Category: RANJONA BANERJI

By Ranjona Banerji

 

An Egyptian court has sentenced two Al-Jazeera journalists to seven years in prison and another to 10 years for “aiding the Muslim Brotherhood and reporting false news”. Two other Al-Jazeera journalists have been sentenced in absentia, to 10 years each. Al-Jazeera has denied all the charges against their staff who had reported on the turbulent events after Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s removal from office in July last year.

 

Is this another case of shooting the messenger or of a people wanting only news that appeals to their sensibilities being given prominence?

 

Many Egyptians felt cheated when the Muslim Brotherhood came to power after the “Arab spring” and the removal of Hosni Mubarak. The army then removed Morsi who was seen as pro-Brotherhood.

 

However, a democracy is all about everyone getting a chance even those you don’t like. And journalism is all about reporting on the unpleasant as it is about telling you which movie star absolutely hates wearing pink. Life-threatening stories all but someone has to do them.

 

The Egyptian courts however seem to have confused a dislike amongst some for the Muslim Brotherhood with reporting on events around the Muslim Brotherhood. The two are neither interchangeable nor the same. Democracy is about dissent as many have pointed out and there will always be some story which offends someone’s political sensibilities. Jail is not the answer, especially when evidence appears to have been thin on the ground.

 

This is from a New York Times editorial about the trial: “In fact, when asked by the court to display the allegedly false news reports obtained from the defendants’ laptops, prosecutors showed images of one journalist’s family vacation and horses grazing in Luxor, Egypt. That would be laughable if the consequences were not so grave.”

 

Appeals will apparently take years and the implications for journalists who want to venture further from boring bread-and-butter stories seem ominous. So much easier to earn an easy wage than disturb the status quo, as we see many of our colleagues do with a dispensation in power? The journalistic community the world over stands in solidarity with Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed. It is the least we can do.

 

In the Indian context, we are not yet in this position and indeed are very far from it. But it is true that dissent is not understood or appreciated by all sides of the political spectrum and this is true of journalists themselves. There is immense bitterness and anger for journalists with the community who do not toe some line or the other. However, being difficult is our birthright and we should not budge from it.

 

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Every year I write this and why should this year be any different? How does one get through to the foreign news channels which broadcast around the world that their weather people need to have a little more understanding of local weather conditions? The BBC World Service is the worst offender here. As India struggles with a heat wave or a slow monsoon we are repeatedly told about “fine, dry, sunny weather” all over the country – with temperatures at 40 degrees Celsius this is quite heartening for us miserable natives. We understand that the UK is a nation plagued by rain and craving sunshine. But when you broadcast on what you call a “World Service” how much will it hurt to figure out how the rest of the world looks at itself?

 

For the record then, the monsoon is vital for India’s survival. We look forward to it. It is late this year, already 45 per cent below par. The effects can be catastrophic. So, throwaway remarks about “scattered showers normal for this season” really hurt. Not everyone sees life as an opportunity to get skin cancer in the Costa del Sol. For some of us, rain is life.

 

As a final note, I spent a miserably hot summer in the UK last year, covering Wimbledon for Mid-Day. People were dying from the heat. The weather forecasts did not then drone on and on about “fine dry weather”. Think of this Indian situation with extreme heat in some parts and a missing monsoon something like that, please.

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

The international media, at least such as we see it in India, is not unnaturally obsessed with the new “Caliphate” of ISIS which has apportioned to itself parts of Iraq and Syria. Since it now claims to speak for all Muslims and is a group which is even further to the fundamentalist right of al-Qaeda, ISIS represents everything the West and some parts of the rest of the world fears the most about Islam, Islamism and Islamic terrorism.

 

Of course, while the anchors and reporters are all worked up with moral outrage, most experts and commentators point to the USA’s inescapable role in the collapse of Iraq plus the effects of constant Western interference in the Middle East. Oil, as many have pointed out, has been the curse of the Arab world.

 

Just as a passing thought, I would love just once for some non-white television journalist to walk through New York, London, Paris and say to the camera, “I have been picking up chatter on the Christian street”. No?

 

Of the Indian news channels, Newsx appears to have someone in Baghdad. The rest are relying on feeds. Surprisingly, given the normal hyper-jingoistic nature of Indian TV news, the fate of the Indians living in Iraq has been rather subdued. One wonders why…

 

But then when you watch the fawning over the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was at Sriharikota to attend the launch of India’s 27^th PSLV, you have your reasons. The launch, as someone pointed out, was not the news: Modi’s presence was. The PM was suitably impressed by the launch, the media was even more impressed by the PM and all is right with such a world.

 

The best takeaway from this launch however came from the Twitter handle @PMOIndia. This informed us that the PM ended his speech with “Bharat Mata ki hai” and also, in another tweet, that the PM had indeed concluded his speech. Modi also felt that India’s space programme was a “perfect example of his vision of Speed, Scale and Skill” – a remarkable achievement on the part of India’s scientists, given that the election was won as recently as May 16.

 

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On television, we found also found other things to concern ourselves with: Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Pal’s appalling speech about how he would get people beaten up and women raped, the continuing saga of Preity Zinta and Ness Wadia, the rising price of onions, building collapses and the failing monsoon. Railway accidents we do tend to forget about the week after they happen and we are at that stage now. What rail accident, you ask? Indeed.

 

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The most chilling story of last Sunday’s papers was from the woman who has accused BJP MP and minister Nihalchand Meghwal and many politicians, including from the Congress, of rape: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/my-husband-wanted-power-thats-why-he-brought-men-from-both-congress-and-bjp-to-me/

 

There is an odd silence from the Central government on this case and an even odder reluctance from the media to do its usual hammer and tongs act…

 

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Then there’s this, which is also ripe for outrage, Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar takes about rape in a lighter vein: http://gulfnews.com/news/world/india/parrikar-s-rape-remark-insensitive-say-women-s-group-1.1353761

 

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While we’re looking at issues to outrage about, has there been a blackout of the suicide attempt by Tanu Sharma of India TV? Too many skeletons, allegations to close to the quick? http://news.oneindia.in/feature/suicide-attempt-when-media-insider-cries-foul-why-does-media-fall-silent-1473101.html

 

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For those who rail against the control that big business has on the media, was one of the world’s most celebrated sports writers made to leave The Times London after 32 years because he was too expensive or because he upset the rich huntin’ fishin’ fu….’ crowd? Simon Barnes leaves The Times: http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jun/27/thetimes-national-newspapers

 

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And finally, the most complete silence of the media on a subject which it talks about to itself. The Mumbai Press Club organised a chat about Paranjoy Guha Thakurta’s new book on Reliance and gas pricing. The media attended and a “lively discussion” took place. Kalpana Sharma writes about what happened after that!

http://thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=7614

By Ranjona Banerji

 

Sports coverage can be easily be one of those please-nobody pitfalls. It is extremely difficult for commentators for instance to say anything very much different about how someone hits a ball, whether with their feet, heads, bats and racquets innumerable times in the course of a few hours. Innovation therefore is sometimes called for. But to do that effectively, you have to understand your fans. Like the Olympic scoring system in events like figure skating and gymnastics, lop off the highest (uncritical) and lowest (never satisfied) scores and go with the rest.

 

But if you really want to know how to get it wrong then Sony Six’s pre-match shows for the FIFA World Cup is the way to go. Having got the rights to this prestigious event, Sony Six obviously wanted to go all out. But it took the cricket or rather IPL route and decided that India’s football fans wanted nothing more than a bit of Bollywood glamour (John Abraham) and IPL sham (anchor Gaurav Kapoor). The show, called Cafe Rio, also had two former international footballers (just about), Peter Crouch and Mikael Silvestre as well a girl in designer togs and Keith Sequeira mispronouncing as many football names as he did tennis names on another sports channel.

 

Fans were appalled from Day One. Football is not cricket – okay that sounds like a meaningless truism but in India at least, football has a small but dedicated following. The love for cricket has encompassed the tawdry glitter of the IPL as well as the intellectually challenging Test match. Football fans know their football and they know that they want. Pap and rubbish are not included in that list.

 

Twitter led the campaign against the show and someone even started a petition to get Gaurav Kapoor (who was also joined by VJ Nikhil Chinappa) off the show. Eventually, Sony Six responded and changed the names around leading apparently to an uneasy compromise between fan feelings and available talent.

 

The problem for Sony Six is easy to understand. India is not yet a sporting nation. This means that we do not have enough experts in enough fields except cricket. Getting commentators becomes extremely difficult when our expertise at the international level is so limited in possibly everything. As of now, we excel internationally – one uses the word liberally – in cricket, tennis and badminton. Our potential experts are still out there playing. Who then to commentate? Would a dedicated fan of any sport accept a player who has not even played internationally? Or a coach whose protégé has gone nowhere? Barring hockey – where our glorious past means we have several experts even Olympians around if we want them – or maybe snooker and billiards, where is our talent pool? And for football, possibly the world’s biggest sport? For viewers who are used year round to hear experts during the EPL, Champions League, La Liga and so on to be subjected to the bumbling rubbish of another fan who perhaps knows less than them during the sport’s biggest event? Unacceptable!

 

Tennis fans for instance have been reduced to gales of laughter listening to Charu Sharma struggle to find the right terminology at the Chennai Open!

 

Talking of tennis, one has to be grateful that Sony Six got the rights to the FIFA World Cup so that we can watch Wimbledon in peace on the Star Sports network, unlike four years ago. I have no idea why Vijay Amritraj and Alan Wilkins are not doing the commentary themselves this year. I for one am not disappointed but I know others who are. Contractual problems may be or someone decided that instead of commentary from a TV set, on court commentary was better? I for one am enjoying listening to John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Lindsey Davenport, Tracy Austen, Tim Henman and the rest.

 

Ya, experts, you know.

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

This week, Pradyuman Maheshwari’s inestimable Mediaah! column looked at whether and how CNN-IBN will survive the exit of Rajdeep Sardesai, one of Indian television’s most familiar faces, the cult following of Arnab Goswami notwithstanding. Sardesai quit – or had to quit – a channel he started after the Reliance takeover of Network18, for those who have spent the last few months in hibernation.

 

The rumour mill suggested that both Arnab Goswami (Times Now) and Barkha Dutt (NDTV) – all products of the Prannoy Roy School of Television Journalism – were approached by Reliance and Dutt is the most likely replacement. Goswami, the gossips feel, is waiting for Rupert Murdoch’s re-entry into TV news in India and the launch of the Fox channels (via India TV) for which Goswami is seen as the best fit. A segue from the blondes who overrun Fox in the US, but we in India have our own preferences. All this is still pie in the sky (or is that Sky?) stuff.

 

For now, however, CNN-IBN is feeling the pinch. The whole idea of primetime TV news in India is star anchors punching each other’s guts out across the airwaves and across channels. Take the debates on the Supreme Court judgment making fatwas from Sharia courts illegal on Monday night. Nidhi Razdan on NDTV had her usual well-controlled show with intelligent analyses of the issue. Just after that finished, CNN-IBN took on the subject just after at 9 pm, a Sardesai slot. Bhupendra Chaubey now anchors the show. However, whether his guests were badly chosen (half were the same as NDTV’s) or whether he himself was trying to squeeze water out of rock, he could not manage to create a controversy. All his guests agreed with the Supreme Court while he tried to twist every argument around to no avail.

 

The next debate was going to be on the increasing number of people below the poverty line in India. CNN-IBN coined the term “An Indian poor”, which ran at the bottom of the screens and then Chaubey himself said it. I did not watch the debate but I hope they had both Indian “poors” and Indian “richs” on it. I have a feeling this line was a direct translation from Hindi and my guess also is that with the changes going on at the channel even the bare minimum quality control that TV uses has vanished.

 

Sardesai meanwhile in his farewell letter hoped that the new management would put journalism first. Indeed. Those old enough may want to remember the Reliance experiment with the Observer. Those young enough can believe what they want.

 

A quick run through TV however shows that they remain confused about how to treat the new government. The kid gloves are still on more or less and the desperation to search for other issues to debate is evident.

 

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Meanwhile, here’s a worthwhile subject to debate not just on TV but in society as well: The problems relating to section 498A of the Indian Penal Code and the way it is misused against men http://www.livemint.com/Politics/V1SIYdZu2IJzHgxRiLNpEJ/The-problem-with-section-498A.html

 

Plus, here’s the India the Great and all those boring things editors would rather bury under mounds of newsprint while re-examining the Preity Zinta Ness Wadia fight: http://m.thehindu.com/news/national/poverty-child-maternal-deaths-high-in-india-un-report/article6188227.ece/

 

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And for proof that journalists really are powerful you only have to look at the internet wars that broke out after a journalist asked tennis star Maria Sharapova whether she knew who Sachin Tendulkar was…

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

NDTV threw a party, Arnab Goswami gathered his friends and relations around him and Headlines Today showcased their owner Aroon Purie plus their newest star Shekhar Gupta. CNN-IBN and NewsX stuck to the usual format. Actually they all had the usual format but the first three tweaked it a bit while the last two made no such effort.

 

To listen to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s first budget you had plenty of options. There was Lok Sabha TV with just the speech. Or there was every other channel which had the speech and 8 million boxes, pop ups, scrolls and anything else that a graphic designer on a bad acid trip could come up with.

 

As for the Budget itself, it soon became clear that this was a “Rs 100 crore” budget. It was also clear that I was finding it hard to stay awake. And more importantly, the stock market was less than enthused.

 

Many commentators on television felt that the budget was not so very different from the budgets presented by the UPA. Most UPA schemes – damned as populist sops at election time – were retained. TV news itself veered between its current cheerleader-for-the-Modi-government mode and some small vestiges of journalistic DNA which lead to small criticisms.

 

Corporate guests at TV studios have no option but to be sort of nice and positive, especially to a new government which they hope will help them. So it is unlikely that they will be objective. Some however were mildly critical. Politicians of opposition parties will of course be extremely critical, so nothing surprising there either. Politicians of parties who were once friends with the ruling party and may hope to be friends will toe the middle line – like the Biju Janata Dal.

 

At the end of all that, what do you get from watching endless television on a rather boring budget speech and a budget full of tiny details – millions of schemes which have been allocated Rs 100 crore each? You get rather boring budget coverage.

 

There is once again a need for the media to examine this manufactured hysteria about the annual budget of the Central government. Budget Day showed just how difficult it is to sustain coverage over an entire day and night. Most people are not interested in tweaks in various schemes and cannot understand the fine print of taxation policies. And as we know from budgets over the years, you really forget when you go out to buy bindis or bobby pins whether the 0.6 per cent cut in excise duty really made a difference to your monthly beauty budget or not.

 

Business papers obviously have a duty to their readers as do business channels. I did however find it a tad amusing that business channels which spend all day discussing the minutiae of stock market trends did not dedicate the whole of July 10 focused on the rather lacklustre stockmarket response.

 

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Possibly the funniest front page is that of the Economic Times, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a footballer and Arun Jaitley in a supporting role. We have over the years seen some spectacular cartoons from ET as well as some really silly ones but this football-inspired front page perhaps tops the Super Silly list? The headline however hits the ground running: “Aiming for the goal, Modi hits the crossbar”. My guess is that they got the graphic done expecting the “Acche Din” budget but got stuck with this boring one so had to improvise with the headline.

 

Swaminathan S Aiyar’s front page analysis in ET was even more damning, headlined “A Chidambaram budget with saffron lipstick”. He gave it 4.5 on 10. Now that’s really rubbing salt into it.

 

In the Indian Express, Arnab Goswami’s go-to-guy for Modi Rah-rahs, Meghnad The Lord Desai, called this a “UPA budget from happier days”. A backhanded compliment or a sudden need to tell it like it is?

 

The opinions of Modi supporters from Columbia University are not yet in evidence, unless Arvind Panagriya and Jagdish Bhagwati were part of the Budget team? Firstpost.com was obviously complimentary though a bit upset about all the “sops” which the tax payer would have to pay for. The Wall Street Journal bloggers will soon make up the rest of the Modi’s economic support triumvirate.

 

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There were glimmers in this Budget coverage though that sooner rather than later some in the media will drop their pompoms and get back to be being nasty and cynical.

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

The media world is now rife with rumours and most of them are frightening. The Adani group has apparently invested Rs 500 crore in NDTV. The Adani group is of course close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Reliance, which has now been placed firmly in the Modi camp by media watchers, already owns Network18. Now there are whispers in the wind that Reliance also wants to buy the newspaper DNA, which currently belongs to the Zee group, although that may not change the paper’s political affiliation much since it tilted to the right after Zee took over from the Agarwals of Dainik Bhaskar.

 

CNN-IBN has, it is said, introduced a novel new designation in its newsroom – the “escalation editor”. This person will look at how news is covered and decided whether a story needs to be pushed further (escalated) or killed (de-escalated, presumably). This new designation is probably because we do not already have enough jargon in journalism. Or, no one in TV or Reliance has heard of a news editor. The first “escalation editor” is Umesh Upadhyaya, whose brother is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Who knows if that is significant or not? In the old days, this sort of “escalation editor” spying and swanning about the newsroom was known as the “malik ka aadmi” and most journalists tried to give them a wide berth. I know nothing about Umesh Upadhayaya. The “malik ka aadmi”s I have met however were usually lacking in even basic journalistic skills but were very good at sucking up to the owners and throwing their weight around based on their proximity to said owners.

 

However, any daft move in journalism in India and you can look to Bennett Coleman. Anyone remember the “brand managers” in the 1990s who would spy on editorial staff and pull rank over editors in the Times of India because they had the ear of the VC? Some of those even went on to become journalists…

 

The story is that all TV newsrooms will or already have these in house “censors” whose job will be to ensure that the new government and the new PM are not targeted. Of course, it must be said that these are still rumours and that boring but necessary wait-and-watch course of action will have to suffice for now. The hope was when Reliance took over Network18 that the mistakes with the Business and Political Observer would not be repeated. The appointment of this “escalation editor” though raises more suspicion than hope.

 

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Is all this just scare-mongering? Can we expect journalists and media houses to get over its early flirtation with the new dispensation and get back to work as usual again? The media’s job is to question and in spite of the large number of columnists who appear to support Narendra Modi and the BJP, there are still those who do not and those who have not yet taken sides. Certainly, Arun Jaitley’s lacklustre budget was criticised by many, even those who appeared to be supporters.

 

It is not just about individuals though. It is the general trend which is frightening and certainly conversations with senior Delhi journalists increase these apprehensions. Anyone who knows Modi knows that he does not like dissent and does not like to be questioned. He has a massive ego and a massive desire to be seen as a “statesman”. How far this ambition will enter into conflict with his personality is what journalists have to look out for. As for those English-speaking journalists who have appointed themselves as his PR agents in print, on TV and in the social media, one fears that their hopes and dreams may not be fully realised…

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

Ever since the gangrape of a young woman in Delhi in December 2012, the Indian media has put the uncomfortable and often unpalatable topic of rape on primetime and on the frontpage. There is no sign that the incidence of rape has reduced in India. In fact, we hear more gruesome stories every day. But the relentless presence of the media – even in areas where the media used to scarce and it was easy to get away with murder and rape – has meant that we know more and more about the society we live in.

 

The past few days have been full of horrific stories – a woman tortured and raped in UP, a six-year-old girl raped in a posh Bengaluru school by a teacher, a two-year-old girl raped by a 30-year-old man in Madhya Pradesh. In spite of all the other stories jostling for news space, none of these have been ignored.

 

The media has to be commended on this. There is a lot of cynicism in newsrooms, an understandable by-product of the exigencies of the job. Horrors are a constant and decisions have to be made almost every five minutes about what to hold and what to play up. Rape, ignored perhaps for too long, is now top of the agenda. Is there any cynicism involved in focusing on rape? If there is, the end product is more worthwhile than the intentions. The constant media spotlight on rape has exposed the misogyny and the callousness of our police forces and our politicians.

 

The media cannot find answers and cannot be expected to. But it can force society to take a closer look at itself and what it puts up with.

 

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Markandey Katju, former justice of the Supreme Court and still (?) chairman of the Press Council of India, has been out of the news for a very long time. After a few initial grandstanding announcements about how he was going to sort out India’s media, we have been treated to silence and no action. Suddenly, however, he has captured media space by attacking the judiciary and the former UPA government with an account published in The Times of India of how an additional judge in Tamil Nadu kept his job thanks to political pressure in spite of a damning Intelligence Bureau report.

 

Katju was questioned on his timing by several legal professionals and journalists and chose to pull out his ear piece and stalk off in high dudgeon when questioned by Nidhi Razdan of NDTV who is not aggressive or rude by any stretch of the imagination. So obviously a touchy point and touchy points make for good television.

 

The lesson for the media here is perhaps more exacting scrutiny on our judicial system. Concepts of respect and worship do not belong in a newsroom. If systems are crumbling around us, then the media needs to be more not less alert.

 

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Talking about crumbling, is that what is happening to the world around us? The international media is running hysterically between Ukraine-MH17, Israel-Gaza-Palestine and ISIS-Iraq. Biases are seen by all sides and all too often, the television that we see in India seems to be channels that subscribe to their government lines. War, conflict and foreign affairs seem to bring out the inner patriot in journalists all over the world.

 

At times like this, it’s good to reference the British war poets of the First World War who were soldiers, slammed the war in some brilliant poetry and died fighting. We have brains, sometimes we should use them.

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

The jury was in when it came to Arnab Goswami’s political affiliations. And now it’s out again. For a good part of this week, Goswami and Times Now have taken great affront to the behaviour of the Shiv Sena MPs who forced a Muslim fasting for Ramzan to eat a chapati, then to BJP MP K Laxman’s comments on tennis star Sania Mirza being unfit to be brand ambassador for Telangana and finally Goa minister Deepak Dhavilkar of the BJP’s alliance partner Maharashtra Gomantak Party declaring that Narendra Modi will make India a Hindu state. Times Now and Goswami are tagging these comments “#RightWingFreeRun” and claiming that they go against the BJP/NDA promise of an inclusive India.

 

Comments on social media are now asking whether Goswami was really as rightwing as he appeared to be when the BJP and Narendra Modi were sworn in to power. Perhaps he is behaving like a journalist again and attacking the establishment. Or perhaps he realised that hero worship can go so far and no further. Or perhaps he still tilts towards the BJP in his personal capacity but feels that this sectarian and divisive behaviour is unacceptable. Since nobody knows, perhaps Goswami as India’s best known TV journalist, needs to start writing a column so his fan club knows what he thinks?

 

Alternatively, as I have long felt, he needs to give himself an hour-long programme where he and only he speaks. This could be a weekly affair like FDR’s fireside chats to the American nation. The prime minister doesn’t speak in spite of slamming the last prime minister for not speaking so it might as well be Goswami leading the nation. There is one more option: a nightly rant in front of a studio audience on the lines of Howard Beale in the brilliant 1976 classic media film, Network. We shall ignore for now the end of the movie.

 

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The media has played the Shiv Sena MPs issue in two ways. Times Now has seen the Sena’s actions are being distinctly communal since the man who was fed the chapatti clearly says that he is a Muslim fasting for Ramzan, says the channel, and he also had a name tag reading “Arshad” on his uniform. Other channels like NDTV wondered whether we should not concentrate on the Sena’s hooligan-like behaviour: forcing anyone to eat as a protest shows not just disrespect to another human being but is also conduct unbecoming. Members of Parliament should deport themselves in a more dignified manner.

 

It is possible however that both points of view are correct. MPs must behave properly and forcing a person fasting for religious reasons to eat is communal. If Arshad had been a Hindu fasting for some reason, forcefeeding him would also be communal.

 

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Meanwhile, former Supreme Court justice Markandey Katju’s allegations against the UPA and three Supreme Court chief justices over the appointment of a judge accused of corruption by an IB report has gone off TV and towards edit page land. The issue will now be forgotten.

 

Katju, who made great waves with his off the cuff remarks when he became chairman of the Press Council of India, has done absolutely nothing ever since and was therefore out of the news. He found a way to get back in but alas, events overtook him.

 

What did happen though to all those changes he was going to bring to the Indian media?

 

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The Hindu, from being India’s most venerable newspaper, has lately found itself in the news for all the wrong reasons. Family squabbles, high profile editorial sackings, strict vegetarian rules all over the premises and confusion over its political stance. The most recent fracas has been the removal of editors like P Sainath and Praveen Swamy. Working at The Hindu is like working for Pol Pot apparently said one resignation letter. The Hindu’s explanation: These two did not fit their roles. Indeed.

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

The story of Neil Harman, much respected tennis writer for The London Times, is a cautionary tale for all journalists. Harman has been a journalist for over 40 years and since 2002, was the chief tennis correspondent for that newspaper. Earlier, he was chief football writer for the Daily Mail. To many, he was known as “Mr Tennis”.

 

Since 2004, Harman was contracted to write the official annual for Wimbledon, tennis’s most revered tournament. But in 2013, the magazine Private Eye revealed that the annual was full of whole-scale copying from the works of other writers. The matter was taken to a head by journalist Ben Rothenberg writing for Slate magazine who went through several annuals to find over 50 instances of direct lifts from other writers. The publications most targeted were Sports Illustrated, particularly articles by Jon Wertheim, the Guardian and The New York Times. These are by any stretch very well-known and much-read publications. Rothenberg lays bare the extent of the copying: “Of these 52 examples, 28 of the passages were lifted from the Guardian. Six were from the New York Times, five from either the Times of London or the Sunday Times, four from Sports Illustrated, four from the Telegraph, four from the Independent, and one from the New York Daily News.”

 

Wimbledon only removed the 2013 annual from its shelves after Wertheim complained. Many writers said they did not know about copying because they had not read the annual. Harman admitted to the plagiarism in an email to the International Tennis Writers’ Association which he had co-founded. The wording however is distinctly odd: “It has been brought to my attention that I have severely compromised my position as a member, having used unattributed material to form part of my writing of the Wimbledon Yearbook. There can be no excuse for such shoddy work, which I deeply regret. I did it without malice aforethought, but that I did it at all is simply inexcusable.”

 

The words “it has been brought to my attention” are a curious way of admitting fault… Many of Harman’s supporters feel that Harman himself was not to blame but an intern may have done the copying.

 

This is a ready copout answer made by most senior journalists and writers who have been found guilty of plagiarism. Incompetent interns however are not a new phenomenon and nor is this a problem which cannot be foreseen. It is also a very convenient horse to flog. To Harman’s credit, he has not used this excuse – although we can here go back to the line “it has been brought to my attention… It is also not inconceivable that Harman himself did not do the actual lifting of so many paragraphs. But the final responsibility is his and since it is he who took the glory, he also has to take the muck.

 

The Times has suspended Harman pending enquiries – but this was only after Rothenberg’s articles caused a storm in the tennis world and on twitter. The Guardian has since alleged that The Times is not taking the charges seriously as Harman’s writing is still being carried in the paper.

 

Many American journalists have said that if they had been caught with their hands in someone else’s words, they would have got the sack immediately. Harman seems to have survived as far as his employer is concerned – so far at least – but he has done his reputation incalculable damage. With all such cases, it seems incredible that Harman did not just credit those whose words he was using. It would have taken nothing away from the annuals, would have enhanced his reputation and made him more friends.

 

Instead, he has laid himself open to this: http://deadspin.com/respected-tennis-writer-cops-to-plagiarism-theres-like-1609661132/1609820603/+Tom_Ley

 

And who can say that he does not deserve it?

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

The curious case of Gaurav Sawant, strategic affairs editor at Headlines Today and his tweets about rioting Muslims continues to outrage two sections of the twitterati and leave the media itself indifferent.

 

Sawant put out a series of tweets about the riots in Saharanpur claiming that “secular silence” had influenced the media not to mention that Muslims had attacked Sikhs and a Gurudwara in Saharanpur and some Muslims had indeed been arrested: “Secular silence as dangerous as communal violence! Covering up sins of one & highlighting crimes of other by ‘seculars’ is playing with fire 11:23 AM – 27 Jul 2014”

 

He went on to say: “When an IT professional was killed in Pune we screamed about his religion. Why is religion of those killed in Saharanpur a state secret?”

 

And then, “National crisis when a roze-dar is force fed a roti but no issue when Roze-dars gather outside a place of religious worship & riots start?”

 

Plus: “That explains the secular silence on Saharanpur riots. Roze par roti becomes headlines but Roze par riots does not.”

 

These tweets led to massive outrage from what is called the “secular” brigade on social media which felt that Sawant was demonstrating a Hindu rightwing bias and even went as far as to say he should be sacked. At the same time there was a counter swell of support from those who felt that Sawant had been brave enough to tell the truth and that he was being targeted as a result by said seculars who only care about the rights of Muslims. Many Hindutva rightwing blogs discussed Sawant’s situation with sympathy.

 

Sawant later deleted some of these tweets. Gossip among the Hindutva blogs and among some media professionals said that Shekhar Gupta, who has just taken over as vice-chairman of the India Today group which includes Headlines Today, forced Sawant to delete his tweets. Sawant has also apparently not been seen on TV since. The “secular” side got together a petition asking that Sawant be shown the door.

 

Whether Sawant has been on air or not (I do know this firsthand), he continues to tweet, some of which are promos for shows on Headlines Today.

 

Rajdeep Sardesai, lately editor-in-chief of CNNIBN, was one prominent journalist who took issue with the tenor of Sawant’s tweets. Rupa Subramanya, a very popular tweeter (am unclear whether she is a journalist but she is a writer) found that Sawant was exactly the kind of journalist India needed.

 

The Times of India did a story on the outrage over Sawant’s tweets (warning, I am quoted) http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31804&articlexml=Outrage-over-TV-anchors-tweets-31072014009037

 

and http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Gallery.aspx?id=31_07_2014_009_037_007&type=P&artUrl=Outrage-over-TV-anchors-tweets-31072014009037&eid=3180

 

While Newslaundry had this: http://www.newslaundry.com/2014/07/28/the-secular-compulsions-of-reporting-communal-clashes/

 

There are number of different issues floating around here, all fighting for attention. The first is the most obvious. Sawant has every right to express his opinion, no matter whether other people find it offensive. The second is that right to object is also inarguable but petitioning to attack someone’s livelihood based on a series of tweets is unacceptable.

 

Then we reach the murky area of “secularism”. The tragedy is that that the word in India is often interpreted to mean “pro Muslim” especially by the rightwing thus making a travesty of secularism.

 

Left-leaning liberals are seen as the worst offenders by the Hindutva-led rightwing, as they apparently refuse to criticise anything that Muslims – and sometimes other minorities too – and only attack Hindus.

 

Most of the anger with Sawant however was not that he slammed “secular silence” but that he connected two or three unrelated events and decided that there was a media conspiracy concocted by evil “seculars” to keep quiet about Saharanpur where Muslims were the perpetrators but play up the murder of a Muslim man in Pune (for being a Muslim) and the assault on a canteen manager (A Muslim fasting for Ramzan) by a politician (from a party known for its er, ambivalent attitude to Muslims).

 

However, Sawant still has a right to his views and it is unfortunate that he deleted his tweets and even more unfortunate if it was done under pressure. No official word on that so far, not least from Sawant.

 

It is odd though why the Strategic Affairs editor (sounds impressive) of a prominent English news channel could not get his newsroom to spin the news anyway he wanted? If Sawant felt that there was “secular silence” on the Saharanpur riots, Headlines Today could have been the beacon showing the way to the rest of the evil “pro Muslim” media.

 

The newspapers that I read on the issue did mention that Muslims had started the problem in Saharanpur and that some had been arrested. Did Sawant miss those? Or did he want hysterical prime time discussions on TV? Were his tweets a sign of frustration that he failed to convince the other editors of Headlines Today to showcase the news his way?

 

Once more therefore we find the Indian media in the midst of a “seculars” versus others fracas. And it is also true that for most of the Indian media, Sawant’s problems appear to be a non-issue. Perhaps we can wait for the book?

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

Social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, engage and enrage people but I have no way of knowing how significant the impact is. The reach is small in terms of internet usage, education, economic status and so on. But it does appear that the impact is disproportionate. Is this because many journalists, commentators and politicians are on Twitter and Facebook and they feel that they have more power over people’s minds than they actually do? Or is it true – as in the Arab Spring – that social media is the most effective tool currently available for people to spread their thoughts and ideas and get a movement going?

 

On Monday night, there was a lot of anger on Twitter and Facebook. But it was a very odd kind of anger. A story emerged on Monday about a young teacher of English and Hindi at a madarsa near the UP town of Meerut, who had been kidnapped, she said by madarsa officials, who assaulted and forcibly converted her to Islam and then she was gangraped by at least four men. UP has suffered several incidents of communal violence recently – Muslims and Jats, Muslims and Hindus and just last week, Muslims and Sikhs. This incident has put a dangerous situation on a cliff’s edge. The woman also claimed that others like her had been similarly abducted and confined. People gathered on the streets to protest. The UP government has been singularly lax with law and order.

 

Now this incident is horrific enough: kidnap, assault, forcible religious conversion and the worst of all, gangrape.

 

But this by itself is not what angered several worthies on social media. The rage started when leftist-feminist-activist Kavita Krishnan tweeted this: “Ugly communal sentiment by RSS visible on twitter over Meerut rape. If this is also true on the ground, another Muzaffarnagar awaits.”

 

This angered all fans of the RSS so much that Krishnan was issued all kinds of insults and abuses, including this by Rati Parker, a prominent and popular proponent of rightwing politics on Twitter, “Will pray tht she à (krishnan’s twitter handle) gets raped by the Madarsa walas n is forced to don the hijab permanently. All of us will be “polite”.

 

Some found Krishnan’s mention of the RSS and her attributing communal colour to them unconscionable. She did not it was pointed out say anything about Muslims being involved in the committed atrocities and instead appeared to blame the RSS. This crime in today’s world is unpardonable apparently. Also some demanded that Krishnan also be at the forefront of the protests in support of the girl as she had been in December 2012 after the Delhi gangrape.

 

Krishnan followed her first tweet with this, “What communalists don’t get it (is?), that in any rape/crime collective punishment – ie punishing the community is wrong. Punish rapists.”

 

I am unsure whether this made matters better or worse. Krishnan anyway was lynched all over Twitter and Facebook for her double standards. Apart from the suggestion that she be raped, she also had the worst insult heaped on her by “patriots” in these times: “Naxal”. Inevitably, all “secular liberals” were condemned for being, well, secular and liberal. These insults are just a bit less, er, terrible than “Naxal” apparently.

 

Parker some pointed out was just a “troll” because that is the ultimate excuse for anything offensive anyone says. Although Parker is not a troll in the customary sense. She uses her own name and her own picture. Those who attacked Krishnan conceded that maybe Parker (when the troll defence did not work) has just gone a bit overboard. Because praying that women get raped is acceptable but saying that the RSS is communalising an issue is not.

 

All that happened actually was that people thought along the usual faultlines. Those who find the RSS’s communalism intolerable defended Krishnan. Those who felt that the RSS was being unfairly attacked felt Krishnan herself should be raped.

 

In all this, the victim of the gangrape, the implications of the crime and the social fallout was conveniently forgotten and ignored.

 

Oh yes, did I forget to mention that the media was also blamed for the whole thing somewhere down the line? Of course. Who else?