As the old saying goes, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action. Or, as we say in journalism, a trend. In the space of just 20 days, two Members of Parliament have been found dead. The first, 7-time MP Mohan Delkar, was found hanging in his hotel room in Bombay in February.…
Tag Archives: The Hindu
‘The Telegraph’ sports journalist who is now the Chief Justice of Madras High Court
Madras High Court has a new Chief Justice, its 42nd: Justice Sanjib Banerjee. Nothing new there, all high courts have a first among equals. The interesting part comes through two tweets by The Hindu’s legal correspondent, Mohamed Imranullah, who reveals that Justice Banerjee, 60, began his career as a sports journalist with The Telegraph in…
If newspapers had been as clear about farm laws as they are against taxing corporates, Punjab’s farmers could have gone back home a long time ago
The month-long agitation by Punjab’s resolute farmers over the agricultural “reforms”, artfully sneaked through Parliament with former journalist Harivansh (former Editor of Prabhat Khabar) presiding over the Rajya Sabha, has seen the usual divisions in the media. Large sections of the media have been susceptible to official spin, running audio and video transcripts provided by…
J-POD || Podcast || “Pakistan took foreign journalists to Balakot a month after India’s strike. India is still to take its own journalists to Galwan six months after the Chinese incursion” || Sushant Singh
Exactly six months ago, on the intervening night of June 15-16 this year, the lives of 20 Indian soldiers ended—literally at the hands of the Chinese in the heights of Ladakh. For several weeks, large sections of mainstream media were in denial, dishing out the sarkari view that there was nothing abnormal on the border.…
In the Samir Jain era, the ‘Times Group’ has shut down 26 newspapers and magazines. ‘Mumbai Mirror’ was a death foretold.
The pandemic and the economic slump may have given the Times group the cloud cover to pull the trigger on Mumbai Mirror, but the tabloid’s fate was probably decided when it was hived off from The Times of India’s parent company a couple of years ago seven months ago. Launched in 2005 with a Bennett…
‘Mr KN’, a legend at ‘The Hindu’: a “Dronacharya who moulded a generation of Ekalavyas”, an elder brother who helped faraway correspondents scale new heights
Journalism is more than just bold-face owners and editors, whose face appears on TV or who advertise their greatness on social media every few minutes. There are many unsung heroes down the food chain, quietly going about their job with dignity and dedication. The Hindu lost two former news editors on the recently. Here, Mathihalli…
Newspaper front pages on acquittal of Babri Masjid accused show how Indian media has been hollowed out of courage and conviction since 1992
When the domes of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya were brought down in 1992, the year after the liberalisation process began, there was great clarity in the news media and its consumers on the foundations on which the Republic of India stood. Blazing front-page editorials minced no words in denouncing the conspicuous destruction of the…
‘KN’, a long-standing News Editor of ‘The Hindu’, and his successor ‘GD’ both pass away on the same day. And the encomiums are a reminder of journalism as it once was.
K. Narayanan, the former news editor and later readers’ editor of The Hindu, has passed on, at age 88. And so has the man who succeeded him at the post: Gomatam Dwarakanath, at age 86. Both on the same day, 29 September 2020. The Narayanan obit highlights his penchant for hard work, integrity, wide knowledge,…
Except ‘The Hindu’ and ‘The Telegraph’, most newspapers can’t join the dots between arrested journalist Rajeev Sharma and NSA Ajit Doval
The arrest of Delhi-based journalist Rajeev Sharma, for violating the Official Secrets Act (OSA) by allegedly passing on “defence secrets” to China, is remarkable for the consistent quality of stenography. Only The Hindu (above) categorically reports Sharma’s association with the right-wing thinktank Vivekananda International Foundation, whose founder-director was the national security adviser, Ajit Doval. ***…
J-POD || Podcast || “Phone is king. Less is best. Follow stories, not editions. Newsrooms must be a zoo of different animals” || Life-lessons from news design guru Mario Garcia
At a time when consumers are exposed to beautifully crafted products from around the world, the first object Indians pick up every morning is The Daily Shame. Barring the odd exception, most Indian newspapers in every language look like a dog’s meal—a mishmash of leftovers of all colours, shapes and sizes with barely any clarity…
45 years after Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, ‘The Hindu’ publishes an ad announcing the death of media in Delhi, in 2020, under Narendra Modi
When Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency in June 1975, a young journalist took out a 22-word classified advertisement in The Times of India in Bombay. It read: “O’Cracy, D.E.M., beloved husband of T. Ruth, loving father of L.I. Bertie, brother of Faith, Hope and Justicia, died on June 26.” The journalist was Ashok Mahadevan, then…
In editorials on Dr Kafeel Khan’s release, 6 out of 8 English newspapers cannot even take the name of his chief detractor, “India’s No.1 CM” Yogi Adityanath
Dr Kafeel Khan is, without doubt, one of the most egregious victims of majoritarianism in contemporary India, where a vengeful state unleashes the blunt instruments at its disposal to “teach a lesson” to a member of the minorities—and is cheered on in this naked display of brutality. The paediatrician’s cardinal sin was to flag the…
J-POD || Podcast || “A large section of media doesn’t want to dwell on stories that present the government in a bad light” || Ananth Krishnan of ‘The Hindu’ on the tepid coverage of Chinese ingress
*** India is locked in its biggest conflict with China in recent times. Twenty Indian soldiers have died. Massive tracts of Indian land have been lost. In response—without naming China—India has banned Chinese apps, curtailed visas for Chinese citizens, raised the entry barrier for Chinese investors, and banned the study of Mandarin. The two nuclear…
“There can be no finer guarantee to a nation’s welfare than a free press in the service of a free nation”: Mountbatten’s 1947 message
The following is the full text of the message sent by Lord Mountbatten, the outgoing Viceroy, on India’s Independence Day in 1947. *** “I send my greetings and best wishes to the Indian press and all your readers on this historic day. It is good to know that paper restrictions have been relaxed to enable…
“India has ceded territory to China”: near-unanimous newspaper editorials call the Modi government’s bluff—and reaffirm the value of print journalism
Editorials in India’s major English newspapers on the “mutual disengagement” that India and China have agreed upon, are nearly unanimous in their verdict: under “strong man” Narendra Modi, India has surrendered its territory to China. The mature and considered reading of the newspapers is in marked contrast to TV news channels parroting the BJP-led NDA…
24 things that happened to the media during the Emergency, besides the three you already know
The Emergency of 1975 is in danger of becoming a cliche, pulled out with rhetorical flourish around June 25 each year to remember Indian democracy’s darkest 21 months. It’s used so loosely as a catch-all scare-word—even by those who have much to hide, especially by those who have much to hide—that for the 81% of…
“Ambiguous. Beseiged. Confusing. Disappointing. Dismaying. Evasive. Frightening. Unpardonable. Unsatisfactory. PM should speak again”: editorials on ‘Surender’ Modi’s cop-out
The major English newspapers all have editorials on Narendra Modi‘s brazen lie, without taking the name of China, that “no one has intruded on Indian soil, nor is any one sitting on Indian soil, nor has any post been seized by anyone”, which made a total mockery of the killing of 20 Indian soldiers last…
‘The Hindu’ virtually sounds the death knell for its Mumbai edition, tells 25 ‘elite’ staffers to leave, as COVID wreaks havoc to revenue streams
*** The Mumbai edition of The Hindu, launched with much fanfare five years ago, has run into serious turbulence with over two dozen staffers being asked to leave the 142-year-old organisation at less than a fortnight’s notice. The indicated last date is June 30. Almost all those whose resignations have been sought, orally, had been…
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
*** 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 business…
Propaganda is king as newspapers open their sanctum sanctorum to be defiled by the ghostwritten schoolboy essays of Narendra Modi & Co
Newspaper maaliks and managers may think no one reads the editorial and op-ed pages. But thankfully the media managers of the Narendra Modi government do. So, to mark the first anniversary of the second term of the BJP-led NDA government, newspapers allow their sanctum sanctorum to be defiled by ghost written schoolboy essays of various…
IJR 