After gripping the nation’s attention for nearly a year, the Niira Radia tapes that brought the politics-business-media nexus into sharp focus, is now on a slow but screechy rewind. The lobbyist Radia has shut shop; arrested politicians (Kanimozhi) are on the way out of jail; the corporate bosses and business executives have secured bail; the…
Tag Archives: Outlook
Vinod Mehta on Arun Shourie, Dileep Padgaonkar
“India’s most independent, principled and irreverent editor” Vinod Mehta has just published a memoir. Titled Lucknow Boy, the editor-in-chief of the Outlook* group of magazines, recaptures his four-decade journalistic journey via Debonair, The Sunday Observer, The Indian Post, The Independent and The Pioneer. With trademark candour often bordering on the salacious, the twice-married but childless Mehta reveals that he fathered a child in…
The ‘sardar in the lightbulb’ signs out suddenly
Seventy years after he started needling readers and 42 years after he wrote his first column, the “sardar in the lightbulb” will shine no more. Khushwant Singh, the dirty old man of Indian journalism, says he is now too old (and maybe just a little less dirty) to dish out malice towards one and all…
The journo married to the Rs 100,000 crore heir
In all the wide-eyed reporting on the gold tumbling out of the vaults of the Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum, reporters have (generally) missed out on one delicious fact: the fact, that one of our ilk is married into the erstwhile royal family of Travancore. That lucky somebody is M.D. Nalapat (left), former resident editor of…
What Niira Radia told PAC on Barkha Dutt chat
The 21-member public accounts committee (PAC), which probed the 2G spectrum allocation scam and finalised its draft report in a hurry, has gone into a tailspin with the draft report being rejected 11-10 and the Congress members charging the chairman, Murli Manohar Joshi, of leaking the report. Tehelka magazine has put up the PAC draft…
It isn’t easy to tell tales of even dead Editors
Outlook* editor-in-chief Vinod Mehta, in the letters’ pages of the weekly newsmagazine: Clarification In my Delhi Diary (Mar 21), I made some references to the late R.K. Karanjia, former editor of Blitz and one of India’s most respected journalists, and Col Gaddafi. I withdraw those remarks unreservedly and apologise to Russy’s family for any unintended…
‘Media standards not keeping pace with growth’
Sanjaya Baru, editor of Business Standard and former media advisor to prime minister Manmohan Singh, delivered the second H.Y. Sharada Prasad memorial lecture on media, business and government at the India International Centre on Sunday, 17 April. This is the full text of his address: *** By SANJAYA BARU I first met H.Y. Sharada Prasad…
Prabhu Chawla: My greatest feat, and failure
A fresh selection of media questions from readers to the editorial director of The New Indian Express group, Prabhu Chawla, and answered with trademark candour. Vol 1. No III. *** Q: Why did you quit India Today group? I am asking this question because I am a big fan of your show Sidhi Baat. A:…
Why an editor took two empty suitcases to Libya
There is little doubt, as the Niira Radia tapes showed, that journalistic integrity in India is at an all-time low—despite the manifold increase in salaries—especially since the liberalisation process began in 1991 and the notional capital of the media moved from Bombay to Delhi. Whispers of editors who own power plants and mines, of reporters…
Have Tatas blacklisted The Times of India again?
Tata Steel, the flagship company of corporate behemoth Tata Sons, is going in for a follow-on public offer (FPO). This display advertisement appeared in the Delhi editions of the Hindustan Times and Mint, Indian Express and Financial Express, The Hindu and Business Standard, on Friday, 14 January 2011, but not in the Delhi editions of India’s…
‘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…
Journalist’s house raided in 2G spectrum scam
Journalistic tongues in Delhi have wagged unabashedly after finding the voices of Vir Sanghvi, Barkha Dutt and Prabhu Chawla in the Niira Radia tapes in the 2G spectrum allocation scam, but the first big piece of action seems to have come from Tamil Nadu in the deep south. The residence of A. Kamaraj, the associate…
Since flattery is best expressed by imitation
The Outlook* magazine cover on telephone tapping dated 3 May 2010. Designer: Bishwadeep Moitra. And the India Today cover on telephone tapping dated 20 December 2010. Designer: Saurabh Singh. * Disclosures apply
SMS IPUB4 to 51818* for Journalist of the Year
The publication of the Niira Radia tapes by Outlook* and Open magazines has seen the usual clutch of usual suspects—and “suspects” many of them truly are—hog the limelight and shine in reflected glory. All, except J. Gopikrishnan of The Pioneer, the journalist who (aside from Paranjoy Guha Thakurta) kept pegging away at the 2G…
When Rajdeep Sardesai got it left, right & centre
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: There were two “key takeaways”—as TV anchors remind us every night, two “key takeaways”—from the post-Niira Radia chintan baithak organised by the Editors Guild of India, the Press Club of India, and the Indian Women’s Press Corps (IWPC) in New Delhi on Friday. The first takeaway is what the…
Is it really so difficult to say sorry, maaf karo?
Nearly 30 years after it was made on a shorter than shoestring budget, the Kundan Shah-directed caper Jaane bhi do yaaro remains one of Bollywood’s most loved movies, presciently squatting at the 2010 intersection of politicians, businessmen and journalists a la Niira Radiagate. In JBDY, two commercial photographers (played by Naseeruddin Shah and the late…
‘A too-argumentative Barkha squanders chance’
Barkha Dutt, the “massively influential but ethically embattled” NDTV anchor subjected herself to an inquisition last night in a bid to extricate her credibility after the Niira Radia tapes were outed by Outlook* and Open magazines. Unlike her well-lit Buck Stops Here set, NDTV situated the interrogation in a dark and spooky set, and the…
Everybody loves a nice mutual admiration club
Ratan Tata, the bossman of Tata Sons in the middle of the 2G spectrum allocation scam following the outing of the tapes of the conversations of his chief lobbyist Niira Radia, has given an interview to Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of The Indian Express and host of NDTV’s interview programme, Walk the Talk. The text of…
How to get tomorrow’s news today: an example
The Indian Express, Ramnath Goenka‘s bludgeon that once drove fear through the hearts of the high and mighty, the corrupt and the crooked, has emerged as a key player in drumming up the defence for Ratan Tata, the chairman of Tata Sons, whose conversations with the group’s chief lobbyist Niira Radia, revealed by Outlook* and…
Lessons for Vir & Barkha from Prem & Nikhilda
By T.J.S. GEORGE Journalism started going astray with the birth of financial dailies in the 1960s. With full-fledged newspapers devoted exclusively to business, corporate houses became hyperactive. The next thing we knew was press conferences ending with gifts of expensive sarees and suitlengths to reporters. That was innocent child play compared to what has hit…
IJR 