Nothing is more galling for a reporter or an Editor—or a “reporter’s editor”—to be accused of not doing her job as expected by her employers, promoters and their puppeteers. Amazingly, that is exactly what the Editors Guild of India is being accused of. When, in fact, it has been the first organisation in the world…
Tag Archives: Magsaysay Award
J-POD || Podcast || “COVID has given us a brain scan of media thinking. National newspapers devote 0.67% of front page to 69% of India. Corporate media is the bed on which religious and market fundamentalists cohabit” || P. Sainath
https://soundcloud.com/user-311470525/j-pod-p-sainath-on-the-media *** Less than 2% of India’s population is invested in stocks and mutual funds. Yet, India has at least half-a-dozen business newspapers in English. And just as many business news channels. Every newspaper in every language, in every part of the country, has a page—or half of page—dedicated to business news. Or what they think is…
Out of 24 newspapers in 9 languages, only three consider Ravish Kumar’s Magsaysay Award worthy of proper front-page display. George Orwell, also born in Motihari, would be convinced that “Big Brother is watching you”.
How much pride does Indian news media have in one of its own—Ravish Kumar of NDTV India—winnning the 2019 Magsaysay Award for “harnessing journalism to give voice to the voiceless”? Surely, it is front-page news given the spate of bad news dogging the industry? Surely, it is the kind of feel-good stories owners and managers…
Ravish Kumar’s citation (878 words) compared to Arun Shourie’s (575 words) is a testament to how much media freedom has shrunk in India under “popular authoritarianism”. It is a tight slap on Narendra Modi’s tax terrorists—and a salute to Prannoy and Radhika Roy.
In 1982, in the wake of Indira Gandhi‘s Emergency, the Ramon Magsaysay foundation awarded Indian Express editor Arun Shourie with the Magsaysay Award. Shourie’s citation was 575 words long. In 2019, NDTV India’s Ravish Kumar has been honoured with what is considered to be the “Asian Nobel”. Kumar’s citation is 878 words long. The length…
Sacrilege! Mihir Sharma takes on P.Sainath
As he exited the Indian Express last year as its most acerbic pen, the Harvard-educated economist Mihir S. Sharma launched into “adman” Suhel Seth in a long review of the latter’s book in The Caravan. Now, at the Business Standard as the editor of its opinion pages, Sharma trains his guns at the Magsaysay award…
Why Khushwant Singh fell out with Arun Shourie
Khushwant Singh, former editor of Hindustan Times and the now-defunct Illustrated Weekly of India, on why he is no longer friends with Arun Shourie, the Magsaysay Award-winning former editor of Indian Express, in the Hindustan Times: “There was a time when I was a frequent diner in the Shouries’ household in Delhi…. At one of the…
‘Outlook’ journo bags prize for using RTI for story
Saikat Datta, an assistant editor at the newsweekly magazine Outlook*, has bagged the National RTI Award 2010 for his expose of the Rs 2,500 crore rice scam using the Right to Information (RTI). Four others were also named for the award by a jury which included the former chief justice of India J.S. Verma, former…
‘Middle-class media doesn’t speak for poor’
P. Sainath, the Magsaysay Award-winning rural affairs editor of The Hindu, says the media did a poor job of explaining the impact of the recent fuel price hike on the poor while it expended time and space on the suicide of supermodel Viveka Babajee. Delivering the silver jubilee lecture on “Mass Media: But where are…
Has R.K. Laxman drawn his last cartoon?
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: A question mark hangs over India’s most famous exclamation mark after a further slip in health of Rasipuram Krishnaswami Laxman, the iconic cartoonist of The Times of India. The 86-year-old Laxman, who has drawn cartoons for ToI for 63 years, has been airlifted to Bombay, reportedly after suffering a “mild…
How Arun Shourie became the Express editor
Magsaysay Award-winning former Indian Express editor turned BJP ideologue, Arun Shourie, in conversation with Mahesh Sarma: How did you get the Indian Express editor’s job? Emergency had passed [in 1977]. I had got to know [Express proprietor] Ramnath Goenka through many episodes. And the Janta Party had come to power. We were staying in Mr…
Arun Shourie: ‘Intolerant. Abusive. Dictatorial.’
Shoma Chaudhury, the executive editor of Tehelka, does a much-required re-examination of Arun Shourie, the former editor of the Indian Express, who occupies an “adumbral position between liberal knight, self-righteous crusader and unselfconscious fascist”, in the context of a recent interview with his protege, Shekhar Gupta. “Shourie joined the Indian Express as executive editor in…
Who are the journos ‘running & ruining’ the BJP?
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: Former Indian Express editor Arun Shourie‘s explosive interview with the paper’s current editor, Shekhar Gupta, while revealing the deep schisms within India’s principal oppostion party, the BJP, has also once again thrown light on the less-than-professional role political journalists have been playing. For the second time in two months,…
Anybody here with an open mind & reads English?
Palagummi Sainath has been the stalwart correspondent of our times. In an era of “feel-good” journalism, the Hindu‘s rural affairs editor has an been unapologetic harbinger of drought, disease, despair and death from parts of Bharat that the Indian mass media can’t reach, won’t reach, and no longer wants to reach. At the same time,…
IJR 