MxMIndia

Category: MxM JOURNALISM REVIEW

  • It must come with a great deal of bewilderment for many to discover that a superhuman has the heart of a human within. This should not be a matter of discouragement but of elation.

    Newswatch: Irom Sharmila and the loneliness of the long-distance runner

    By Pradip Phanjoubam

     

    Irom Sharmila is in love with somebody who has been communicating and sharing soul anguish with her in her confinement through letters. A report in The Telegraph, Kolkata declared this loudly. Nothing very strange about this, after all Sharmila is only 39 years of age and has been living alone in a prison cell after having vowed to sacrifice eating to demand the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) for nearly 11 years. Her fast completed 11 years on November 2 which is the day her family says her fast began, or November 5 when the newspapers first took notice of her fast and put it on record in the next day’s edition.

     

    The terrible privation she has inflicted upon herself and how she has been coping with it is next only to superhuman, and it is a wonder that her spirit did not break down long ago. Ordinary men and women would have probably lost their sanity by now. She is still very much alive today, carrying on the fight she took upon herself to shoulder. It must come with a great deal of bewilderment for many to discover that a superhuman has the heart of a human within. This should not be a matter of discouragement but of elation. After all, what we want to see demonstrated is an ordinary human pushing the boundaries of achievement and not a god doing what are humanly impossible.

     

    We would in this sense give three cheers to Sharmila for the revelation and not downgrade her stature in any way, although we do feel as a public figure she should have been a little wary and discreet about going public with her very private life. It is also unfortunate that she had not indicated this to the local media, making it seem as if the local media has been party to keeping her feelings under wraps. Or is it a case of efforts by interested parties to do just this? This should become known sooner than later.

     

    But no great damage done, the truth is out, so be it, and hopefully for the better towards the actualisation of the noble cause she is fighting for. Her direct supporters, and all the rest of us, must come to terms with the new and more human image of the lonely tough-willed fighter, and carry the movement forward with renewed vigour. After all the movement is what is important, and with or without an iconic figure like Sharmila as standard bearer, it should carry on without any sense of loss or that the wind in the sails has diminished. She has done enough to highlight the issue, more than anyone behind the cause can imagine every doing. We should not be on the lookout for a martyr in her. Instead we should be encouraging her to end her self-inflicted privation and carry on the struggle without having to go through all the torture of unending hunger. The issue is the draconian AFSPA and not Irom Sharmila, however great she is.

     

    We cannot however help wondering if Sharmila is not under psychological stress more than ever in the past few months. It is learnt that meeting her even by her own family members is no longer as easy as it used to be, permission now having to be acquired from the chief secretary of the state himself. All of us who have visited the iron lady in the past know her confinement was not so strictly guarded. For whatever the reason, her privation was being deepened and surely her loneliness too in equal measures, after all she is a human too. Imagine 11 years in a prison cell all alone, not even in contact with other prisoners as she is in a special jail ward in the Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital Porompat so as to enable medical care and nose feeding.

     

    Not only this, going without food is not just about tolerating hunger. In fact, in her case, hunger may not be much of an issue for she is fed through the nose and kept alive. But her self-denial is more about foregoing taste and smell of food, some of the most gratifying of all human senses. Any lesser person would have lost sanity under the circumstance. Is this additional stress having a toll on her? We hope not.

     

    In any case, the campaign against the oppressive AFSPA has been allowed to hinge on Sharmila alone for too long. This was not good for her as she is finding out now, or for the movement, for it deprived individuality of individual campaigners, most of them having simply to rally behind Sharmila, abdicating in the process the need to take individual stances in the manner Erich Fromm described the emergence of dictatorships in “Escape from Freedom”.

     

    The episode is sad in another way though. The paradoxical thing is, to be a public leader entails a great deal of sacrifice of private life. Sharmila as a selfless crusader against the embodiment of an oppressive law automatically came to be lifted on an exalted public pedestal. Sharmila as a shy private woman can lead a happy individual life but will disappear from the public domain. This is the difference between an inspirational leader and a common citizen. The freedom to aspire for either should remain with the individual. Let Sharmila decide her own future without any guilt. She has contributed enough already. Manipur and its resistance against the AFSPA must however continue undeterred even if she decides to retire to a peaceful normal life.

     

    Leaders and Followers

    But there are more to what this recent development has proven. The fact that a personal decision of Irom Sharmila is now seen somewhat as a threat to the campaign against the AFSPA in Manipur is a demonstration of the strategic and structural flimsiness of any protracted struggle to resort to hero worship. It has to be said that Sharmila’s direct followers are guilty of having done this to a great extent. Even if it is not hero worship, they had built their campaign with her as the major, if not the only prop.

     

    The approach should instead have been to see Sharmila as a star campaigner, but not the heart and soul of the campaign, but unfortunately, for whatever their reason, this route was not given much importance. And so a single report of Sharmila’s love affair with a hitherto unheard of man, and her reported statement that she is disillusioned with her followers, caused so much trepidation and even the fear that the campaign against the AFSPA would lose much of its steam.

     

    We hope this does not happen and the movement is able to find new legs that could do with but did not absolutely need Sharmila as a prop if she at all becomes unavailable. Indeed, the myriad human rights organisations actively involved in the campaign must now take time off to rethink, retrospect and reorient their future strategies. Meanwhile leave Sharmila to be where she wants to be.

     

    But increasingly confounding is also the reason why The Telegraph chose to give so much prominence to Sharmila’s declaration of her very personal affair. This is even more intriguing for in all of the 11 long years she has been staging her protest fast, even on the day she completed the 10 year landmark, she was not seen as deserving headline space by this newspaper. Many other newspapers and television channels even ignored the event. So why this sudden interest in her personal affairs, even though it is clear she was the one who revealed it to the journalist who did the report.

     

    The timing, whether by design or coincidence is also curious for only a few days earlier the Union home minister, P Chidambaram had announced in New Delhi that the government was considering a review of the AFSPA. Moreover a reflected halo from the Anna Hazare blitzkrieg in New Delhi was beginning to hover over Sharmila, signifying perhaps liberal India’s conscience was being awoken, and the issue of AFSPA was beginning to attract national attention. It was in the midst of this that the story of Sharmila’s love affair butted in rudely.

     

    The story was heart-warming no doubt despite the hiccups caused by a passage suggesting Sharmila was having very serious differences with her supporters, still the question of its timing as well as the prominence given to it, would undoubtedly make many suspicious that it may have motives other than plain journalistic calibration of news value. Thankfully however, it does now seem the sensational revelation is unlikely to sidetrack the anti-AFSPA campaign.

     

    The development also should bring back the old debate of whether leaders make situations or the situations make leaders. The Sharmila case should again highlight the need to find the right balance between two. Leaders with vision give any movement the right focus and charisma, but it is also equally true that it is the peculiarities of a given situation which throws up a leader. For instance it is unlikely Gandhi could have happened in the 18th Century or Abraham Lincoln in the 20th Century.

     

    This notwithstanding, it would be wrong to also dismiss human agency in shaping event and indeed history. If everything were to be predetermined by circumstance and leaders too were forged only by the impersonal forces of history, as Isaiah Berlin noted in “Crooked Timber of Humanity” a difficult ethical situation would arise whereby it would become impossible to hold anybody accountable for history’s many atrocities. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and all the other mass murderers of history would then appear to be no more than quasi-tragic figures, compelled by historical circumstances to do what they did.

     

    In this context, Pol Pot who killed two million of his countrymen in the span of a decade of his rule, believed whatever he did was for the good of his country even on his deathbed as became evident in what was to be his last interview by Far Eastern Economic Review. It would thus be prudent for the human rights movement in the state to assess the situation arising out of Sharmila’s changed emotional constitution from this light.

     

    Pradip Phanjoubam is Editor, Imphal Free Press.

  • Ranjona Banerji tracks the big news of the day including the Economic Times play on the word ‘mystery’.

    How about a little ethics from owners & managers?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The big news for Friday’s newspapers and Thursday evening’s television will undoubtedly be the assault on Union minister Sharad Pawar in Delhi and whatever happens to Sachin Tendulkar in the match against the West Indies in Mumbai.

     

    But the big news for Thursday was the announcement on Wednesday evening that Cyrus Mistry was to take over from Ratan Tata as chairman of the Tata group in December 2012. Although Mistry – son of Shapoor Pallonji of the giant construction company and a significant shareholder in Tata Sons – was on the shortlist, most of the talk had been of Ratan’s half-brother Noel, who runs Trent.

     

    So plenty of scope for journalistic speculation, projection and detailing from Mistry’s choice of music to his preferred holiday destinations most of which has been fulfilled in the newspapers. The Economic Times also wins the award for Desperate Need for A Pun with the headline ‘Mystery Ends, Mistry Begins’.

     

    Since Ratan Tata will only retire when he turns 75 in December 2012, there is enough time for our largely adulatory business media to tell us everything we never wanted to know about Mistry (or, if you prefer, No-more-a-mystery). Puns, as you can see, are endemic, chronic and largely incurable in journalism.

     

    **

     

    But the biggest issue for the media is more media-related. The edit page of The Times of India carries a long and extremely well-argued lead article by N Ravi of the Hindu group called ‘Censors at the Gates’. The ludicrously large fine on Times Now for defamation has been dissected and dismissed, the dangers of allowing government regulation of the media has been delineated and the Press Council of India and its new chairman Markandey Katju summarily castigated.

    Ravi says, “What is causing consternation among the media now is that to the expected chorus of complaints from parties in power facing media exposure of corruption have now been added the voices of the Vice-President of India Hamid Ansari and former Supreme Court judge and newly appointed chairman of the Press Council of India Markandey Katju. Self-regulation of the broadcast media has failed and there was a need for a state-sponsored body to regulate the media, both asserted at an event held ironically to mark the National Press Day…

    “The debate on the media has somehow got tangled with the discussion on putting in place an ombudsman to tackle corruption among ministers and high public officials though they are two entirely different sets of issues.”

    Ravi points out that much as the media dishes it out, should be able to take it. But he makes a distinction between being subject to the laws of the land and being subjected to unfair legal conditions or restrictions of any kind by the government.

    So far so good. No media person can argue with Ravi. The difference however between being a journalist and owner of a media house emerges at the end of the article when Ravi discusses government trying to stifle the media through its wage board. Regardless of how good a newspaper The Hindu is, let us not forget that the standards of journalism are upheld by journalists and no by owners. Most of the degradation in the media today — paid news, private treaties and other forms of institutionalised corruption – are invented and carried out by owners and managers. The wage board ensures that newspaper owners pay their journalists and other workers. It is hard to understand the moaning and carping of newspaper owners that paying wage board rates will force newspapers to close down. The Times of India, for instance, several years ago switched to the contract system for journalists when the birth of broadcast news created a shortage of journalists and an escalation of salaries. A few that stuck to the permanent employee-wage board system got paid comparative pittances. Some in fact, at the tail end of their careers, found they were earning about the same as trainees.

    It is also well-known that many language papers pay their reporters almost nothing and expect them to make a living through helping the owners through various channels of institutionalised blackmail. When I was with The Times of India in Ahmedabad in the early 2000s and Divya Bhaskar was launched, the other Gujarati papers were horrified that Bhaskar paid English-newspaper rates rather than the usual Rs 1000 a month for reporters.

    The upshot is that wage board recommendations are minimal and most large English and some language papers pay well above them. The recommendations are tailored to the size of the newspaper – they are not uniform across all of them. I do not know of any industry where employees have to be willing to work happily for peanuts while the owners rake it in. Not surprisingly, the journalists are quite happy with the wage board because it means at least they get paid something. Journalists would be even happier if owners and managers did not dictate news to suit their advertisers, gave up Medianet and stopped the practice of paid news.

    So how about a little more media ethics from owners and managers?

     

     

    eom

  • That a journalist like Jigna Vora was arrested in the J Dey murder case brings us to a very sad pass, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Crime & Journalism

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The arrest of journalist Jigna Vora in the J Dey murder case is quite horrifying, anyway you look at it. That a journalist can be accused of instigating the underworld to kill another brings us to a very sad pass. While rumours of Vora’s involvement have been doing the rounds for a couple of months, the actual arrest itself is a shocker.

     

    It is pointless to speculate on guilt and innocence just yet and the media, which often takes arrests at face value initially and only asks questions later, has been very carefully following presumption of innocence route here. (If only it would do it at all times!)

     

    One thing is clear though: editors need to be more aware of what their crime reporters are up to and how far they push them to get a story. In 25 years in journalism and most of them in Mumbai, I cannot remember any crime story which invoked more than salacious reader interest. The best result might be the two very good movies made by director Ram Gopal Verma – Satya and Company. The close relationship between some journalists and the underworld is hardly an industry secret. Oswald Pereira’s novel, ‘Beyond the Newsroom’ should be a must-read for all young and budding crime reporters.

    The other problem here is the relationship between the police and reporters who often get carried away and see an arrest as surety of guilt – quite the opposite of the attitude in Vora’s case. It is another matter than so many accused get acquitted by the courts by lack of evidence. The media stands guilty on two counts here – one, for romanticising the underworld and two, for taking the police at face value.

    Young reporters are not to blame so much as their mentors are. The romantic idea of this all-powerful underworld which runs Mumbai is just that and it is far from the reality in today’s world. The days when Vardarajan Mudaliar, Haji Mastan, Karim Lala and later the Naiks, Dawood Ibrahim and so on ran Mumbai are long gone. Prohibition was lifted decades ago, smuggling was no longer as lucrative after liberalisation and after the slum rehab schemes started, land-grabbing was taken over by the state and the police. And as drug usage is (thankfully?) not as high in India as it could have been, we are still a conduit rather than a market profitable enough for the powerful South American cartels to get directly involved in. The famous underworld was reduced to normal criminal activities. There is no Al Capone like figure any more.

    But younger journalists, fed on the myths, get taken in. As editors themselves are getting younger, they get excited too. A little dip into history may not be a bad idea.

    As for the Vora and Dey case, it is curious and sad.

     

    **

     

    The slap received by Sharad Pawar led the media into some needless self-excoriation. Was it given too much importance? Did it blank out other important news? Should the media have followed the Katju directive and immediately focused on poverty and development issues instead? Blah blah blah.

    The fact is, the slap was news. And that is the job of the media: to give you the news. Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves for being misunderstood, let us accept that we are the carriers of misery, sensation, death, depression and all the other strange, horrible and wonderful things that human beings do to each other and the world around us.

    Why get so defensive about it?

     

    **

    Talking of being defensive, Press Council chairman Markandey Katju’s piece trying to explain himself in today’s Times of India is quite amusing.

     

    eom

  • Earlier, nothing you wrote could find its way into print without passing through several filters. Much of this still exists but there is an obvious slackening of rigour, says Kalpana Sharma.

    Newswatch: Kalpana Sharma on the falling standards in newspapers

    By Kalpana Sharma

     

    When the new chair of the Press Council of India, Justice Markandey Katju held forth on the competence, or rather incompetence and lack of learning of journalists, we were outraged. How dare a person from outside the media cast aspersions on our competence? Has he any idea how difficult it is to produce readable newspapers and magazines and watchable TV shows?

     

    Yet what was considered inexcusable only a few decades ago now passes without anyone being hauled over the coals. By this I mean the bloomers one can find almost every day, particularly in print. On TV we now know that there probably are as many mistakes as in print. It took the former chair of the Press Council, Justice PB Sawant to catch one such “inadvertent” mistake and to ensure that it was never forgotten. But in print, the errors jump out at you every day – wrong photographs, captions, erroneous headlines, inaccurate data. Are all these inadvertent or do they reflect a lowering of standards in the media – where the rush to print has introduced carelessness that can sometimes prove costly?

     

    Earlier, nothing you wrote could find its way into print without passing through several filters, including people who were clued in on the law. Headline writers generally read the whole story before giving a headline. Even these would be checked before the page was passed. Much of this still exists but there is an obvious slackening of rigour. If there is a ‘post-mortem’ the next morning, and many media organisations have dispensed with this altogether, heads probably don’t roll if there is a mistake unless it provokes a legal notice.

     

    Take just one day in the life of newspapers in Mumbai. On November 28, three newspapers that I read carried stories on the efforts of two NGOs to have a car-free day in South Mumbai. The divergence in the numbers quoted in the reports tells its own story.

     

    On page 5, The Times of India had the following headline: “8,000 ditch vehicles to celebrate car-free SoBo”. (For the uninformed, SoBo is the fashionable name for south Mumbai.) But while the headline was unambiguous about 8,000 people participating, the first paragraph of the report read:

     

    “An initiative to reclaim south Mumbai for pedestrians and cyclists got off to a great start on Sunday morning, with around 800 Mumbaikars ditching their vehicles to participate in a walkathon and a bike-a-thon.”

     

    So who is right? The headline writer or the reporter?

     

    If you thought reading another paper might yield more accurate information, you would be mistaken. Hindustan Times, on the same day, had a six column headline on page 5 stating, “SoBo’s Car Free Day fails to gather steam” and below that: “Poor response: Only 150 people turn up for event, participants complain of poor arrangements.”

     

    How did HT spot only 150 people when TOI counted 800? Or 8,000?

     

    In frustration, I then turned to Express Newsline of Indian Express. It echoed HT’s headline: “Lukewarm turnout, but walkers and cycling enthusiasts have free run”. But unlike the 150 number of HT, Express quoted an organiser claiming that 150 cyclists and 200 pedestrians had participated. So that adds up to 350. So in the end were there 8,000, 800, 350 or 150?

     

    For those outside the media, this might sound like nitpicking. What does it matter? In any case, people only read one newspaper – that is if they read anything except the entertainment supplement.

     

    Yet, the fact that a simple report like this could show such variance actually points to a very basic problem in journalism today. The golden rule about statistics and numbers is: if in doubt, leave out. The structure of newspapers is supposed to provide the checks so that inaccuracies are caught. Journalists are supposed to be trained to be especially careful with numbers. And to double- check everything, even the most trivial detail. When something so basic begins to break down, then you are laying the ground for the kind of mistakes that bring in lawsuits.

     

    So even if Justice Katju’s remarks were sweeping generalisations, I would suggest that they were not entirely off the mark.

     

    Kalpana Sharma is an independent journalist and columnist.

  • Gouri Dange on how the Dilliwallahs far outshine the Mumbaiwallahs in talkshow lung power

    Gouri Dange:The Tower of Babel-Babble

    By Gouri Dange

     

    It’s not my mandate to talk about the news channels (that is ably done elsewhere on the MxMIndia site), but I couldn’t help snorting my coffee, at the alacrity with which one of the channels tried to cleverly throw in a new coinage, when The Slap incident happened.

     

    Speaking urgently into the camera (you can see the glee on their faces – after all, they’ve got some easily spreading news, lurid angles, lots of scope to whip up opinion polls and to repeat the incident frame-to-frame, this-and-that angle through the day), one newsperson (oh please, let me just use newswoman) used the word ‘Slapgate’ to label the incident. I mean comeon, “Slapgate”? Grow up, and grow away from the pretend-American phrases, please. Even the Americans don’t us the something-gate label for scandals or shocker incidents anymore.

     

    Some freshly-minted words and phrases after such an incident, do catch on. For instance, it was the easiest thing to caption the whole Slapping Incident ‘Why this kolaveri, kolaveri, kolaveri di?’ (kolaveri, for those who aren’t caught up by this gone-viral-on-internet song, means ‘murderous rage’ in Tamil). From A list channels to chota-mota papers, anchors and sub-editors instantly thought of asking cheekily (albeit unoriginally, as it turned out): Why this kolaveri…

     

    But some slapped-together phrases simply don’t make the cut. Chiefly because they don’t roll off the tongue well, though the newswoman concerned did a valiant job of spitting out all the awkward consonants of the word ‘Slapgate’as effortlessly as possible as many times as possible. The Hindi channels lovingly tossed the word ‘thappad’ around all day and well into the night. I didn’t watch MTV, but surely it was a landmark day for them, when their original One-Tight-Slap had suddenly become an official form of protest. The word ‘Slapgate’ didn’t hold, however many times the lady tried to use it with her expert guests also because the incident was dying down in spite of best efforts by mostly the electronic media and the usual suspects in Mumbai to keep it alive. Even TV channels faithfully moving the incident to other geographical locations, with various grassroots heroes putting their foots into their mouths while being asked for their reactions, didn’t quite help to keep the fizz and the buzz going.

     

    Never mind the various body parts – faces, palms, feet, and mouths. I am so through with watching that other body part – the Talking Head – on TV. And on Indian television, the heads rarely do much talking; they are only ever shouting heads. Some of them in fact seem to be trained and threatened by their handlers (their party, or their social organization) to keep saying whatever they want to say as if speaking into a dictaphone machine. No amount of attempts at interruptions, even by anchor people known to have PhDs in the Art of Interruption, can dam the flow of some of these shouters. It comes from the sad fact that they know how it is on Indian television. That if they pause for breath, some other geezer/geyser will instantly begin spouting, so they must say their say, without any of the natural rules of dialogue or debate being used.

     

    And in this, I think the Dilliwallahs far outshine the Mumbaiwallahs. In sheer lung power and in the tenacity, to go on talking over anything else being said. The Mumbaiwallah expert-panelist tries, but makes the fatal mistake of stuttering or trying to take an eloquent pause after making a point, only to be completely drowned out by shouting voices, who are not responding to him, so much as upchucking the words that are left in their stomachs, before the anchor begins screaming for a chance again.

     

    The important thing seems to be to not stop talking. So remember, Mumbai people, if you’re on one of these programmes, ‘Jo darr gaya, samjho marr gaya’, is the rule on Indian TV debates. Learn better breath control, never stop to clear your throat, and don’t make the fatal mistake of pausing to bleat some rhetorical question to the audience like ‘Don’t you agree?’ You’ll just give away your time to more able shouters.

     

    When we were very little, we played this game that one kid recites Jack and Jill on top of her voice while the other hollers Mary had a Little Lamb. The effort was to make your opponent forget her track and begin to inadvertently recite yours. I find the ‘discussions’ on prime-time Indian TV much like that game. At the risk of being stamped phoren-lover, I would much rather watch something being discussed on western television even if I have no particular interest in the subject, than watch and listen to the Babel-babble, even on relevant subjects, on Indian TV.

     

    Gouri Dange is a Pune-based counsellor, novelist and columnist. Naming No Names appears every Wednesday

  • Ranjona Banerji rues about how and why journos are no longer united on the J Dey murder case

    J Dey murder case gets murkier

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    When journalist J Dey was murdered in the Mumbai suburb of Powai in broad daylight in July 2011, the entire journalistic community came together in shock and horror. The first impulse was to believe that Dey was killed in pursuit of a story or that is, he was killed because he was a journalist. There were rallies and marches and seminars and panel discussions. Some sections of the media called for a special law to deal with attacks on journalists. It was alleged that the police would try and cover up the crime. The chief minister of Maharashtra swore that the administration would work as fast as it could to find those responsible.

     

    But since then, the story has become murkier. Dey, a crime reporter who had written a book on the underworld, was not killed because of any imminent story that he was working on, that much was clear. That the gunmen who did the deed were part of an underworld gang – specifically that of Chhota Rajan — was also clear. But there were several unanswered questions here as well and rumours amongst the journalistic community started emerging, of all sorts and colours.

     

    The story has now moved into the realm of the bizarre with another journalist, Jigna Vora of the Asian Age, being picked up for being involved in Dey’s murder – she is accused of passing on some vital information to Chhota Rajan which led to the killing. Although allegations of Vora’s involvement have been the air for a few months, her arrest was a shocker. Once again, many journalists came out in her support and her employers stood with her. But that was the initial reaction. As more details of the case emerged, we now learn that her colleagues are not so supportive any more.

     

    The journalistic community, which was brought together by Dey’s murder, is no longer a united front. Dey’s death was not of dangers inherent in the pursuit of a story and crime reporting in Mumbai cannot be compared to covering a war zone. The implication of another journalist has soured the waters. Journalists pick up a lot of information and not all of it can be printed. But that doesn’t mean that the information is false: it is sometimes just not possible to corroborate it. Dey’s death and Vora’s arrest fall into that category. The result is that a sympathy wave will now have to make way for the twists, turns and turmoil of a regular crime story. The kid gloves may well come off as friends of the murdered man and the accused trade charges and is it not likely that we will find some very unsavoury happenings at the bottom of it all?

     

    The implications (and accusations by the police) here are of a strange case of professional rivalry – not in trying to get a better story but in currying favour with your sources or the subjects of your stories.

     

    In all the discussion about paid news and medianet, perhaps this kind of journalistic corruption also needs to be included.

    **
    This is an aside which is aimed at the PR industry because I am a little curious and would like to know the experiences of other journalists. To put my questions in perspective, my last job was with DNA, where I was senior editor and was on the edit page. I quit in March 2010. But I did continue to write edits, columns and a weekly food review as a free lancer on contract for about nine months after that. In January 2011, DNA shut down its edit page. Soon after my food reviews stopped and in May, all my dealings with DNA ended. I have since then not worked with any other newspaper. I consult with MxMindia and I do a weekly column with Mid-Day.

     

    One of the best parts of not working for an organisation is that PR people drop you like a hot potato (you can see why I will never become as powerful as Barkha Dutt or Vir Sanghvi). My contact with public relations was limited to a few emails about new restaurants, which soon petered out. But this wonderful peace has been shattered over the past week. I have been called to cover some medical event because I am “the health reporter for DNA”, to write about diamonds for Hindustan Times and to cover art events for Mid-Day. These are calls, not emails.

     

    I would really like to know how this works. Someone suddenly thought of me in one PR agency and a domino effect started? There are people with the same name and number as me who work in DNA, Hindustan Times and Mid-Day? I have inadvertently entered my name in some sort of PR roulette?
    If anyone can help me, I would be very grateful.

    eom

  • Ranjona Banerji analyses news on primetime TV, the morning papers, social networks, Twitter… everywhere!

    Of course journos suffer for their mistakes!

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    In case Press Council chairman Markandey Katju believes that journalists don’t suffer enough for their mistakes, he can perhaps get some satisfaction from the arrest of senior journalist Gurbir Singh in Mumbai on Tuesday night. Singh was arrested for ignoring a court summons in a “rasta roko” (street protest?) case which dates back 11 years. As a result, a non-bailable warrant was issued against him.

     

    Without commenting on this particular case, several journalists have cases like this against them and litigants sometimes file them all over India mainly as a form of harassment. The Indian legal system being what it is, the cases drag over years and when the journalist concerned will most likely have a changed a few jobs by then, the annoyance increases. The upshot for Shri Katju: The legal system has its own ways of torturing people.

     

    **

     

    I was quite unpleasantly surprised to see a half page feature in the Mumbai edition of The Times of India dedicated to the wonders of probiotics. I looked carefully to see if the page was sponsored but could find no such legend. There was a signed piece by a doctor about how probiotics were essential for a number of reasons and a corroborating article. There was not one single word about contraindications – and there is no substance on earth which does not have side effects. Since probiotics can be dangerous for diabetics – of which India has a substantial number – one would have expected a soupcon of caution from both the doctor and the newspaper.

     

    **

     

    Not surprisingly, FDI in retail has been the big subject in the news (even I succumbed, I admit, in my column for Mid-Day), but while newspapers gave us multiple opinions and pros and cons, one yearns for an intelligent discussion on television which does not descend into shouting, blaming and general hysterics.

     

    Contrast this to the discussions on the just-held elections in Egypt – surely an emotive subject – on Al Jazeera where guests had their say, disagreed or agreed and left un-bloodied.

     

    **

     

    One of Indian television’s most popular guests is Suhel Seth. He is known for his emphatic opinions on just about every subject and is as a result a love-him-or-hate-him chap. Seth has just written a sort of self-help book on how to get ahead in life. Those who both love and hate him must read a biting, caustic and very intelligent review of the book by Mihir Sharma for Caravan magazine.

     

    The Twitter world is full of the review, reactions to it and Seth’s own reactions. Highly entertaining.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a Mumbai-based journalist and former editor. She is Contributing Editor, MxMIndia

  • In Freaking News, Ranjona Banerji finds there's confusion everywhere… in the papers and the news channels

    Why need govts when u have anchors & editors?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    My cablewallah has decided that the only two English news channels I need to watch are Times Now and Headlines Today. I don’t know whether this is a political statement or an indication of what most people watch or general inefficiency. Of the two I (naturally?) chose Times Now. And I was treated to Arnab Goswami in full flow – he had to save the Indian nation on two counts, from China in the East and Pakistan in the West, so you can imagine the passion and intent. Remarkable, almost as good as watching Keeping up with the Kardashians and a darn sight better than Masterchef USA.

     

    The problem with China was of course that it had interfered in the running of a democratic secular nation (India) by warning the West Bengal governor and chief minister not to go anywhere near the Dalai Lama. This affront to Indian sovereignty was not to be countenanced and it is my overwhelming regret that there was no Chinese representative on the panel. Why do we need governments when we have TV news anchors and editors?

     

    (My personal view is that China forgot that there was no longer a tame CPM government in power in West Bengal!)

    Having blustered away at China – and some poor guest who had the misfortunate of having to explain China’s fears – we then turned our attention to Pakistan. Here, the role was of senior statesman, a negotiator if you will between Pakistan and the United States. The subject of course was the NATO attack which killed several Pakistani soldiers.

     

    It is a credit to our news industry that the larger picture of changing US-Pakistan relations was lost in lots of bombast and sharp positioning.

    In between all this, there was a short session between Rajiv Shukla of the Congress and Chandan Mitra of the BJP about FDI, Lokpal and whatever else is creating excitement in our political lives.

     

    Apparently, everyone is similarly confused because sometimes we like something and the next day we don’t and then again and so the circle of life goes on. Mitra was very emphatic that political parties have the right to change their minds, which is good to know.

     

    **

     

    The morning papers have been equally confusing as one day they tell us everyone is under the Lokpal and the next day they’re not and then everyone is for FDI, everyone is against FDI, partly for FDI, was for FDI once but now no more…

     

    The most interesting news then is that this so-called Bharat bandh by petty traders did not apparently amount to much.

    Team Anna meanwhile seems to be as confused as the rest of us and so has seemingly decided to call off its ritual hysterics for a while.

    Here’s to an equally confusing weekend!

  • In Freaking News, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on primetime news and the morning papers

    Raking up Ramanujan

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    How intriguing that several weeks after other newspapers have debated the removal of AK Ramanujan’s essay on India’s many Ramayanas from the Delhi University history course, that The Times of India should not only pick up on it but give it front page treatment. Nothing new has happened on the issue this week and the article reads more like an overview rather than a news story. Many years ago when Mumbai was Bombay and TOI had very little competition in the city, the newspaper’s arrogance seemingly declared that something was not news till TOI carried it, sometimes a week after it happened.

     

    However, it is good that the Times has given so much coverage to the subject, which so far has been largely restricted to edit pages. Ramanujan’s essay upset the Hindutva brigade which pressured the university to drop it. The BVP also apparently targeted the prime minister’s daughter Upinder Singh since she was on the committee which picked the essay. Ramanujan’s academic credentials are impeccable and the essay has been there for four years. The politics of the protesters and those who gave in to them seems to have won the day and this is one more death knell for free thought in India. Now how about a TV discussion on this, with all our usual suspects?

     

    **

     

    NDTV’s Politically Incorrect between Mani Shankar Aiyar and Swapan Dasgupta had an interesting discussion on FDI in retail. In keeping with the programme’s format, Aiyar and Dasgupta batted for opposing sides. That is, Aiyar (Congress) was against FDI while Dasgupta (BJP) was for it. In some sense, that matches the positions which one would expect these two parties to take. It also demonstrates how difficult it is to maintain strict ideological positions in today’s politics – 20th century divisions are now passé and we need new definitions perhaps.

     

    **

     

    Meanwhile on Times Now, it is evident that even the great champion of Anna Hazare, Arnab Goswami, is getting a little tired of this anti-corruption movement’s obstinacy. As the discussion on the Lopkal bill went round and round, the viewer knows this much: Although Team Anna’s desire for an anti-corruption bill is commendable, this constant desire to go on hunger strikes when anyone disagrees with them is getting tiresome.

     

    Medha Patkar, an old hand at such movements, was actually quite honest when she admitted that stridency and supposed stubbornness is a well thought out strategy to keep the issue alive.

     

    **

     

    If you can catch the BBC documentary Secret Pakistan, please don’t miss it.

  • In Freaking News, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on primetime news and the morning papers

    R.I.P, Dev Saab

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The death of Dev Anand, not unnaturally, took up most of Sunday’s news and a good proportion of Monday’s newspapers. To the more maudlin amongst us, it seems that 2011 has stolen many of our “icons” (The cynical might argue that death is inevitable). But when it comes to Dev Anand, no amount of mourning is enough and no encomium over the top. This is a loss of an amazing spirit and an irrepressible zest for life. In this ego-ridden world, Anand refused to rest on his past laurels and kept looking ahead to his new ventures. He did not seem fazed – or if he was he did not let them daunt him – by his many failures in the last 20 years. He just kept on. The Times of India most appropriately headlined their lead, ‘India’s Youngest Star Dies at 88’.

     

    From being one of the triumvirate who ruled Hindi cinema in the 1950s,60s and even the 70s and beyond, to a whimsical director who refused to be defeated either by age or opinion, Dev Anand carried the flag of both the golden age as well as the future.

     

    The fact is that Anand was criticised through the later part of his life – albeit affectionately – and he took it all in his stride. In death, then, we can only look back on a glorious life.

     

    **

     

    Most called Anand’s death ‘end of an era’, which indeed it does signify. The international media has picked it up as well and not just because Anand died in London. Bollywood and India’s reach is now well known. But Anand also made a name for himself a long time ago with Guide. Renowned novelist Pearl Buck adapted RK Narayan’s novel for the 1956 English version of the movie. The Hindustan Times, harking back to one of Dev Anand’s seminal films, headlined their second lead, ‘Indian cinema loses its ‘Guide’. Though one is not sure whether Anand would have been happy with being called a guide; perhaps he saw himself more as a trailblazer! (It is another matter that the making and final versions of Guide, gave Narayan close to a nervous breakdown!)

     

    **

     

    The newspapers have been full of tributes and over the next weeks we are bound to see more, from those who know him well, those who met him only once, the various people he introduced to cinema and his millions of fans.

     

    **

     

    Based on a conversation on Twitter and my own observation, it appears that reporters have so much to thank social media and micro-blogging for. The tedious task of calling people for reactions to some event has now been replaced by logging on to twitter and taking down comments. So much easier than conventional calls and with no chance of the person being “misquoted”?

     

    (Unless of course you quote Suhel Seth whose twitter account is apparently hacked into at regular intervals!)

  • In Freaking News, Ranjona Banerji finds there's confusion everywhere… in the papers and the news channels

    Mid-Day Delhi & Bengaluru closure a shame

     Ranjona Banerji

     

    The day started with the sad news that Mid-Day was closing down its Delhi and Bangalore editions with immediate effect. Undoubtedly the owners have their reasons but it is still a shame.

     

    Having worked with Mid-Day many years ago and also having been part of a publication which shut down years before that, I can feel the pain. Commiserations to all involved.

     

    **

     

    Part of Tuesday on television and twitter was about Kapil Sibal wanting websites like Google and Facebook to screen “offensive” content on the internet. Outrage broke out on all levels. So far, except for China, no government has had much success with patrolling or reining in the internet, so good luck to Sibal and the government. Initial reactions have been largely over the top with twitterers and TV commentators rushing to protect India’s democracy, Article 19 A and so on. Without irony (actually irony is conspicuous by its absence on Indian television), Times Now rushed to Varun Gandhi to get his opinion on free speech, he of course, is known for an infamous hate speech.

     

    **

     

    Kudos to Mumbai Mirror on its story that “fans” were paid Rs 300 each to cheer for Hollywood star Tom Cruise, who was on a Mission Impossible promo visit to India. Since almost nothing in the media appears to be real, when it comes to entertainment, why not pay for a few people to cheer? The whole celebrity-entertainment culture appears to be a carefully constructed falsehood – and the media is an integral part of this.

     

    Sadly for the PR genius who came up with this scheme, the death of cinema stalwart Dev Anand pushed Cruise off the main Indian news pages and segments. Also, isn’t Rs 300 a bit cheap for a star as big as Tom Cruise?

     

    **

     

    Congratulations to film star Aamir Khan and his director wife Kiran Rao on their new baby. Good for them that they told the world it was through an In Vitro Fertilisation-surrogate process, thus giving untold free publicity to the expensive IVF process and its doctors. But is this headline in Hindustan Times’ HT Café appropriate: “Baby Boy! Produced by Aamir Khan, Directed by Kiran Rao’?

     

    Cleverness gone too far, I think.

  • In Freaking News, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on primetime news and the morning papers

    Social media hits back at Sibal

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

     The might of social media came straight down on Union minister Kapil Sibal on Tuesday after he tried to control, contain and coerce the internet into submission. Not only did the websites he spoke to refuse to screen content before it goes online, internet users also spewed venom at him. Those who tried to defend the minister’s position also felt the wrath of the people – former minister Shashi Tharoor and cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle for instance.

     

    Sibal said that after “offensive” comments and pictures on the net were brought to his notice, he got in touch with some websites and asked them to screen such content before it goes online. He pointed out that the cultural sensitivities of India had to be protected.

     

    Does the minister have a point? The problem for him though is that the internet is notoriously (and gloriously) indifferent to regulation. Its users guard their freedom very effectively and the effort to control them would be time-consuming, expensive and largely futile.

     

    TV on Tuesday night was bristling with rage – though I should clarify that. Times Now and CNNIBN bristled, NDTV was bothered about surrogacy (more publicity for Aamir Khan) and after that, showed We The People Again.

     

    For the first time since I have seen Suhel Seth on television (I confess here that he and I went to the same school for some years in Calcutta, at the same time), he did a commendable job yesterday. As Chandan Mitra was extolling the virtues of a tolerant India and the importance of freedom of speech, at the same time likening the Congress Party to the devil, Seth reminded Mitra that December 6 was the anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, which does not say much for Indian tolerance. He also asked Mitra to reveal what he felt about freedom of speech and expression in the context of MF Husain and the controversy over the late artist’s depiction of Hindu deities. Mitra promptly changed his tune and was not quite so much in favour of freedom of expression. This is fact brought him closer to the song which Sibal is singing? Goswami, to his credit, pointed out to Mitra that he had changed his position. Anyway, Seth and Mitra got into spat and that ended what anyone else had to say.

     

    As a result, like all TV debates, there was more bombast that substance. It took today’s newspapers to tell us that the government is considering fines for offensive material and is formulating a code of conduct.

     

    Twitter and Facebook however continued their anger into Wednesday. India was likened to China (which is infamously terrified of freedom), the Emergency was harked back to, Sibal was compared to a Taliban cleric and the defining word – used in defiance of course – for Sibal was “idiot”.

     

    Not a nice day in the office for the minister!

     

    **

     

    The amount of publicity given to Aamir Khan’s baby via IVF and surrogacy has raised this cynic’s suspicions. Is there some sort of a publicity campaign going on for IVF clinics? Having done a number of stories on the procedure in my youth, I am surprised to see that the downside of IVF – high cost and low success rate to name two – is hardly being discussed.

     

    Surrogacy however has had some discussion on it.

     

    **

     

    V Gangadhar’s satirical piece on the edit page of The Hindustan Times is worth a read for a chuckle. He’s had a little gentle fun with the tributes to the late actor Dev Anand, which have been written by the unlikeliest of people.