Former Tehelka, India Today and Headlines Today journalist Ashish Khetan is to be the Aam Aadmi Party’s candidate from the New Delhi constituency, continuing the fledgling party’s strange infatuation with journalists. But from deep south, there is news that AAP may field a blast from the past, Anita Pratap. The former Time, CNN, Indian Express,…
Tag Archives: Headlines Today
Narendra Modi, Mukesh Ambani & Network 18
In the latest issue of Open magazine, former NDTV and Headlines Today journalist-turned-academic Sandeep Bhushan, throws light on how the television media is covering the BJP’s “prime ministerial candidate” Narendra Modi: “Several past and serving employees of the media behemoth Network 18 have told me that a heavy-duty ‘go-soft-on-Modi’ campaign is underway within the group.…
When everyone forgets, the family remembers
An ‘In Memoriam’ advertisement appearing in New Delhi newspapers on September 30, for Soumya Viswanathan, the Headlines Today journalist, who was found murdered in Delhi in 2008, shortly after leaving work for home. In 2009, United News of India (UNI) reported that Soumya’s employers, TV Today Network, were fined Rs 250 for violating the capital’s…
‘TV is manufacturing news & consent for State’
Former NDTV and Headlines Today reporter Sandeep Bhushan, now an academic at the Jamia Millia Islamia, in the Economic & Political Weekly: “The news studio has become the site for “manufacturing” news and consent on behalf of the beleaguered state. This is largely the product of an unprecedented financial crisis which has threatened media’s advertisement-based…
Now, NewsX says it is the ‘No.1 English channel’
If our TV stations cannot even put out numbers of their viewership which have a faint whiff of credibility, can they real put out news and views that news consumers can trust and believe? NewsX, the news channel which has already seen three sets of owners since its launch, is running crawlers on its screens…
Headlines Today claims it’s overtaken Times Now
In a non-stop season of scams, you would expect television watchers to switch on private TV stations to get the plain, unvarnished truth? Well, think again. Hindustan Times once again reports that the most-watched news shows between 8 pm and 10 pm are those on the state-owned Doordarshan News. The paper reports that the 8…
India’s most-watched TV news show at 9 pm is…
India’s most-watched TV news show at 9 pm is, pinch yourself, DD News! Hindustan Times reports in its gossip columns that News Night: “the primetime news show [on DD News] between 9 pm and 10 pm topped the TAM ratings last week with 66% market share, four times the channel which comes next.” Interesting, if…
How promoters killed the TV news reporter
Sandeep Bhushan, a former reporter with NDTV and Headlines Today and now a journalism educator at the Jamia Milia, on the implications of the growing intervention of owners/promoters in determining news content in TV broadcast news networks, in The Hindu: “The most far-reaching is the redefinition of the role of the editor. Increasingly his/her profile…
Lots of people watch Lok Sabha TV. Surprised?
It doesn’t look pretty when a free-to-air public service broadcaster gets into the TRP race. Lok Sabha TV, the channel of the lower house of Parliament, has issued newspaper advertisements through the audio-visual publicity department (DAVP) of the government, of the viewership commanded by it in Delhi during the first week of March—when the results…
Anna Hazare: 17 TV interviews over 11 hours
Exclusive interview with Barkha Dutt on NDTV 24×7. Exclusive interview with Rajdeep Sardesai on CNN-IBN. Exclusive interview with Rahul Kanwal on Headlines Today. “Live” exclusive interview with Arnab Goswami at “8.23 pm” on Times Now…. It was all in a day’s work for anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare on Tuesday, 13 September, as he rolled out…
Should ‘media corruption’ come under Lokpal?
The more-than-just-a-neutral-observer position taken by sections of the media on the Anna Hazare agitation has clearly begun to rile politicians, and at least two of them cutting across party lines have argued in the last couple of days that the media too must be brought under the purview of the proposed anti-corruption legislation. Exhibit A: Union…
Ex-Star News, ToI journos behind ‘Arnab Spring’
In today’s Mail Today, Headlines Today executive editor Rahul Kanwal adds another name to the roster of journalists working with the Anna Hazare campaign against corruption: former Star News anchor Shazia Ilmi. He also throws light on the media strategy adopted by the team to craft India’s “Arnab Spring”: # Never start a press meet…
To err is human, to eff up repeatedly is divine
If only they weren’t taken so seriously by TV news channels, election surveys and exit polls should be published on the comics pages, for the unbridled fun they offer—after the declaration of results. Above is The Times of India‘s composite infographic of all the surveys done by various TV stations and polling agencies for the…
We, the Peepli Live: 42 OB vans at Jantar Mantar
There were 42 outside broadcasting (OB) vans of various TV stations at Jantar Mantar, the venue of the campaign against corruption launched by Anna Hazare, in New Delhi yesterday. Headlines Today, the news channel owned by the India Today group, had even set up a walk-in studio. Photograph: Pritam Sengupta
Radia effect on PM’s invitees for TV pow-wow?
Prime minister Manmohan Singh‘s much ballyhooed pow-wow with “editors” of television channels to clear the air over the scams dogging his government, was, as was to be expected, a typically tepid, bureaucratic affair. Only the national English TV channels—Headlines Today (represented by Aroon Purie), CNN-IBN (Rajdeep Sardesai), NDTV 24×7 (Prannoy Roy), Times Now (Arnab Goswami)—were…
Note to directors: It was Shammy not Barkha
No One Killed Jessica? Well, someone ‘killed’ Harinder Baweja. Raj Kumar Gupta, the director of last weekend’s multiplex marvel—in which Rani Mukherji essays the role of a single, bitchy, aggressive, passionate, foul-mouthed, investigative journalist probing the murder of the model Jessica Lal at a Delhi bar—may have made the world believe that his ‘wet dream’…
Four lessons in journalism from Tata’s chief PRO
Christabelle Noronha, corporate affairs chief of the Tata group, in a letter to the editor of the business daily, Mint, which had carried a story on the Tatas blacklisting The Pioneer, Outlook*, Open, India Today group and The Times of India group for their “biased reporting” of the 2G spectrum allocation scam: “Is it not…
Barkha Dutt breaks silence in NYT interview
For 15 days, as the media storm over the Niira Radia tapes raged around her, NDTV’s star-anchor Barkha Dutt opted to speak to the world through an official press release, an online essay, and a pre-recorded inquisition by print editors. Dutt declined to appear on a Karan Thapar show and in a Headlines Today debate,…
“TV channels stump particle/ astrophysicists”
“EVERY CHANNEL NOW ENJOYS HIGHEST VIEWERSHIP“ The game of up-onemanship—yes, you read that right, up-onemanship—between Indian television stations on who is behind them, and at what micro-second of the day, has become a bit of a joke. Many have caught it, of course, but only GAUTAMA P. has been smart enough to decide to do…
It is their opinion they have done an exit poll
Exit polls are said to be more reliable than opinion polls in gauging the mood of the electorate since pollsters catch respondents immediately after they have cast their ballot. But for the second successive time in five years, mainstream Indian media organisations have fallen flat on their faces in their “exit poll” projections, throwing a…
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