commercial purposes. The Indian Express reports on six of them: DAINIK BHASKAR…
Kuldip Nayar on Shekhar Gupta, N. Ram & Co
Kuldip Nayar, 89, the grand old lion of Indian journalism—former editor of the Statesman in Delhi, former managing editor of the United News of India news agency, former correspondent of the London Times, former media advisor to the late prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, former high commissioner of India to the United Kingdom, and above…
What your settop box says abour your newspaper
The perils of cross-media ownership are obvious and the Bombay daily DNA demonstrates it in ample measure today on its business pages. The news-you-can-use story is ostensibly aimed at empowering TV viewers on the various options before them as the country’s four metros go digital from July 1. It lists the comparative advantages of Tata…
Are journalism’s best practices in your DNA?
On the eve of the nation’s 63rd Republic Day, the Bombay newspaper DNA, from the Dainik Bhaskar and Zee groups, devotes its front page to publicising its code of ethics. Before laying out its key principles—responsibility, freedom, independence, truth and accuracy, impartiality, fair play—the code reads: “Our Constitution, protecting freedom of expression, guarantees to the…
Top-6 dailies devote 2% coverage on rural issues
“India lives in its villages.” “Agriculture accounts for 60% of the Indian economy.” “Two out of every three Indians live in the rural areas.” The cliches abound about Bharat id est India. Yet, a study of India’s top-three English and Hindi newspapers shows that they devote only a minuscule porportion of their total coverage to…
IJR 