The cover image of the now-defunct Sports World magazine, from the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group, which landed the Calcutta-based media house in a protracted 21-year legal case that ended this week. The image of tennis star Boris Becker covering the breasts of his then fiancee Barbara Feltus with his hands, had been reproduced from the…
Tag Archives: Supreme Court of India
When ‘Indian Express’ gave ‘The Hindu’ a story
In October 1989, when The Hindu‘s then associate editor, N. Ram, was stopped in his tracks by his uncle and editor, G. Kasturi, from publishing the third part of an investigation into the Bofors gun deal, Ram found a novel method of getting the story out. He called a press conference and handed out the…
‘Darkest hour for media since the Emergency?’
Is it a good thing that the Supreme Court of India has not announced guidelines for media coverage of court cases? Or has it opened the floodgates by introducing a “neturalising device” that underlines the right of the accused to seek postponement of coverage on a case-by-case basis? And, by introducing a “constitutional principle” has…
Conflict of interest in ‘Indian Express’ awards?
The Ramnath Goenka awards for excellence in journalism, instituted by The Indian Express, will be given out by the vice president of India, Hamid Ansari, on Monday, January 16. But the sponsorship of the awards has run into trouble, with a bunch activists and intellectuals raising questions of “conflict of interest”. Below is their full…
INS: ‘Wage board move will kill most newspapers’
After dithering for months, the Union cabinet has approved the recommendations of the G.R. Majithia wage board for journalists and other employees of newspapers and news agencies, subject to the final order of the Supreme Court which is hearing petitions from at least three media houses. The Indian Newspaper Society (INS), which had steadfastly opposed…
INS: “We reject wage board recommendations”
The following is the full text of the media release issued by the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) in response to the report submitted by the wage board led by former Supreme Court judge, G.R. Majithia, which recommended a 35 per cent hike in salaries for working journalists, and increased the retirement age to 65 years.…
Dishing out news means flouting parking rules
A line of outdoor broadcast (OB) vans occupy one half of the road outside the Supreme Court of India on Tuesday, 28 September 2010, the day the highest court in the land ruled that the judgement in the Ayodhya title suit could be pronounced without any further delay. Below, the media scrum sticks the mike…
Letter-writer secures win against top judge
Forty-two years ago, textile trader Subhash Chandra Agarwal, then an engineering student, was miffed with a Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) bus conductor who refused to give him a ticket for a 20 paise journey. So, he shot off a letter to the editor of the Hindi daily Dainik Hindustan complaining about the misconduct. “When the…
Bolo ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’. Bolo ‘It’s a work of art’
Not that they are sensitive to these things, but the highest court in India has delivered a stinging slap on the menacing faces of the moral police and thought thugs; the connoisseurs who know exactly what we should see, hear, wear, watch, read, write, paint, feel and think. Or else. Maqbool Fida Husain‘s Bharat Mata—a…
‘If a journalist cannot write, then who else will?’
A two-judge vacation bench of the Supreme Court of India has restrained the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat from arresting sociologist Ashis Nandy, for an opinion piece titled ‘Blame the middle class’ he wrote in The Times of India in January this year. Justice Altamas Kabir: “There is no ground for harassing a journalist. Let…
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