Narendra Modi‘s stunning victory in the 2019 general elections has resulted in a not unusual journalistic overkill that has been the hallmark of his first five years in office. The country’s biggest English newspaper has an all-Hindi headline, ‘Chowkidar’s Chamtkaar‘, but at least there is a semblance of sobriety in most the headlines and coverage…
Tag Archives: General Elections 2019
Wisdom at the ‘Sangam’: Journalist Jawid Laiq has called seven elections in the last 42 years with greater accuracy than exit pollsters just by dipping his finger in the Ganga. Will 2019 reverse that trend?
After watching Indians at a polling booth and failing to read their mind on which way they were inclined to vote, James Reston, the late executive editor of The New York Times, grandly concluded that an election was a secret communion between a voter and democracy—it is sacrilegious to pry. Now, where “Scotty” wrote this…
Everybody’s favourite MP, P.Rajeev—the Chief Editor of ‘Deshabhimani’—is digging deep in Ernakulam to find out which side of the brain makes voters decide: left, or right?
Drawing room chats on the state of Indian politics almost always end up in collective kvetching, before everyone drowns their miseries in a glass of hypocrisy—and returns to forward the latest WhatsApp bile with their signature emoji. 🙏 “Wish we didn’t have to choose the best from among the worst.” “Wish our parties would stop…
Nine journalists arrested in Telangana for reporting and recording EVMs being shifted in the middle of the night in private vehicles
Mohammad Mohsin, an IAS officer of the Karnataka cadre posted as an election observer in Odisha, has been suspended for “dereliction of duty”. His offence: checking the helicopter of Narendra Modi, days after a black box had been hurriedly carried off the PM’s chopper in Karnataka. *** Now, nine journalists in Telangana have been arrested…
In India’s glorious dance of democracy, why are regional language newspaper groups so eager to send their owners, not Editors or reporters, to “interview” Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi?
Publicity is the mother of election. So, in a seven-phase poll Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi are gaming their “interviews” to big-circulation publications in states heading to the hustings, phase by phase. Modi spoke to the Kannada daily Vijaya Vani before 14 constituencies in the southern part of Karnataka voted on April 18. And Gandhi spoke to The Hindu…
EC’s poll code bars ‘The Times of India’ from displaying an interview with Narendra Modi. But the rule does not apply to ‘Vijaya Vani’ and ‘Dighvijaya News’, the Kannada newspaper and TV channel owned by former BJP MP Vijay Sankeshwar.
The Times of India has an “interview” with prime minister Narendra Modi on the eve of the second phase of #GeneralElections2019, but it is only available in hard copy, in the print editions of the newspaper. On its website, ToI has blanked out the PM’s interview with the line: “In view of the 48-hour silence…
‘Raavali Jagan, Kaavali Jagan’: 14 pages in today’s ‘Sakshi’ on its owner Jagan Reddy and his rival Chandrababu Naidu prove the old adage: freedom of the press belongs to the politician who owns one
The model code of conduct of the Election Commission of India has been mostly reduced to a joke by pliant officers, cunning chartered accounts, and contemptuous politicians cocking a snook at the fundamental decency of democracy. It is most evident in the manner among political parties and politicians which own media as India heads into…
“Journalists make terrible politicians. You have to have a very, very thick skin to survive the muck. I made a mistake,” says anchor Ashutosh who had vowed (on camera) never to come back to journalism
Do journalists betray their profession when they enter politics? Do journalists make terrible leaders? Should there be a “cooling-off” period before a journalist takes the plunge? Questions, questions, questions. All asked a zillion times before whenever a journalist steps over to the other side of the mike. As Supriya Shrinate, a former ET Now presenter,…
L’affaire Tejasvi Surya: “Media isn’t losing its freedoms so much as surrendering its freedoms. As a group it is unwilling to challenge the restrictions being imposed on them”
The temporary injunction obtained by BJP candidate for Bangalore South, Tejasvi Surya, against 49 newspapers, news channels and digital platforms has met with a strange radio silence from the affected parties. None of them have (so far) filed objections. No media body in Bangalore or elsewhere has thought it fit to react to such a…
If a fake news website deserves freedom to concoct an alternate universe for bhakts, bots and WhatsApp uncles, why cannot legitimate media organisations probe and report a BJP candidate’s past?
Media organisations seem so tired and bored of (repeatedly) fighting for their freedoms that not one of them has publicly raised their voice against an extraordinary injunction issued by a Bangalore court barring them from reporting on troubling questions concerning the private life of BJP’s Bangalore South candidate, Tejasvi Surya. The only paper to have editorially…
Made in Sivakasi: How newspapers front-paged the announcement of general elections 2019 in a mad riot of colours, cartoons, graphics, boxes, numbers
The dog’s meal that is Indian newspaper front pages, on big news days. Text, graphics, pictures, cartoons, photo-illustrations, boxes, highlights, numbers, colours, all in one right royal mess, with nothing to hold the eye. Even on a such as this, the announcement of #GeneralElections2019, there were newspapers like Dainik Bhaskar (Hindi), Divya Bhaskar (Gujarati), and…
74 full-page advertisements in 3 English newspapers over 6 days: Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal show how media silence can be bought before an election by the square centimetre
*** Fact: government advertising is what sustains “free media” in India, and pulling back government ads is standard operating procedure. Fact: the government was the biggest advertiser in print and on television before the 2014 elections, overtaking FMCG, automotive, etc. *** Still, it takes the breath away to see the quantum of public money being…
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