MxMIndia

Category: MxM JOURNALISM REVIEW

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    Freaking News: Mamata Banerjee, media’s favourite whipping girl

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    This was an unexpected find: I had assumed (and from past experience) that the Hindustan Times would be strongest in local coverage amongst the national dailies in the national capital, given that New Delhi is (or was) its stronghold. But while HT does score on nitty-gritty local happenings, its biggest rival, The Times of India, is still going strong as far as blanket coverage of all news is concerned.

     

    This should be troubling for Hindustan Times because although it has the advantages of first choice as far as old-timers are concerned and its long history with the capital, its rival appears to be hitting where it hurts the most – with content. TOI and HT have been running neck and neck in Delhi for years, with both claiming ownership of the city at different times but conventional wisdom usually gave HT the edge. Now, I wonder.

     

    * * *

     

    James Murdoch has had to step down from the chairmanship of News International UK and is now being called a “shadow man with no role in the empire” (Sydney Morning Herald). This is of course the outcome of the phone-hacking scandal involving not just the defunct News of the World but other titles in the Murdoch stable of newspapers. Whether Junior’s moving aside is going to change company policy is another matter. Just as paid news and Medianet and its variations remain giant ogres for the Indian media to deal with, the dodgy practices of News Corp’s newspapers and journalists are the core problems. Removing James may not therefore be enough. As we have seen over the past year, the connections between the Murdoch empire and subsequent governments in the UK run deep and the favour system appears to have corrupted everyone, even the once highly-admired Scotland Yard.

     

    * * *

     

    The Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal finds itself under greater media scrutiny with every passing day. The tendency of the chief minister to blame every event on the previous Left government and turn every criticism into a conspiracy theory has only made matters worse. Perhaps she needs some better media advisers and spin doctors? Right now, she’s the media’s favourite whipping boy (girl) and unfortunately for her, she, her ministers and her party only make matters worse every time they open their mouths!

     

  • Behold the Solitary Change-Maker as she charges into the Valley of Death – cannons to the left of her, to the left of her, to the left of her

    [MxM Journalism Review] Mamata, the lone change-maker

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Behold the lonely change-maker! She stands there victorious, having defeated the sinister dragon. She is righteous and she is also always right. But will that damn dragon let her do her job? In insidious and terrible ways, it hampers the change-maker’s progress.

     

    What option does Mamata Banerjee have but to blame the erstwhile Left Front government and its remnants for everything that goes wrong in West Bengal? Oh sorry, I think the state has a new name but it is so like the old one that I’ve forgotten it.

     

    So when infants die in a state hospital, you have to blame the Left Front government because the children were conceived during the Left’s reign. This is a little-known scientific fact which only the solitary change-maker has fully grasped. Your future is determined by where you were conceived (one more reason to blame your parents for whatever goes wrong in your life). Evidently, if you were conceived during a Left Front government’s rule, long life under someone else’s rule is inconceivable.

     

    Then there’s rape. This is an awful thing – but only if it really happens. What if every rape in West Bengal is actually a conspiracy by the Left to malign the Solitary Change-Maker (if the Left deserves upper/lower case, surely so does she)? Therefore, if a woman gets gang-raped after leaving a pub, not only does one have to discuss her antecedents, behaviour and so on but also make it clear that the rape was not on the victim but an attempt to victimise the Government of Change.

     

    Just after the Park Street Rape is the Burdwan Train Rape. This is even more conspiratorial. The so-called victim who claims to have been gang-raped in a train was a widow – whose now-deceased husband used to be a member of a Left party. If that is not an outright strategy to discredit the new government, then what is?

     

    If rape is not bad enough, there’s murder. A member of one of those Left parties is hacked to death allegedly by members of the Party of Change. Oh, come on. Even those aliens buried in America are more believable than this theory.

     

    The only possible taint on the Grand SC-M can come from the evil nephew who keeps going to botanical gardens after they’ve closed and demanding he be let in. Or driving on the wrong side of the road and then slapping a policeman who stops him. This nephew exists. But it is also possible that he will soon become a construct of the Communist imagination.

     

    Behold the Solitary Change-Maker as she charges into the Valley of Death – cannons to the left of her, to the left of her, to the left of her.

     

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    Freaking News: SP goes UP, Times Now went down

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    What a mouth-watering cornucopia of choice, you think, as you settle down to watch the election results unfolding at 8 am on Tuesday morning, what with so many TV channels to choose from. In a couple of hours of course, you’re weeping at the cacophony, the grand, sweeping statements and the sheer confusion caused by so many channels.

     

    For once, the loser is perhaps Times Now. The channel, which so often knows what India wants to know, appears to have overplayed its hand. Its bizarre desire to clock 100 hours of election coverage meant that it started long before the results day and created unnecessary boredom for the viewer. Plus an enormous range of “guests” some of whom were colour-coordinated (Vinod Mehta and Meghnad Desai on Monday night and Meghnad Desai and Neerja Chowdhury on Tuesday morning) and too much on-screen graphic hysteria made Times Now distracting and the remote more appealing.

     

    CNNIBN made large generalisations even as early trends were being reported and then hopped back and forth to little avail. If Times Now had too much, CNNIBN did not have enough.

     

    In the English news segment, the battle seemed to be between NDTV and Headlines Today. NDTV had Prannoy Roy and Dorab Sopariwalla, the old and trusted team, bolstered by words of wisdom from Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta. Headlines Today had Mani Shankar Aiyar to add his considerable wit to the mix apart from a very eager energetic Rahul Kanwal.

     

    I have to be honest here – I preferred NDTV until Barkha Dutt arrived, which is when I switched to Headlines Today – which by the way also claimed that only its exit polls were correct (more on that in a bit).

     

    Of the Hindi channels, Aaj Tak was professional and easy to watch – although they all have a better ground presence in terms of reporters than the English channels. The Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha channels both had serious debates and less fluff than all the others combined.

     

    Mid-morning, the confusion between the channels reached its climax as each of them showed different trends, some almost at odds with each other. At which point, I switched everything off and went for a walk!

     

    **

     

    It’s now 12.55 pm and we have no results yet but some very strong trends. Most exit polls had decided that the Samajwadi Party would win UP, but the feeling was for a hung assembly where the permutations and alliances would be paramount. Right now, it seems like a clear win for the SP. The BJP has not done as well as it must have expected and nor has the Congress – but it has done better than before. Most channels have been debating this “failure” of Rahul Gandhi in UP although the numbers show a Congress gain.

     

    Punjab was tagged as a clear Congress win but instead the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP alliance has retained power – although the BJP’s losses have been the Congress’s gains.Uttarakhand is still too close to call – but again, it was seen as a Congress win.

     

    Manipur has gone to the Congress – as expected and Goa seems to be heading to the BJP, again as expected.

     

    **

     

    Which means once more, the Indian voter has done her own thing and flummoxed everyone.

     

  • Every Thursday, Ranjona Banerji will write about a grouse. Either spewing venom or tongue-in-cheek

    [MxM Journalism Review] Why must TV news depend on print eds for analyses

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Where would TV journalists be without their colleagues in print? (I thought I’d say cousins but then that would make me related to TVwallahs too so…) Every time there’s some big issue to discuss (which in TV land is every day), out come a whole array of print seniors (and sometimes not so seniors).

     

    During the election coverage on Tuesday we had Shekhar Gupta, Vinod Mehta, Neerja Chowdhury, Manini Chatterjee, Siddharth Vardarajan, Vandita Mishra, Hartosh Singh Bal… and many more worthies.

     

    I’m thrilled for my friends and colleagues in print who I see on TV all the while at other times – Ayaz Memon, Sidharth Bhatia, Anil Dharker, Arati Jerath… At any time you are likely to see Dileep Padgaonkar, Bachi Karkaria, Tavleen Singh giving their considered opinion on this and that. The list is endless and I apologise to anyone I have left out. I don’t mean it. But it makes me wonder about our esteemed TV anchors and editors. Do they trust their own judgement so little that they cannot carry a programme by themselves? Have they not managed to hone their opinion creating abilities? And if that’s true, what have they been doing for all these years in TV?

     

    TV wallahs often feel that print journalists are too critical of them. But when they do nothing to change those perceptions and instead feed them by calling print journalists as experts all the while? How often do you see print journalists on BBC and CNN?
    My advice to TV wallahs is: have a little faith in yourselves.

     

    Having said that, I then remember the columns which Rajdeep Sardesai, Sagorika Ghosh and Barkha Dutt write for Hindustan Times (since few other print publications condescend to give them a platform and rightly so) and I really wonder at myself!

     

  • Manoj Barpujari of Dainik Agradoot daily is to be awarded the Best film critic award Swarna Kamal and Rs75,000 for his critiques in English and Assamese

    Assam’s Manoj Barpujari wins Nat Award for film criticism

    By Archita Wagle

     

    The recently announced National Awards 2011 saw Manoj Barpujari win the Best Film Critic award Swarna Kamal and Rs75,000 for his critiques in English and Assamese.

     

    Mr Barpujari is based in Guwahati and works as Assistant Editor with the Assamese daily, Dainik Agradoot. He also “very occasionally” contributes to the English daily, Assam Tribune. He is a member of Indian section of FIPRESCI, the Paris-based international federation of film critics and contributes to the website, www.filmfocusindia.com. He has been associated with the film society movement for more than two decades and has been tutoring on media and film studies. Mr Barpujari’s win makes him the fourth from the North-east to win this award.

     

    Mr Barpujari said that winning the Best Critic award was “Beyond my expectation. I am feeling what any man would feel on winning such a prestigious award.”

     

    When asked about his foray as a film critic, Mr Barpujari said: “I started as a film critic in the early 80s, even before I became a full time journalist. I was very much influenced by the parallel cinema movement in India and that inspired me to write about films. I write mostly about political and social issues. Only 10 per cent of what I write is about films.”

     

    Fellow film critic and Assamese journalist and now a film-maker, Utpal Borpujari, who was also the first from the North-east to win the Best Critic in 2003, was all praise for Mr Barpujari. “Manoj is a very senior film critic. He follows Indian and world cinema very seriously. He is the fourth from the North-east to be awarded the Best film critic. This proves that there is serious film criticism happening in the North-east. Unlike the mainstream media, regional publications are giving space for serious film criticism.”
    Apart from Mr Barpujari and Mr Borpujari, Altaf Mazid and RK Bidur Singh, both from North-east, jointly won the Best Film critic award in 2009.

     

    Mr Barpujari is not just a film critic and a “working journalist” as he calls himself. He is the winner of the Hafeez Karamath Journalism Fellowship 2010 of Trinidad & Tobago and has published nine books on various subjects in the fields of socio- political issues, art and literature including cinema. He has co-edited with Dr Garima Kalita the first ever comprehensive volume on cinema of Assam titled Perspectives on Cinema of Assam (2007).

     

    Mr Barpujari has served as jury in many competitions and film festivals in India and abroad. He presented documentaries from Assam in a program organized under the auspices of the Media and Communication Department, Goldsmiths College, London in 2008.

     

    Mr Barpujari is also a poet whose have been translated in to several major Indian languages. A collection of his poems won the Munin Borkotoky Literary Award in 2004.

     

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    Freaking News: It’s business as usual after the election euphoria

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Of course the media was to blame for the Bahujan Samaj Party’s loss in UP’s assembly elections. Sure, the Samajwadi Party, Congress and BJP were also involved but the media certainly played a role in the rout of Mayawati. Thankfully – perhaps – the former chief minister of UP did not blame the people, as Prakash Karat, chief dictator of the CPM did, after the Left managed to lose West Bengal to Mamata Banerjee.

     

    After the results were declared, TV land went into a sort of decline. Having expended this enormous amount of energy on getting the results out to the people in the usual frenzied fashion, the day after was a probably inevitable anti-climax. The arrival of Holi did not help either, because everyone went into holiday mood which for most TV channels means showing a stream of Hindi film songs (no point asking) and other fillers.

     

    Life was not different for newspapers as Holi meant holidays on different days across India. Was this a conspiracy by the Election Commission? If I were Mayawati or Salman Khurshid, I would certainly think so.

     

    The Times of India’s early edition for Dehra Dun on March 7 (more on the perils of being stuck with a mofussil edition coming soon) headlined the results as ‘UP has spoken, no Rahul Maya’, with the ‘sp’ of spoken in red. Other puns were also in evidence (Sonrise for Akhilesh and Bad Heir Day for Rahul Gandhi). The Hindustan Times went for ‘Akhilesh Pradesh’, DNA Mumbai had a bit of fun with ‘Rahul knocked down by cycle’.

     

    * * *

     

    Newspaper editorials summed up the results quite cogently. The Hindu argued that just depending on anti-incumbency isn’t enough; parties have to make more effort that expecting the other person to lose. The Times of India emphasised the fact that the Indian voter knows when someone is trying to take them for a ride and rather than traditional promises, deliverance and governance are the keys. Several commentators also pointed out that corruption at the Centre had an impact on local polls, which is bad news for the UPA and Anna Hazare, his team and Baba Ramdev had a little chuckle here. No one missed the fact that the regional parties had trumped the big two in UP either. The forthcoming perils for the UPA and the BJP have both been underlined.

     

    As expected, it takes print to make sense of anything and TV would do well to develop some expertise and analytical skills of its own.

     

    * * *

     

    By the time the euphoria died down, it was business as usual and the Samajwadi Party was up to its usual tricks which TV jumped on with alacrity – a young boy killed, journalists under siege, houses burnt. An IPS officer was killed in Madhya Pradesh, apparently by the mining mafia, several people in Mumbai were hospitalised by poisonous Holi colours and BS Yeddurappa wants his job back!

     

  • Little did the prince know that the damsel would be vanquished not by him but by another putative heir – one who blindsided him with a cycle

    Noosemaker: The fable of Rahul Gandhi & the other chap

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Pity poor Rahul Gandhi. There he was riding around Uttar Pradesh on his white charger, eating with a Dalit family here, saving a Dalit village there, quite the prince of India, promising deliverance from the evil dragon. In the strange twists that best illustrate fairy tales, the dragon was a damsel – but contrarily, a damsel who was causing distress.

     

    The media sometimes liked the young prince and sometimes it didn’t. The opposition all hated the young prince. And the Congress Party tried every sycophantic trick to woo the young prince. The prince himself was so involved in saving the state from the damsel that he paid no attention. The queen and the princess were clear that the prince was only interested in helping and wanted nothing for himself. The biggest advantage that the prince had was that he was better looking than most of his courtiers or indeed than the upstart wannabe princelings, who belonged to other, lesser parties.

     

    Little did the prince know that the damsel would be vanquished not by him but by another putative heir – one who blindsided him with a cycle which was obviously more effective than his horse as a dragon-slaying device. Suddenly everyone counted. The prince of India travelled so many thousand km and delivered so many speeches. But his quiet rival did more of everything. Had the prince failed? Was he a hoax? Had he missed the woods for the trees? Did he have any dragon-slaying and state-saving abilities at all? Would he ever become king emperor?

     

    After all, the other chap has been made chief minister of Uttar Pradesh by his grateful father and the sulking dragon has retreated behind a statue.

     

    In India, it must be noted that while sons may replace fathers and daughters may take over from mothers, there is only one dynasty. So the prince of India did what he did best. He dimpled his apology to the people of India and his mother, the queen, said they would live to fight another day.

     

    Awwww, said the people, that’s so noble and sweet.

     

    Damn said the white horse, no rest for me.

     

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] Grrrrr! Why do people speak so much on News TV?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The best news programme in India has to be The Week That Wasn’t on CNN-IBN. Since it steadfastly refuses to save India and the world and shamelessly makes fun of everyone, it fails miserably on the high-pitched hysteria count. But it wins on all the others. And it makes you wish that the programme had more than a weekly format because if you spend three evenings running watching our other worthies, it is enough to make you scale to the top of a tall building without a safety harness.

     

    After his marathon election extravaganza, I have found Arnab Goswami and his channel a dead bore. Also, they spend too much time discussing the minutiae of the Indian cricket board’s digestive processes. Plus, when they do, Boria Mazumdar comes on air and this disrupts my digestive processes. So I tried to give a fair hearing to NDTV, Headlines Today and CNN-IBN (am currently in Tata Sky land which does not carry Newsx).

     

    Rajdeep Sardesai on Monday night went on and on about the UPA government collapsing, a third front forming and mid-term elections approaching. None of his guests – Devesh Thakur of the JD (U), Pinaki Mishra of the BJD and Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the Congress agreed with him. Sardesai laboured the point and the rest pooh-poohed him. I fail to see the point of such a programme. Then Sardesai announced that Chandan Mitra was arriving on the show so I quickly switched to NDTV. And to my horror, there was Chandan Mitra on NDTV. This was too much to handle and I tried to look for a tall building (with no safety harness) but there aren’t too many in Dehra Dun where I am now.

     

    On NDTV just before the horror of the spectacle of Chandan Mitra, Sonia Varma had Arvind Kejriwal on the show. He said that the results of the Uttar Pradesh government, where the Samajwadi Party effectively trounced the BSP, reflected the anger of the people against the Congress Party. Varma, if she had false teeth, would have swallowed them. Serves her right for inviting a member of Team Anna to start broadcasting their bizarre logic all over again.

     

    Headlines Today was on a trip which I couldn’t understand, a mixture of cricket and the government falling, but none of them cohesively.

     

    On NDTV Profit, Srinivasan Jain attempted to interview Aditya Ghosh, president of Indigo airlines, about why they were more profitable than the others and what about Kingfisher. However Jain spoke so much that Ghosh’s views got lost in a series of “having said thats”.

     

    Still on NDTV, Prannoy Roy had a panel discussion with several industrial worthies at a Mumbai college. Rahul Bajaj spoke so much that no one else had a chance, so that was that.

     

    The good news was that someone actually found the world-famous Bollywood Super Star Nupur Mehta who is now going to sue The Sunday Times (phoren) for calling her a “honey trap” used by bookies to lure cricketers into cheating. But no one told me whether it was just because her picture was used or because she really was the honey trap. Anyway, I had never heard of her before and any minute now my ignorance will be exposed because she is the star of Ra One, The Robot, Dirty Picture and more. No?

     

    Finally, I took refuge in Rajya Sabha TV which was so serious and sober that I felt that I had entered a parallel universe which completely disoriented me, so I went back to watching tennis.

     

  • Every Thursday, Ranjona Banerji will write about a grouse. Either spewing venom or tongue-in-cheek.

    [MJR] A little respect for readers, please

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Living in big cities, you accept the privileges given to you with an entitled sense of arrogance. Yes, we have pubs everywhere in Mumbai, dear Virginia, and women can walk out at any time without fear of being raped.

     

    But this grouse is not about that. It’s about trying to read a newspaper in non-big city India. The past three weeks in Dehra Dun mean that all the news in the English newspapers are between 24 and 48 hours old and given the pace at which TV spews out the stuff, completely outdated. Internet facilities in the capital of Uttarakhand – and I am stationed a few km above Dehra Dun – have improved considerably. This means that by the time you get The Times of India, The Hindustan Times or The Hindu in your hands, your only interest in the front page is which paper has given more importance to which news.

     

    I understand all the compulsions which newspapers face about printing and travelling times and the costs incurred in transportation. But there has to be a better way of dealing with “dak” or “mofussil” editions than methods used decades ago. In fact, just a decade ago when I was with The Times of India in Ahmedabad, we were aware of the problems faced by our readers in Vadodara and Surat and pushed the management to look closely at the logistics.

     

    The most amusing newspaper which we get here is The Asian Age, which really is a day old since it’s the Delhi edition. With it, you play the game to see which front page item is completely redundant.

     

    A little more respect for readers may not be such a bad thing, perhaps.

     

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that’s on the Web

    Budget 2012: Ranjona Banerji on how TV Channels fared with their Budget specials

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Soon after India liberalised her economy, the late great Nani Palkhiwala, whose budget analysis speech would fill up Brabourne stadium, decided that there was no longer any need to discuss the budget. Yet in India, it is still a grand tamasha event and even more so, with the massive explosion of television. Before the TV days the best we had to contend with were the massive graphics on the front page of The Economic Times, with the “fin min” portrayed as some kind of super hero or failing that, a comic character.

     

    (By the way, thank god they don’t call them fin mins any more or maybe Pranab Mukherjee threatened dire consequences.)

     

    From early on Friday morning, all the channels were in a high state of excitement as they discussed what the budget could be, what they wanted it to be and so on. Despite the Economic Survey of the day before, no one had too many clues though everyone wanted reforms. Some business types even conceded that the poor and less fortunate needed help while the economists looked askance at the idea. This continued till 11 am when everyone had to switch to the feed from the Lok Sabha channel.

     

    After that, it was a juggling act to get the best interpretation of the budget as it happened. I started with juggling between NDTV and NDTV Profit because the discussions headed by Prannoy Roy on one and Vikram Chandra on the other were interesting. But then they filled their screen with so much other information that I lost track of the “fin min” (oops).

     

    So I surfed till I reached CNNIBN which had the cleanest screen of the lot. No millions of shares going up and down, no “insta analysis” from experts as provided by Times Now and no tweets from the general public. Suddenly however CNNIBN started running a little cartoon man with placards saying “cool”, “good idea”, “bad idea” to several budget proposals which became a tad distracting. When I started spending more time figuring out if the cartoon man’s moustache changed position as he changed placard from cool to bad idea, I realised CNNIBN was also a bad idea and shifted to the Lok Sabha channel.

     

    I did surf through the business channels but not only were the screens cluttered with shares going up and down, they were also full of acronyms which I could not decipher. Seemed like maths class after some time – if you put the ELSS on the SME and divide it by the ECB you realise that the squaw on the hypotenuse is actually sleeping with the Big Chief. Or something like that but probably not as exciting.

     

    The speech took two hours, after which the viewer was exhausted but the analysts were chomping at the bit to take off and expound. The economists and journalists all hated the budget while the industrialists, bankers, investment and money people did not think it was so bad. It was clear that the journalists and economists were deeply hurt that Air India had not been sold, petrol prices had not been increased to Rs 150 a litre and even worse, so much money had been given to NREGA, rural and urban health and education and so on. Others talked about how “inclusive growth” was necessary in a politically correct manner, except for one man on one of the business channels who talked about “socialist stuff… health and all this blah blah”. One can only hope no one he knows ever has need of “blah blah”.

     

    As the evening progressed, Times Now looked at the politics of it and Headlines Today and NDTV went quite quickly into Sachin Tendulkar’s 100th century (glory be, at last, what a joyous day for Pranab Mukherjee). The business channels divided themselves us as some looked at property, others at investment and others at the stock market.

     

    Interviews with Pranab Mukherjee were shown on NDTV with Prannoy Roy and TN Ninan, on Times Now with Arnab Goswami and Navika Kumar, on CNBC with Raghav Bahl and on CNNIBN through Lok Sabha TV with a young man who Rajdeep Sardesai told us was a TV18 staffer. Whatever. Mukherjee’s famous temper was on display only with Raghav Bahl when he told him quite categorically that he was not going to get into a “school debate” with him. For all the posturing that the experts did on the other channels about the budget and the deficit and so on, only Bahl asked the really tough questions. Not that it came to anything.

     

    The verdict at the end: a choice between CNNIBN, NDTV for regular channels and Bloomberg and CNBC at the business end. The winner is possibly the remote, in that case.

     

  • It is not media’s right but rather an obligation to keep the people informed and it should not give the government a chance to step in and hold it accountable, says Justice Varma.

    @FF12: NBSA chief suggests independent regulation for media

    By A Correspondent

     

    In 1950, Jawaharlal Nehru said that freedom of speech should be granted to good and bad editors, but they should use it in national interest for he believed that if it is left to the government to decide, the good editors will be jailed and the only the chamchas will survive. This was the opening Justice JS Varma, former chief justice, Supreme Court and  News Broadcasters Standards Association (NBSA) Chairperson used for his keynote address for the session ‘Freedom of Media: Significance of self regulation’.

     

    Justice Varma said that freedom of speech is precious and we have to preserve it. The way to do so is self regulation as the media is mature enough to know to do it themselves and ward off the danger of state regulation.

     

    He said that it is not media’s right but rather an obligation to keep the people informed so that they can participate in government decision making process. It is the media’s duty to ensure transparency to ensure accountability.

     

    Justice Varma emphasised that the media should not give the government a chance to step in and hold it accountable. He said that the media (which reports) and judiciary (which decides) are the two strongest pillars of our democracy and they shouldn’t use their strength (power) to harm anyone, lest their power be curtailed due to lack of their accountability.

     

    Moving on, Justice Varma criticised the media, especially the broadcast media’s tendency for breaking news. He said that the key tenets of journalism should be kept in mind while reporting ‘breaking news’- is it true, fair and in public interest. He said that objectivity and due diligence must be applied while covering news. He cautioned the media, which has tremendous reach, to be cautious in its reporting as the effect of the news it flashes is instantaneous. He closed his address by saying “The more potential for damage, the more is the accountability you have”.

     

    The moderator, Barun Das, Zee News CEO and Vice President, News Broadcasters Association (NBA) spoke about how the media can’t be regulated as it is an essential pillar of democracy. He opined that free media can be good or bad but media which is not free can never be good.

     

    Mr Das said that regulation is a process of evolution. The media needs to introspect and understand where it stands.

     

    He outlined the dilemmas faced by the media while trying balance the content and the bottomline where news is trivialised for gaining eyeballs. The broadcast media especially is constantly grappling with trying to strike a balance between what the audience ‘would like to see’ and what they “should see”.

     

    The stage was then thrown open for the panel discussion. Each of the panellist was given time to speak and answer questions by the moderator.

     

    The discussion was opened by KVL Narayan Rao, executive vice chair person NDTV and President, NBA.

     

    Mr Rao said that there is no question of compromise on the fact that that media is free and that is the way it should be in a democracy. He said thatIndiais the largest free news market with a reach of 500 million households (news TV reaching nearly 115 million households).

     

    He said that in the early 2000s, after the private players were allowed in, they got together to set up the NBA to set up a code of programming and ethics which will regulate their broadcasting. He emphasised that it was important to have an independent and respected authority to keep a vigil on what is happening in the industry. He was proud of the fact that they telecast a scroll reminding the viewers that they have a forum to go to if they have any complaints.

     

    He also spoke about the NBSA which has been an advisory to the media with regards to improvement in news coverage and takes up issues suo moto if the media is found lacking.

     

    When questioned by Mr Das about balance or conflict on interest between news and business, Mr Rao was emphatic that there should be a “Chinese wall separating news and commercial interests”. He opined that news is to inform, educate and entertain the public independent of government and advertisers. He allowed that some compromise may take place but said that with digitisation, more cost can be spent on content and hence the scenario will change.

     

    Next to take the mike was Nitin Desai, Former under Secretary General, United Nations and member NBSA.

     

    Mr Desai started by saying that he disliked the term self regulation and “independent regulation would be a more appropriate term”. He said that emphasis should be given to developing the independent regulation in such a way that it is credible in the eyes of the media, the people and the view makers.

     

    His main concern was about the emergence of new media and challenges presented to regulate it.  He reiterated the need for due diligence to be given to fair and unbiased reporting, rights of an individual to privacy and avoiding trial by media.

     

    He said that he had already noticed a change in the fact that the mindset of the editors and the non-media members on the NBSA was converging due to the internalising the sense of responsibility.

     

    When questioned about the trivialisation of content, Mr Desai said that it was being done as the measurements showed that the audience preferred it. He said that there was a need for a different measuring system for news channels. He also opined that news channel have to stop behaving like money making operations and take responsibility to cover news that “people should know”.

     

    Phillip Turner, Chief of Bureau, CNN International, South Asia said thatIndiahad a long tradition of journalism but we tended to forget it. He emphasised that focus should be on stories that have a relevance to the rest of the world and maintaining the integrity of the media. He agreed with Mr Desai that the new media is presenting a challenge for regulation but he was of the opinion that everything would work out if the media stuck to the basic tenets of journalism – fair, relevant, responsible and accurate reporting.

     

    When asked about the need for a NBA-like worldwide authority, he wasn’t sure that such a platform could work globally.

     

    Kiran Karnik, member NBSA and former president of NASSCOM spoke about the challenges of new media. He said that today, when the news is available instantly as reported by citizen journalists and through the new media, it is the responsibility of the media to separate what is true and what is not. He also opined that news media today has shifted from reporting news to making news. He cautioned them to use the power they have responsibly by maintaining their standards and not infringing on the rights of the people.

     

    When questioned on the challenges thrown up by the new media, he agreed that technology is not amenable to censorship and also the consumer is becoming the creator and consumer. But he emphasised that there should be zero tolerance for unverified news and the news media as the aggregators of news should use their own censors.

     

    Mr Das wrapped up the session by stating that now is the time to convert challenges into opportunities and inclusive growth through media is the way forward.

     

  • Ranjona Banerji isn't surprised on how those who damned the master blaster not long ago are now singing praises.

    [MJR – Noosemakers] Will typists and babblers leave Sachin alone?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Bill Dwyre in The Los Angeles Times, in a recent comment on Roger Federer, dismisses trigger-happy journalists of print, web and broadcast as “typists and babblers”. But far more often than tennis great Roger Federer has cricket legend-in-his-lifetime Sachin Tendulkar had to face the firing squad. If the poor man doesn’t score a century every time he plays, out come the guns. O, now he should retire. O, actually, MS Dhoni, Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan, Akhilesh Yadav and Emraan Hashmi are all better than him. O, India never wins when Sachin scores a century. O, he’s just a selfish beast. Babble, babble, blah blah. The typists and babblers, having no sense of history (or if it comes to that, geography) can’t really compare him to Gary Sobers or Viv Richards or even Sunil Gavaskar. Instead, they cast their beady little eyes around and catch the first person they see. The canteen teaboy, for instance, had he been a cricketer and played for India and scored 99 centuries.

     

    The last few months, especially after India’s scintillating performance against Australia in Australia, have been good for the knife-sharpening brigade. And all focus was on Sachin Tendulkar scoring his 100th century. This nunber was far more important than anything else in the world. The pain of our losses in Australia would have been wiped out if the great man (or selfish beast) had done it. As it happens, no one even has close to 99 centuries in International cricket and getting 100 does not constitute some significant cricketing milestone. But the typists and babblers (thank you, Bill Dwyre) picked on this and stuck to it. “Sachin fails again” were common headlines. Former greats like Kapil Dev called for him to retire.

     

    And then the man goes and does it. No one could believe it at first, so the whiners and those with bad digestion (some bran flakes in the morning a good idea to improve the mood?) got in first: O, it was only against Bangladesh. It would have been better if it had been against another team. (By that reckoning, do the record books discount all India’s victories against Bangladesh or do we hang on to them happily?).

     

    Soon after however, the joy and accolades took over. All the hyperbolic praise poured out as if the last few months had not happened. Kapil Dev appeared on TV with the “greatest” and whatnot pouring out of his mouth in his own brand of English. He ducked the retirement question, heh heh. Other former cricketers made it clear that Bangladesh was a legitimate Test playing country. Former England captain Nasser Hussain pointed out that it wasn’t just about a century against Bangladesh but the other 99 against every top team and top bowler in the world. The headlines now said, “Sachin, Thanks a Ton”, “Man of the Century” and “God of All Things”.

     

    The biggest winner however was Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee whose lacklustre budget got forgotten.

     

    Knowing the tiny thinking capacity of the typists and babblers however, there can be no doubt that they’ll begin soon once again. Sachin Tendulkar however knows that he will recover and decide for himself. As Ayaz Memon quoted from Shakespeare in The Times of India on Monday to describe Tendulkar, “I might call him a thing divine; for nothing natural I ever saw so noble.”

     

    Yes, typists and babblers, you can look up Shakespeare on Wikipedia but don’t read it for too long or your little brains will hurt.