MxMIndia

Category: MxM JOURNALISM REVIEW

  • … and India demanded answers on Times Now. But other channels and sportspersons were not as outraged, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: When Boria Majumdar went ballistic on Vikas Krishan

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Even though the greatest show on earth is far from over, it can be nominated a news dominator this week and possibly next week as well. The Olympics have been at the forefront of news in India, as has plenty of hope, hysteria and of course given that this is an international competition, as much jingoism as possible.

     

    The top purveyor of jingoism in the English news world in India is Times Now and its main proponent is Boria Majumdar. I do not know what his journalistic credentials are (the few times I have tried to read his mediocre writings he is described as an academic) but there he is, screeching away as he saves India’s pride or takes India to task all over London. His greatest glory came when the boxer Vikas Krishan was first declared a winner and then a loser in his bout against an American boxer. Majumdar stayed up all night pondering this terrible act of cruelty. Then he woke up all the Indian officials to find out why they were sleeping when they should have declared war on Britain, the International Olympic Committee, the USA, the various boxing federations, the judges and so on.

     

    Once Majumdar informed Times Now (I really hope he woke up all the biggies at 5 am also), the channel found a juicy bone to get its patriotic teeth into. India demanded answers, why was prime minister Manmohan Singh not calling American president Barack Obama, was Suresh Kalmadi somehow responsible, how dare India sleep when an Indian as insulted and other such thrilling stuff.

     

    The other channels and other journalists and other sportspersons which and who are clearly not such supreme patriots started looking for the reasoning behind such a brutal decision by the judges. Boxer Akhil Kumar on CNN-IBN said quite clearly that the American had boxed better and he was surprised when Krishan won. Others who saw the match said that even the Indian boxer looked surprised that he had won. Others pointed out that this outrage should have been directed at the loss handed out to Indian boxer Sumit Sangwan who everyone, from the commentators of the match, said had been cheated out of a victory.

     

    Anyway, soon Indian Saina Nehwal won a bronze medal and then shooter Vijay Kumar won a silver (and that story we shall take on tomorrow) and Krishna Poonia conducted herself very well in the discus competition and we forgot all about the war fronts India had opened up across the planet.

     

    **

     

    And at the end, a lesson for Anna Hazare and his dyspeptic gang of newborn politicians – next time you want to launch a grand movement, don’t do it during the Olympics. There is only so much patriotism the people of India can digest at any one time.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior editor and commentator. She is Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are her own

     

  • Right now though, I'm worried about the management jargon that enters the mainstream by the "backside"

    Ranjona Banerji: Any more skilling and I’m killing myself!

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The Oxford English Dictionary, the last word on lexicography to many, has included many new “Indian” words in it. These are words that are peculiarly Indian like “prepone” or “airdash”, plus “crore” and “lakh”. So bring out the tricolour and let’s have a round of “Jana Gana Mana” to celebrate.

     

    Journalists across the country, please take a bow. Airdash is definitely a journo word and every Indian newspaper uses lakh and crore. Except, of course, the pink papers who want to be international and so prefer million. As we all know the international community of bankers and investors are falling over themselves to read Indian pink papers. I lie. I sometimes doubt whether bankers and investors can read at all, whatever their national origins. I would also give a journalistic nod to “chargesheet” and “undertrial” since newspapers use both all the time, though presumably, so do the police and the legal fraternity.

     

    Prepone and airdash are not so bad if you think about it: Both make sense. Though to be honest it’s not often that meetings in India start before the appointed time. And more curiously, airdash was coined when the only Indian airline was Indian Airlines and no would describe the experience of flying with them “dashing”. And, fact is, the words have become a little cliched and jaded and we’ve laughed at them for years.

     

    Years ago senior subs would tell their young ones to avoid used airdash since it had become a joke. And grammar purists of yore (now called grammar nazis by the Twitter generation who can neither spell nor understand syntax construction) would shudder at prepone.

     

    But tolerance can only go so far. I now await with horror the day that the Indian use of “lesser” becomes acceptable. For some reason, we don’t like to use the simple “less” when it comes to quantitative measures. Some things just cost less money. No need to make it lesser money. Lesser money would imply that the money itself was devalued. Like what’s happened to the rupee against the dollar. You could at a stretch say that because you used the rupee instead of the dollar to pay your bills, you used lesser money (all right, off with my head). Lesser is a qualitative description.

     

    But that’s my permanent language bugbear. You might have your own.

     

    Right now though, I’m worried about the management jargon that enters the mainstream by the “backside” (okay, a cheap joke, but backside usually refers to the human posterior end in common usage rather than the back of some inanimate object which is how it is all too often used). I read a headline in the Economic Times the other day – written by some management type – which asked for more “skilling”. Now this is not an Olympic sport. It is part of an ongoing management trend – led, it seems, by Americans – to make nouns into verbs. So if you want to increase or hone skills, then that presumably is skilling. The great management skill it seems is to kill language.

     

    Incidentally, Microsoft Word does not seem to like airdash or prepone but that could be because mine is an old version. But what the IT community has done to language is a whole other grouse. The only good news is that Word doesn’t accept skilling either. Yet.

     

  • Don't let the headline above fool you and click on it to read Ranjona Banerji's take on the coverage on the Northern Grid collapse and why she loves Boria Majumdar so much

    Ranjona Banerji: Good to hear sports greats on CNN-IBN

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Which is bigger news wise? Gagan Narang winning an Olympic bronze, the collapse of the Northern grid leading eight states, including the national capital, powerless for close to eight hours or a fire in a train in Tamil Nadu leading to at least 30 deaths? It’s a tough call to some but most newspapers decided that “feel good” was the way to go and Narang got top billing therefore. After that, as far as Mumbai’s big two broadsheets are concerned it looks like Hindustan Times exercised better judgment than The Times of India. HT Mumbai took the power grid collapse as the second lead and carried the train accident just above the fold, giving all there prominence. Times of India gave the power story a single column and then decided to go what used to be the DNA way when I worked there – fill every page with 80,000 stories. This can be counter-productive: the reader may be impressed that you have so much news but gets confused about which tiny bit to read first.

     

    **

     

    Primetime TV news was on its usual trip. These days, they have permanent scanners on Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and on members of the Anna Hazare-led India Against Corruption movement. And when the two converge, nothing like it! Every time Modi sneezes or Arvind Kejriwal hiccups, we get a panel discussion. The same people mysteriously appear on every channel at the same time. They say the same things. And most sensible people are either watching the Olympics, Masterchef Australia, going out for dinner or reading a book.

     

    But I have to give a shout out to Arnab Goswami for his impassioned speech about the flip flops in the Anna Hazare movement. And good effort by Rajdeep Sardesai, trying to make some sense of why safety is not a priority for the Indian Railways.

     

    **

     

    Olympics coverage has been good across most newspapers – although sometimes with too much focus on India. The world’s best athletes have gathered to demonstrate their prowess after all, so more about them please. But the winner for me would be the special discussions on CNN-IBN with Michael Ferreira, Geet Sethi, Vimal Kumar, Enrico Piperno, Raghavendra Rathore and others. It’s illuminating to hear sports greats discussing other sportspersons and recounting their own experiences without losing their tempers. Getting the great Carl Lewis is a good coup as well.

     

    Times Now has the squeaky and annoying Boria Majumdar so I am afraid to go there.

     

    **

     

    While on sports, he’s a good friend of mine but I defy anyone to anyone to make sense of Bobbili Vijay Kumar’s attempt in yesterday’s Times of India to try and give a cricket spin to archery just because the Olympic event was taking place at the hallowed ground of Lords. After two paragraphs I knew that even if William Tell’s father stuck an apple on my head I wouldn’t be able to understand it.

     

    Ranjona Banerji, senior journalist and commentator and Contributing Editor, MxMIndia, reviews media four times a week. The views here are her own.

     

     

  • The British feel that Indians only feel welcome when they see other Indians. In this case it backfired – as cultural determinism normally does

    Ranjona Banerji: Honey, you stole the show!

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    It’s hard to choose the biggest noosemaker of last week. Was it Danny Boyle for his quirky, funny and very British opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic Games? Was it Madhura Nagendra aka Madhura Honey for gate-crashing India’s flag march in the parade of nations and not being colour coordinated at the same time? Or was it our old friends, the various members of Team Anna in their fight against corruption and the people of India who support them?

     

    This Honey or Nagendra person, depending on how affectionate you feel about her, has got no affection from the people of India – even less than they have for Anna Hazare. She smiled as she stole the show from our athletes but since then she has apparently even cancelled her Facebook page. The crime was double-fold: walking in the parade as if she belonged there, smiling away and then wearing bright red and turquoise which clashed horrible with the yellow of the Indian team. This is a rule which all gate-crashers must follow – at least attempt to blend in.

     

    Her daddy in Bangalore has tried to defend her (daddies are vital for the defence of all those connected with Indian sport as we discovered in the Bhupathi-Paes face off, especially daddies from Bangalore) and so funnily enough has Lord Sebastian Coe of the London Olympics. Nagendra got “over-excited” he said. She was supposed to be a performer which is why she was lurking about, but was not eventually selected which is why she had no business lurking about. Then there’s the other suspicion (mine) of the British propensity for cultural determinism. Someone put her there to make the Indians athletes feel welcome as they entered the arena, it was hinted at somewhere. This is because the British feel that Indians only feel welcome when they see other Indians. In this case it backfired – as cultural determinism normally does.

     

    So where does it leave Danny Boyle? Probably wishing he had selected Honey-Nagendra. What is this Honey thing anyway? The Indian press applauded the opening ceremony as did most of the world. Most even forgot that there was some speculation about AR Rahman being part of the show -which he wasn’t and no one cared.

     

    Mumbai Mirror’s headline “Tepid London Boyle’s Over” upset firstpost.com which pointed out that the headline and the body copy did not match.

     

    * * *

     

    That leads us to the latest fast by Anna Hazare and his anti-corruption crusaders. Last year over one lakh people supported him in Delhi and that was a lot and this year 6,000 people supported him and that was a lot. In Mumbai last year when 5,000 turned up in Bandra that was too little, and this year 2,000 people in VT is a lot.

     

    Thus proving that even mathematics is relative: If only my maths teacher had bought that argument when I was in school.

     

  • It is very tempting here to blame television for making heroes out of, to use Suhel Seth's favourite word here, dolts, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Is it okay to blame TV for Suhel Seth’s insulting comments on Viren Rasquinha?

    By Ranjona Banerji

    The outrage on Twitter the past couple of days was over the comments of adman and TV personality Suhel Seth at the Times Literary Carnival over the weekend. Those without media-sponsored short-term memory problems might recall that an invitation to editor and rape accused Tarun Tejpal just a few weeks ago caused huge anger on the social media circuit. The invitation was withdrawn in a huff by the festival’s curator, veteran editor and columnist Bachi Karkaria.

    Sunday’s sessions at the festival included one on the future of sport, which included as a panellist former Indian hockey captain Viren Rasquinha. Suhel Seth was part of the next session and in his introductory speech he said (about Rasquinha), “Don’t know what that bald guy is doing on a panel on sports. What’s he done?”

    This caused immediate mayhem with Rasquinha furious and tournament director Karkaria had to go up on stage and apologise. I spoke to veteran journalist and India’s best known cricket writer Ayaz Memon who moderated the session with Rasquinha. He said, “Seth’s comments were nasty, unacceptable and symptomatic of the complete ignorance about sport in India.”

    So just what has Rasquinha to do with sports? He is not just a former India hockey captain, he is also an Olympian and an Arjuna Award winner. He is chief operating officer of Olympic Gold Quest, India’s best agency for sporting (and spotting) talent, which has had much success with the sportspersons it has nurtured at successive Olympic Games and other world events.

    Seth on the other hand worked in advertising, owned an advertising agency and is also known for general schmoozing and networking in Delhi’s social and political circles. He has done bit roles in a few films here and there. Not in the same league as Rasquinha (no Olympic status, please to note) but his connections, his fluent and smart-alecky language, have made him a regular on TV news debates. Clearly, he was trying to be too-clever-by-half and it backfired.

    Rasquinha tweeted his anger. Seth finally apologised. But only after he was attacked on twitter, which Seth also referred to.

    The carnival (how else to refer to it?) itself is not to blame here. They could not possibly have known that Seth would insult a guest on another panel. Seth stands along here, wallowing in his cleverness. He is known for a particular kind of behaviour. His ignorance about Rasquinha is excusable. No one can be expected to know everything. But the reason – if indeed it is fair to use the word reason in such a context – for such comment is unfathomable. Rudeness is a more appropriate word than clever. Or perhaps this was an attempt at humour.

    Some people feel that any publicity is good publicity and that the carnival gained from the Tejpal notoriety and will only benefit from this as well. All that may well be true. But it is no less distasteful for all that.

    Once again it is Twitter which has flexed its muscles and made its presence felt. The power of social media can be over-estimated and blown out of proportion especially when you consider the number of people who are not on it. But nor can its power be denied. It is very tempting here to blame television for making heroes out of, dare I use Seth’s favourite word here, dolts.

  • Almost 30 years in the media have taught me that life and death are cyclical. You never know when something revives, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Why slam Mid-Day, Ms Baghel?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    This week, I’m taking on a personal grouse, so I apologise in advance.

     

    There can be no doubt that Mumbai Mirror started in 2005 like a breath of fresh air in the city of Mumbai. It was exciting, bold and entertaining and gave the idea of news a daring dynamic. Much of the credit for this goes to Meenal Baghel, the editor of the newspaper who was interviewed yesterday on mxmindia.com.

     

    I know Meenal only very vaguely but am full of admiration for the newspaper that she created and nurtured. Mumbai Mirror has in a short space of time – six years – made itself indispensable to many and has displayed a sure hand, a deft touch in dealing with news and giving it that tabloid spin. All kudos. But I have felt a dip in Mirror in the past couple of years – perhaps because Baghel was involved in overseeing the various editions of Mirror which have started all over the country. The edge was missing and the newspaper had started doing what seemed to me to be “college boy” stories. In fact, I shifted to The Economic Times, using The Times of India’s various subscription schemes as a result. This I must emphasise is my personal opinion.

     

    However, I was intrigued to read this in her interview to Anil Thakraney:

     

    “You’ve pretty much killed Mid-Day. Feels good?

    The paper killed itself. And I feel really bad. I feel bad that what was such a robust paper is no longer that. We all worked very hard out there. We worked our asses off at Mid-Day and we used to take great pride in the paper being so robust, that it was second only to the TOI.”

     

    Before becoming editor of Mirror, Baghel was deputy editor of Mid-day.

     

    But this is where I have a little story to tell. In 1993, Pradyuman Maheshwari, editor-in-chief of mxmindia.com joined Mid-day. We left at the same time in 2000. In those years, we had to work very hard, for most of that time under the editorship of Ayaz Memon to make Mid-Day a strong and credible Mumbai property. Baghel worked for Mid-Day in the dispensation that followed all of us leaving in 2000. When we left, Mid-Day and Sunday Mid-Day had been on a rising graph as far as circulation and readership were concerned. A survey of readers during that stint had this most interesting quote: The Times of India is seen as a “respected uncle” while Mid-Day is seen as the “Shah Rukh Khan of newspapers”. I can say without any false modesty that when we quit, Mid-Day was a force to reckon with in Mumbai. Tariq Ansari is the best publisher I have every worked with, so all credit to him. Incidentally, Anil Thakraney was also part of the group for a few of those years, as editor of The Brief.

     

    Within six months of our leaving, Mid-Day lost almost 60,000 copies in circulation. It has taken it almost a decade to get back to the figures it was at when Ayaz, Pradyuman and I quit. Mid-Day has had many great editors and journalists working for it in the past – some great luminaries of Indian journalism – but not, I have to say, since 2000. They still have time to turn luminaries. I am sure that everyone worked very hard because that is what the newspaper and the medium demanded. We had four editions a day in my time but that was disbanded shortly after.

     

    I do not want to take away from Baghel’s formidable achievements in journalism. Her book on the Neeraj Grover case is excellent from all accounts (I have not read it). But almost 30 years in the media have taught me that life and death are cyclical. You never know when something revives, and I for one would advise desisting from slamming other publications – especially those that you have worked with in the past.

     

    From what I understand from IRS figures, Mid-Day is on the rise again under the able stewardship of Sachin Kalbag. Plus I write a column for them again, so who knows! (That last line was a joke, by the way.)

     

     

    The views expressed here are Ranjona’s own. But we are carrying these not because I endorse them, but it’s a view and must get aired. Plus it’s part of her blog/column. Also, who doesn’t mind a li’l bit of controversy. Lol.

    Just for the record: I had moved on from the main paper to the interactive division in ’99, though I would still write a media column in the Sunday paper. And, yes, I quit the group a couple of months after Ayaz and Ranjona had moved.

    I resubscribed to Mid-Day (on weekdays) three weeks back, and must say it has improved much. However the paid news policy – albeit in the entertainment section – sucks. Sunday Mid-Day though could do with some more, to use the word Meenal used, energy.

    – Pradyuman Maheshwari

     

  • The idea of freedom of speech has to be absolute. But in India, we are constantly alert to various sentiments being upset, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Anyone cares about Freedom of Speech?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The case of Shireen Dalvi, editor of the Mumbai edition of the Urdu newspaper Awadhnama, perfectly and in some ways tragically encapsulates our wavering devotion to freedom of speech and the up-and-down solidarity between journalists.

     

    Many in India – on social media at least – came out in support of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo even though few had even heard of it before the ghastly terror attack by Islamists leaving 14 dead. But standing with Shirin Dalvi is another matter. So what if the newspaper she edited is published from Mumbai and not Paris? So what if she’s been in hiding since January 17 because of cases filed against her by Muslim fundamentalists and others because she reprinted a Charlie Hebdo cartoon? So what if her children are too frightened to go to college? So what if the Mumbai branch of the newspaper has been shut down by the owners leaving Dalvi and other employees jobless?

     

    Dalvi has been charged under section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, “outraging religious sentiments with malicious intent”. Dalvi had in fact apologised for carrying the cartoon, making it clear that she did not want to blaspheme the prophet Mohammed. She also wrote an editorial saying that the way to protest against such cartoons is not by killing or threats.

     

    The idea of freedom of speech has to be absolute. But in India, we are constantly alert to various sentiments being upset. The idea that Dalvi as an editor and a journalist has certain rights has been ignored by the Mumbai police in this instance over the rights of those who have felt offended.

     

    Veteran journalist Jyoti Punwani, in this article for scroll.in, finds that there is another angle to the hounding of Dalvi: the fact that she is a rare female editor with a meteoric career rise in the male-dominated world of Urdu journalism: http://scroll.in/article/704074/Behind-hounding-of-female-editor-who-published-Hebdo-cover,-pettiness-of-Urdu-journalism-lies-exposed

     

    It is heartening in some small measure that both the Mumbai Press Club and the Bombay Union of Journalists have issued statements in support of Dalvi and most Mumbai editions of newspapers have been carrying articles about the case. But a larger voice, like we saw for Charlie Hebdo? Uh-huh.

     

    This is from the statement of the Mumbai Press Club:

    “We see this as a systematic attempt to intimidate a journalist who was merely doing her job, and drive her out of the profession. Her being a woman editor, a rarity in the Urdu media, seems to have has added an edge to her persecution. We call upon the state government to create conditions for her and her children to be able to return home and live in security.

     

    The Press Club is also writing to Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who also heads the state Home Ministry, to stop the harassment of Shireen Dalvi through trumped up FIRs, and to ensure that she and her children are provided police protection.”

     

    **

     

    The national media’s hysteria over the Delhi state elections continues (or, as one news channel put it, “our continuous coverage continues”).

     

    Those who watch TV regularly know that the entire world is circumscribed by Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi, Amit Shah and Narendra Modi. Who knows, perhaps it is.

     

    **

     

    The only way out for those in India who have other things to think about than Delhi seems to be the release of a new Amitabh Bachchan film. Which perhaps proves that Bollywood PR beats political PR hands down. This I write judging from the appearance of India’s best known film star on every news channel.

     

    A “sham” approach to news?

     

  • Having surfed through most news channels in various Indian languages, it was clear that the most exciting channel was Times Now, writes Ranjona Banerji

    AAPHEW! Ranjona Banerji: Times Now, Twitter score with Delhi results

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    “ARNAB GOSWAMI JUST CONGRATULATED ARNAB GOSWAMI FOR HIS VICTORY IN THE DELHI ELECTION!”

     

    This is a tweet, capital letters and all, from Overrated Outcast (@Over_rated). Because without a doubt, Times Now was the only channel worth watching, for its entertainment value at least, as the results of the Delhi state elections were being counted.

     

    It started soon after 8am on February 10 as the counting started. Other news channels started putting out trend figures. Goswami was spitting scorn. Other channels, he said, were “psephological paparazzi”. Some hapless guest tried to claim that phrase as his own. I laughed so much that I missed who the guest was: mea culpa. But Goswami used the phrase through the morning as results poured in and has effectively made it his own.

     

    He carried on with it and by 11.40am was even asking for a CBI enquiry into news channels which put out figures which inflated the BJP’s wins!

     

    Times Now and Goswami also took great glee in pointing out that exit polls and forecasters got the Delhi election wrong, since the Aam Aadmi Party effectively swept through Delhi. But one might point out that the night before, on February 9, Navika Kumar of Times Now said that the BJP could not be written off since the BJP claimed that there was a voting surge for them between 3 and 5 in the afternoon on voting day. Goswami did not at that time react as fiercely as he did with such claimants on February 10.

     

    Instead, Goswami, who is often seen as pro-BJP, took off on the BJP as the results became clear. Shazia Ilmi walked out of the studio after being asked tough questions. This is a sure way of getting ahead of the rating points for any channel and Times Now has won.

     

    Having surfed through most news channels in various Indian languages, it was clear that the most exciting channel was Times Now. And all credit for that has to go to Goswami for being compelling viewing, with all the attendant melodrama and hysterics. He interrupted the discussions to show us where in the world the hashtag #TimesNow was trending. The US apparently, where he told us, Times Now has a huge following. No ad breaks, however.

     

    But having doffed my hat to Times Now and it is still blaring as I write this, the winner has to be Twitter across all media. There is no better way to track news events. You don’t just get the news but you get humour, analysis, wit, scorn, anger, bitterness and rubbish as well: the whole human experience.

     

    And as for tracking the election results, the Election Commission is surely the most reliable: http://eciresults.nic.in/.

     

    You can track the results through constituency, party and vote share. You can therefore be ahead of the hysteria of news channels. Though the fun of Arnab Goswami cannot be beat! NDTV, too civilised and calm. Headlines Today looks like a CNN-IBN copy unless Rahul Kanwal and Gaurav Sawant are allowed to prance about. NewsX looks like a copy of all. CNN-IBN looks like His Master’s Voice except the BJP master and his main puppeteer are missing in action after this drubbing.

     

    **

     

    Jokes aside though, there is an urgent need for India’s best known journalists, especially those on TV, to do a little thinking. Their all out sycophancy for the government at the Centre has run its course. No?

     

  • In a jingoistic way, it is heartening to see an Indian TV anchor, watched by 1.2 billion people (Goswami hinted at that on Thursday night though I have yet to see it in a Times Now ad) ask questions of the US president with no hope of ever getting an answer, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: The nation wants to know when Barack Obama will answer Times Now! No, really!

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Many people have complained to me that if I was being sarcastic about Arnab Goswami and Times Now being the best anchor and channel to watch on the Delhi election results day this week, it did not come through. My sincere apologies. But I reassert that Times Now was the most entertaining channel to watch!

     

    **

     

    But here’s a story where you have to partially at least agree with Goswami and Times Now: the assault on Suresh Patel by the police in Madison, Alabama, which has left him paralysed: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/11/alabama-cops-leave-a-grandfather-partially-paralyzed-after-frisk-goes-awry/

     

    I say partially because while the story is horrific and the actions of the police smack of both brutality and racism, it was ridiculous for Goswami to sit in his Mumbai studio and demand an answer from US president Barack Obama. Certainly, you can castigate the US system, you can take on racism but it is silly to use a hashtag like ObamaStopPreaching to highlight Sureshbhai Patel’s plight.

     

    The fact that Obama spoke of the need for secularism in India did not mean that he said that there is no racism in the US. Quite the contrary. He mentioned racism in America and his own experiences in his speech in India as well. But in a jingoistic way, it is heartening to see an Indian TV anchor, watched by 1.2 billion people (Goswami hinted at that on Thursdaynight though I have yet to see it in a Times Now ad) ask questions of the US president with no hope of ever getting an answer.

     

    Meanwhile, NewsX has been claiming since Friday morning that some part of this story was “first on NewsX”.

     

    Wait till Goswami hears about that, all you paparazzi channels!

     

    **

     

    NewsX however went hammer and tongs at activist Teesta Setalvad on Thursday night, after a Gujarat high court denied her anticipatory bail application in a case about possible fraud in money collected for a museum to commemorate victims of the 2002 Gujarat riots. The anchor Rahul Shivshankar made it clear to some hapless guests that he did not want to discuss the legal aspects of the case but the hypocrisy of Setalvad.

     

    Just to make life interesting, the Supreme Court has since stayed the arrest warrant. Obviously the apex court is more interested in discussing the legal aspects of the case than Shivshankar?

     

    This comment from The Economic Times puts some of the questions for and against Setalvad in perspective: http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/et-editorials/stop-harassment-of-human-rights-activist-teesta-setalvad/

     

    **

     

    Mohammed Fahmy and Baher Mohammed are hopefully to be released on bail soon from an Egyptian jail. The two Al-Jazeera journalists were arrested on suspicion of being Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers. A retrial has been ordered in their case. Earlier, Australian journalist Peter Grieste also one of the three Al Jazeera journalists, had been allowed to go home as well.

     

    http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2015/02/egypt-court-releases-al-jazeera-journalists-bail-freeajstaff-150212114228426.html

     

    **

     

    The US is mourning the deaths of two senior journalists. Bob Simon, celebrated foreign reporter and war correspondent with CBS, died in a car accident in New York on Wednesdaynight. Simon had reported on wars since Vietnam. He was 73. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-correspondent-bob-simon-1941-2015/

     

    The New York Times is mourning the loss of David Carr, 58, who wrote a very popular media column. Carr collapsed in the newspaper’s Manhattan newsroom on Thursday.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/business/media/david-carr-media-equation-columnist-for-the-times-is-dead-at-58.html?_r=0

     

  • Women in journalism have fought very hard to get where they are. And they do not need advice of this “known your limits” sort from anybody. No need for a shooting champ to shoot his mouth of, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Barkha Dutt leaves NDTV, Rajyavardhan leaves women fuming

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Celebrated TV journalist Barkha Dutt shot to fame during her coverage of the Kargil War-Like Situation. She also gathered an enormous fan following with her studio discussion programme, We the People, which debated various issues in a sort of unstructured format. Many feel she has a way of connecting to people that is rare and appealing. In her 20 years with NDTV, in the various names the channel has been known as, she has been an abiding face.

     

    However rumours of her leaving the channel have not been new in media circle, from when Peter Mukerjea set up the Newsx-9x brand to when Rajdeep Sardesai quit CNNIBN. Now Dutt has quit to set up her own media outfit, although her two shows, We the People and The Buck Stops Here will continue.

     

    Yet, Dutt’s tenure in television has not been without controversy. There were objections to her access to army positions during the Kargil conflict. Her coverage of the Gujarat riots of 2002 angered Hindutva followers and her coverage of the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai angered many who felt she gave away vital information putting lives in danger.

     

    But her worst moments were when the Niira Radia tapes were made public by Open and Outlook magazines. To hear a senior journalist agreeing to become a messenger for a corporate lobbyist trying to influence the appointment of a cabinet minister for the telecom ministry was shocking even to hardened journalists. Dutt denied she ever meant to pass the message on. But why Radia ever thought Dutt would help her was not made clear. To some of us oldtimers, at the risk of sounding unbearably self-righteous, there are limits beyond PR reps are not allowed in. Calling you at 4 am to discuss cabinet ministries is one of them.

     

    Even worse, as was brought up by then Open editor Manu Joseph during a questioning of Dutt organised on NDTV itself, was why a journalist as experienced as Dutt did not see a story in Radia’s request. The fact is, the telecom industry was pushing for A Raja of the DMK to become telecom minister in UPA 2. By any standards, that’s a story.

     

    And here’s this one:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/02/16/barkha-dutt-ndtv_n_6690808.html

     

    **

    Last week, Information and broadcasting minister and Olympian shooting champ Rajyavardhan Rathore annoyed women and journalists by a speech he made to the Indian Women’s Press Corps. The minister said that women journalists need not go out into the field but might better use their skills for analysis. He also mentioned their safety and their other roles and responsibilities as mothers, sisters, daughters and so on.

     

    There was immediate outrage on social media, where his patriarchy was questioned. Rathore then responded with a number of tweets which first said that he was misinterpreted and then that he was misquoted. India Today took their story off their website as a result of the tweets and blamed the news agency (IANS) for the mix-up. But as the link below from newslaundry.com shows, Rathore did indeed make those remarks and those media outlets which succumbed to his tweets and took down the story, had jumped the gun.

     

    Women in journalism have fought very hard to get where they are. And they do not need advice of this “know your limits” sort from anybody. No need for a shooting champ to shoot his mouth of.

    http://www.newslaundry.com/2015/02/16/the-benign-patriarchy-of-rajyavardhan-rathore/

     

    **

     

    Twitter fascinates me, as regular readers of this column know. The way companies respond to complaints and ideas tells its own story. Makemytrip possibly wins with its sense of humour demonstrated when BJP candidate and now MP Giriraj Singh said that all opponent to Narendra Modi should go to Pakistan. Makemytrip’s twitter account said it was organising charter flights. On a personal note, Makemytrip has always responded and helped when I’ve tweeted to them. So have Indigo and Jet Airways, Tata Docomo, Vodafone, Ten Sports and Neo Sports.

     

    The two failures in this regard remain by old bugbear Star Sports, now without ESPN but still as silent to tweets and Tatasky.
    My humble opinion is that companies which do not respond to customers and people on social media will one day pay the price…

     

    **

     

    For those who missed this, Twinkle Khanna’s brilliant column on the All India Bakchod Roast and the Indian right to be being offended:
    http://m.indiatimes.com/entertainment/this-twinkle-khanna-column-is-breaking-the-internet-today-230279.html

     

     

  • The Indian Express was at the forefront in the last week, asking uncomfortable questions with uncomfortable stories and incisive opinion pieces, notes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Express on the top

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Aah cricket! I can’t believe that I’m writing this but cricket made a difference to the news mix last week. We’ve been so full of politics for so long now and that includes the politics of sport. But the start of the Cricket World Cup and India’s two wins in the first stages meant that we had a break from manufactured outrage.

     

    Of course there is no doubt that cricket fatigue will set in at some point and I’ll be grumbling here quite soon as this tournament goes on and on… There will be an endless questioning of Sachin Tendulkar and the endless squeaking of Boria Majumdar both on Headlines Today. There will be some needless (I cannot say gratuitous because no money = no appearance) film star presence because cricket is not glamorous enough in India as we all know. There will be outrage over every small fielding position. There will enormous anger that some other team actually dared to play well.

     

    And not all the deities in the world can save Team India from the media’s wrath if things do not go the media’s way… There you have it. That’s the World Cup in three paragraphs!

     

    **

     

    Actually, it’s been a news-filled week and the Indian Express has been at the top of one of the biggest stories: what the media dubbed the “terror boat” from Pakistan. Since the story of the boat that blew itself up on the night of December 31 2014 broke in the first week of January, questions have been raised, not least by India’s intelligence agencies. The Indian Express was at the forefront, asking uncomfortable questions with uncomfortable stories and incisive opinion pieces.

     

    Last week, they came up with a speech by a DIG of the Coast Guard where he claimed that he was in Gandhinagar when the boat was headed to the Porbandar coast and he had ordered that it be blown up (“We don’t want to serve them biryani”). There was hell to pay after that and denials and counter-accusations flew fast and thick between the Coast Guard, defence ministry, the government and the media, especially (obviously) television.

     

    The Indian Express waited as the denials became stronger and then released a tape of the DIG’s speech. This led to maximum embarrassment.

     

    However, fun as all this was, there are a couple of problems here. The first, amusing as it is for the media, is the “I was misquoted” excuse. The electronic age makes this excuse redundant. You can wiggle around saying you were misunderstood or quoted out of context. But even those have limited traction. If you are going to blab secrets or put your foot in your mouth, find a better explanation for your words before someone makes your words public.

     

    The second problem is more serious. It is the way that every story falls so quickly by the wayside. The coast guard DIG’s statement is serious because, among other things, it points to a frightening lack of communication between our security agencies and implies the defence ministry lied to the nation especially on a subject as fraught with tension as our relationship with Pakistan.

     

    But we have already forgotten about the story as we have jumped on to the next big one: The auction of Narendra Modi’s suit, the Budget session, the disappearance of Rahul Gandhi, Mohan Bhagwat’s comments on Mother Teresa or the information leaks and robberies from the petroleum ministry to petroleum companies. Some of these are not even that big but stories are judged on how they can be milked for attention and not for their intrinsic worth.

     

    Ah well.

     

  • All too often, people with minimum or no experience are made heads of departments and what they teach is open to speculation, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Faulty faculty at journalism schools

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Discussions about the future of journalism and journalism trends in India tend to get terribly depressing, especially if the discussion is amongst journalists over the age of 40. A friend who has started guest lectures at a well-known journalism school is appalled at the quality of both students and faculty. One uses the word faculty cautiously here. All too often, people with minimum or no experience are made heads of departments and what they teach is open to speculation. As for the students, they are caught up with the glamour of TV and dream every night of their families watching them interview Ranbir Kapoor and Narendra Modi every single day.

     

    But one cannot blame the students. It is not their fault that teaching in schools is pathetic – at least judging from the entrance tests that I have conducted over the years where both general knowledge and language skills have been dismal. It is not their fault that the way they understand journalism is from TV. The young do not read newspapers and when and if they do, it’s usually that glamour stuff. And in today’s India, the glamour stuff is not journalism but paid content cooked up by PR and marketing people.

     

    Is it surprising that a growing number of young journalists who cut their eyeteeth in the “glamour” beats switch to PR? They know that that is where the real power is when it comes to film stars and movies.

     

    But there’s another conundrum at work here, brought up by a conversation with another old friend: older journalists who turn to general PR and then become experts on how journalists should behave. Unlike the young people, this lot is excessively annoying. In many cases, you know just how good or bad they were in their former profession and how badly placed they are to be “experts” in anything at all. And yet they hold forth on how journalists should behave.

     

    Unfortunately, as with any profession, the more you stay away the less connected you become. But journalism being what it is, the pull remains and this causes a sort of bitterness and resentment at what you have given up. And, let’s be honest, the power you’ve lost. It is this bitterness and regret that tints their diatribes against journalists.

     

    I am willing to concede that journalists can behave very badly with PR people, ask for all kinds of favours and not do their homework. And those are genuine complaints from PR people, whether they were former journalists or not. But if journalists-turned PR professionals do not want to lose all respect of their former colleagues, they need to hold back on the gratuitous and frankly often idiotic advice.

     

    **

     

    The Railway Budget, as is our wont in India, led to interminable discussions on matters that most people are not really interested in. I wish TV anchors would ask their “experts” just one question before they invite them to share their views: “How often do you travel by train in India?”

     

    That might give us some real opinions instead of what we are saddled with. No doubt, The Budget on Saturday will give us more of the same…

     

    **

     

    The world of Twitter on Thursday/Friday was consumed by a question of whether a particular dress was black and blue or white and gold. Yeah, right. Priorities.

     

    As ever, mashable.com had the answer: http://mashable.com/2015/02/26/dress-white-gold-blue-black/?utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-main-link