https://soundcloud.com/user-311470525/j-pod-ex-ins-president-and *** Battle-weary journalists, who have been there, done that and seen it all, think they know exactly how the media houses which employ them should deal with the existential threat posed by the #Coronavirus pandemic. You could call this the sentimental view, the belief that, at this inflection point for the media business, the…
Tag Archives: Sonia Gandhi
J-POD || A podcast on journalism || “The newspaper business is in danger. It’s an unprecedented challenge for survival. We were in denial till Coronavirus struck” || N. Ram, Chairman, ‘The Hindu’ group
https://soundcloud.com/user-311470525/j-pod-n-ram-former-editor-in *** To look at the deep and debilitating impact #Coronavirus has had on jobs and salaries and workplaces merely through the prism of journalists and editors in India, would be to take a very limited view of what is a larger, systemic problem, one that haunts those way above the payscale of employees. Barring…
Q: How free is India’s “free press” if it has to depend on government ads to survive after the Coronavirus? A: Don’t even ask that question, or else.
In mature democracies around the world, the news media goes out of its way to underline its independence to the outside world—to convey that they are credible businesses not beholden to governments, businesses or other vested interests for their survival and journalism. #CoronaVirus seems to have blown away even that little figleaf in the world’s…
In Gauri Lankesh’s home-state, a frighteningly real story of ‘fake news’, with the clumsy footprints of BJP and RSS—and embedded ‘sangh’ journalists and newspapers. (And, yes, a fake news peddler followed by Narendra Modi.)
*** A leading Kannada newspaper owned by a former three-term BJP MP and a serial fake news peddler followed by Narendra Modi on Twitter, have been embroiled in a forged letter scandal, following the arrest of a “journalist” owing allegiance to the RSS. # The newspaper is Vijaya Vani owned by former Dharwad (North) MP Vijay Sankeshwar. #…
You have read the column, now read the book
When he began a new column titled “First person, Second draft” in September 2013, Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta acknowledged that the Hindi film Madras Cafe, directed by Shoojit Sircar, on the hunt for the killers of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, was somewhat of an inspiration. Gupta wrote in the inaugural issue of the…
Where was Priyanka Chopra going with Bob?*
There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip in the era of fast-breaking news and even well-equipped organisations like CNN and BBC are not immune from howlers in the “supers”. On Tuesday, when the Congress president Sonia Gandhi was rushed to hospital, look who was momentarily accompanying her son-in-law Robert Vadra to look…
The anti-Congress journo who fell for Priyanka
From the gossip column of the Hindustan Times: “Congress president Sonia Gandhi did not think for a second before announcing that she would be contesting from Rae Bareli again in 2014, while speaking to reporters at the UPA anniversary dinner in May. “Ask her,” she had responded to a question as to whether Priyanka Gandhi…
How Tavleen Singh fell out with Sonia Gandhi
The columnist Tavleen Singh has just penned what she calls her “political memoirs”. Titled Durbar (Hachette, 324 pages, Rs 599), the book charts Singh’s view of the corridors of power in Delhi from the inside out—from Indira Gandhi‘s Emergency in 1975 to her assassination in 1984; from Rajiv Gandhi‘s rise to his downfall and death…
How did Robert Vadra vanish off the front pages?
A week is a long time for the media in Scamistan. The ripples caused by Sonia Gandhi‘s son-in-law Robert Vadra‘s real-estate dealings have given way to the hera-pheri of BJP president Nitin Gadkari‘s. The veteran editor and columnist Virendra Kapoor writes in The Sunday Guardian: You can be forgiven if you believe that Nitin Gadkari‘s…
What they said when Shankar shut his Weekly
The capitulation of the Congress-led government at the Centre in the Ambedkar cartoon controversy was welcomed with the thumping of desks by parliamentarians who seemed to have little appreciation of the legendary Shankar‘s work and even less of what its inclusion in a school textbook meant. From Congress president Sonia Gandhi (whose mother-in-law Indira Gandhi…
MUST READ: ‘Shankar’s Weekly’ final editorial
Media freedom in India id est Bharat has never been a more scarce commodity than in the year of the lord 2012. The fourth estate is under concerted attack from all three pillars of our democracy—the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. Organisations mandated to protect media freedom (like the press council of India) are…
So many reporters, so little info on Sonia Gandhi?
Nothing has exposed the hollowness of so-called “political reporting” in New Delhi, and the fragilility of editorial spines of newspapers and TV stations across the country, than the Congress president Sonia Gandhi‘s illness. Hundreds of correspondents cover the grand old party; tens of editors claim to be on on first-name terms with its who’s who;…
Why foreign media broke news of Sonia illness
Few things have exposed the state of political reporting in India than the news that Sonia Gandhi is unwell. Dozens of reporters, most of whom claim more “access” to 10, Janpath than all the rest, cover the Congress party. Yet, in a throwback to the Cold War days, none knew or none told the world what was…
Jawaharlal Nehru: 24 ads, 11 pages in 12 papers
A week is a long time in politics, especially if you are a dead Congressman. On May 21, the 20th death anniversary of the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, various ministries, departments and State governments unleashed an advertising blitzkrieg in the media. Result: 69 ads totalling 41 pages in 12 newspapers. Today, on…
Straight drives from the man behind Seedhi Baat
Former India Today editor Prabhu Chawla has taken his interactive “Ask Prabhu” column to The New Indian Express, which he recently joined as editorial director, answering questions on this, that and the other with earthy candour. Many of the media questions directed at Chawla and his responses are illuminating. Chawla confirms market rumours that the…
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…
Vir Sanghvi “suspends” Hindustan Times column
Vir Sanghvi‘s weekly Hindustan Times column Counterpoint will not appear from next Sunday, after tapes of his alleged conversations with the lobbyist Niira Radia surfaced in Outlook* and Open magazines last week. The column which will appear tomorrow, 28 November 2010, will be his last, although Sanghvi claims on his website, a) that he is…
Why the internet won’t replace newspapers—III
At a rally organised by the Congress party in Bellary on Monday, upon the culmination of a fortnight-long pada yatra (foot march) from Bangalore, 320 km away, members of the audience use newspapers to protect themselves from the searing sun in Sonia Gandhi‘s former constituency. Photograph: Karnataka Photo News Also read: Newspapers as wall paper…
15 things you didn’t know about K.M. Mathew
The passing away of the doyen of Malayalam journalism, Kandathil Mammen Mathew, better known as K.M. Mathew, on Sunday has resulted in a rare outpouring of coverage, with Indian media proprietors burying their usual pettiness about competitors to salute one of their own. So much so that the news of the death of the chief…
‘The PM did his job; it’s the media that didn’t’
Manoj Joshi in Mail Today: “The Prime Minister alone cannot be blamed for the lacklustre national press conference he held on Monday. “True, he did not articulate an overarching vision for his government, nor for the country, for what is being touted as our decade of opportunity. “The media in equal measure failed to extract…
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