https://soundcloud.com/user-311470525/j-pod-coomi-kapoor-author-of *** An acclaimed Indian Express journalist, whose husband was jailed during the Emergency of 1975, says governments no longer need to take Indira Gandhi’s route of introducing censorship to control the media or the message that reaches the people. “Parties have found enough ways to control the media without having to formally declare censorship.…
Tag Archives: S. Nihal Singh
‘The Hindu’ issue more complex than you think’
Predictably, the “private” TV news channels do not have too much on the resignation of Siddharth Varadarajan as editor and removal of Arun Anant as CEO of The Hindu after the family-owned newspaper decided to restore status quo ante on Monday. Newspaper reports have been sketchy and superficial, and web interviews and Twitter feeds of…
When an editor draws a cartoon, it’s news
Indian print editors have done book reviews (Sham Lal, Times of India), film reviews (Vinod Mehta, Debonair), food reviews (Vir Sanghvi, Hindustan Times), music reviews (Chandan Mitra, TOI, Pioneer, The Sunday Observer; Sanjoy Narayan, Hindustan Times), elephant polo reviews (Suman Dubey, India Today) etc, but few have done cartoons. When The Telegraph, Calcutta, was launched…
Will TV channels lose out to newspapers by 2050?
Before the reforms of 1991 prised open the doors of Indian journalism (and the minds and wallets of publishers and promoters), “Gulf” was the El Dorado journalists and editors chased. In Bombay and Bangalore and Delhi, dozens of journalists and editors attended road shows and group-interviews in the banquet halls of five-star hotels. Khaleej Times,…
Will Barack Obama be page one news tomorrow?
Will Barack Obama‘s reelection be front-page news in your newspaper tomorrow? Not if your paper has a “jacket advertisement” in this Diwali season, in which case it will technically be on page 3. Not if your paper two jacket ads, in which case it will be on page 5. In many ways, Indian newspapers have…
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…
Rajya Sabha TV tears into Reliance-TV18 deal
The fears over what happens when a big business house with deep pockets and political influence across parties funds a big media house to legitimise its hitherto-hidden media interests, are coming true even before the controversial Reliance Industries -Network18/TV18-Eenadu Television deal can be inked. Obviously, the political class is silent. Obviously, TV18’s competitors won’t touch…
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…
‘Arun Shourie: a Hindu right-wing pamphleteer’
There are few more polarising figures in Indian journalism than Arun Shourie. For many of his professional peers, he is everything a journalist should not be: a wonky-eyed, hired gun of the Hindu right, selectively and deviously using facts to push its ideological and political agendas. Arrogant, intolerant, abusive, dictatorial, . For multitudes more, he…
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…
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