MxMIndia

Tag: freaking news

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

    [MJR] The big wound in Indian newsgathering covered with Kareena Kapoor’s bandaid

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Even three years ago, my father couldn’t tell the difference between Kareena Kapoor and Shah Rukh Khan, if he even knew who they were. Now he can recognise every single Bollywood star and can even talk knowledgeably about their new films and their goings-on. He has not watched a film, I must clarify, in I-don’t-know-how-many years. But he is a news junkie. Therefore, when he told me on Saturday that the biggest TV news of the day was that Kareena Kapoor had a band-aid on her leg, I believe him.

     

    I think I also take back every criticism of Markandey Katju I ever made. I opened the e-paper of The Times of India this morning, to have a look at what was happening in the world. The front page of the main edition and the front page of Bombay Times opened next to each other. I have not read Bombay Times since Medianet began, so I did not look further. Why should I, when I already knew from opening the TOI website that Sajid Khan thinks that the Shah Rukh Khan-Farah Khan fight was meaningless and that Sachin Tendulkar had handed over the captaincy of the Mumbai Indians to Harbhajan Singh.

     

    Actually, it said ‘Bhajji” but by now we all know who that is. Should they have called Sachin “Tendlya” to keep the casual tone consistent? Maybe you’re not allowed to get casual with Sachin.

     

    I then went to Google to have a look at Hindustan Times. “Click for the latest Bollywood and cricket news” said the link. Ah well. I already know that, I thought. Kareena Kapoor has a band-aid on her leg and Sachin is no longer captain of the Mumbai Indians. Of course I was wrong. The most viewed story on the Hindustan Times website is “Akshay Kumar, John Abraham in a brawl”.

     

    I had foolishly thought that the Myanmar elections and Aung San Suu Kyi’s imminent victory was big news but couldn’t find it on the home page of these two worthy websites.

     

    So I went to the Times Now website and that is where normal service was resumed. Arnab Goswami, in save-India mode, looked at me sternly and I then knew all about Jaganmohan Reddy’s yatra as the CBI noose around him tightened, the fact that Team Anna was now taking on the BJP over Himachal Pradesh and the Lok Ayukta Bill, that the prime minister had refused to meet army chief VK Singh. I also saw Mynmar there.

     

    I hereby humbly take back all the nasty things I have ever said about Indian television. This I predict will last three days. Because I just remembered Kareena Kapoor and her band-aid.

     

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

    Freaking News: Making sense of the army revelations

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Not surprisingly, the extraordinary revelations coming out of the army have consumed most of our days and nights. Kudos must go to DNA for first carrying the letter, which the army chief sent to the prime minister, about our lack of defence preparedness. Of course amidst all the high-decibel hot air about “high treason” and calls for sacking, we have as usual wandered into all kinds of marginal territories and taken a little time to put matters in perspective.

     

    Arnab Goswami on Times Now felt great shock that former prime minister Deve Gowda’s son Kumaraswamy said that arms dealers had tried to approach his father through him. Twitter took this as a joke with someone pointing out that Deve Gowda probably never took up the offer because he was asleep at the time. The innocence of television – is it endearing, annoying or just so put on?

     

    On NDTV and CNN-IBN, there were sometimes back to back discussions on the same subject with different anchors and guests. No great purpose was served by any of these – people who once wore uniforms claimed that the uniform-wearers were all purer than the driven snow, defence analyst Ajai Shukla said everyone always knew that India was badly prepared except probably Parliamentarians. Tarun Vijay of the BJP took great exception to being called ignorant but was told that he didn’t know what he was talking about for all his troubles. Brajesh Mishra felt that this government had spent too much money on development and “giving money to villages” and other unimportant stuff like that instead of presumably spending it all on national security. Luckily there was very little Chandan Mitra in all this.

     

    It, therefore, took the newspapers to explain to us the inner workings of the Tatra-Vectra-BEML deal, the connection between Ural trucks and army chief VK Singh and the problems with defence procurement. To be fair to Mishra however, he also said that the armed forces wasted time testing equipment in the snow, desert, mountains, plains, wind, water and so on till everything had become obsolete. All former uniform-wearers blamed the bureaucracy for the same.

     

    At the end of it all, you had to read the papers to find out who was who and who was doing what to who. This is a familiar pattern now and perhaps TV continues to be the saving grace for newspapers which have to make sense of the sound and fury. We now need some comprehensive stories on what appears to be some sort of internecine warfare within the army. It would also be good to know where the other service chiefs stand on all this.

     

    * * *

     

    As a break from all this, was the BRICS summit which just concluded in Delhi. TV did focus on that as well but sometimes when the reporters babble on and on saying the same thing in 16 different ways to guarantee their 2 minutes of air time, your eyes just glaze over. The business channels, however, had more focused coverage, including interviews with industrialists and so on. BBC and CNN were also more interested in the summit than in our military mis-manoeuvres.

     

    * * *

     

    A quick look at Pakistani papers this morning showed that in spite of all the fears of our former generals with moustaches quivering with rage, the Indian army’s lack of preparedness has not consumed them.

     

    * * *

     

    The Hindu has written a very welcome editorial, if a little late, slamming spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar for his ridiculous comment that government schools are breeding Naxals. Does the media usually treat them too kindly?

     

    * * *

     

    The felicitation for Sachin Tendulkar by Mukesh Ambani provided the relief factor. TV, of course, pointed out that Bollywood attended in full force, leaving out the industrialists, politicians, artistes, literati and other movers and shakers in evidence. Where Bollywood ends, India ends I guess.

     

  • Danish super-chef Rene Redzepi got a four-page spread in the same issue that aapro Narendra Modi got two, notes Ranjona Banerji in the 95th edition of Freaking News

    Freaking News: Much ado about Time’s Modi cover?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Finally got my hands on the Time magazine featuring Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and all that springs to mind in Shakespeare. Much ado about nothing in fact. For all that Modi is on the cover, the text is a double spread. It appears to have been started when Modi was on his “Sadhbhavana mission” and contains some interaction between the writer, Jyoti Thottam, Time’s New Delhi correspondent, and him.

     

    What do we learn from it? That Modi is not remorseful about the 2002 riots, that he grew up as a pracharak, that industry in Gujarat is booming and that Muslims may not be better off in this state but they are certainly not worse off. Nothing that we did not already know. The hypothesis that Modi could be the next prime minister of India is tenuous at best – the article displays a very superficial interpretation of Indian politics and how it functions. The comparisons with Rahul Gandhi are specious and Modi did not campaign for the BJP in UP, we do not know how he would have affected the vote. The larger picture in which this profile is based is that the UPA is finished. Perhaps someone convinced Thottam that the BJP could win the next general election with Modi’s help?

     

    Why Time decided to run this story is what is interesting but since Time has done away with that little publisher’s note in the first few pages and no one seems to have asked them, we have no idea. Instead we have to wonder why Hindustan Times decided that the Time story was front-page worthy and why channels like NDTV thought the issue needed a debate.

     

    In any analysis, Time is will within its rights to do what it wants on its pages. Incidentally, Danish super-chef Rene Redzepi gets a four page spread in the same issue. Also, we are talking about the Asia edition of the newsmagazine, not the international or American editions. (Though according to comedian supreme Jon Stewart, the American edition of Time is most likely to have a cover story on whether pets like to wear matching clothes with their owners.) There is no significance to the timing – except that after the article appeared, the BJP lost a significant Lok Sabha by-election to the Congress in Gujarat.

    Enough said about nothing, I think.

     

    **

     

    The hysteria on TV over the allegations that two BJP MLAs were seen watching porn in the assembly by a senior journalist was vastly annoying and much less amusing than the jokes on twitter: “One Gujarat MLA to another: came cho?” (Thanks to Peter Griffin of Forbes).

     

    As usual TV lost the plot – the issue is about the appropriateness of watching porn in the legislature. Instead we went into screams and shouts about banning or legitimising pornography. Rahul Kanwal on Headlines Today though was quite sharp about stopping Shaina NC and Yatin Oza of the BJP making the debate about Narendra Modi!

     

    **

     

    Congratulations to CNN-IBN for being the most watched channel (it says) for the election results and the budget. They were certainly less annoying for most of the day on both days.

     

    **

     

    This bit is personal. When I complained a few months ago that Indian newspapers (particularly the Times of India) were not giving enough due to tennis star Roger Federer’s remarkable recovery after he won the yearender in London 2011, a young person commented (sounded young to me anyway) that Federer’s achievements were unremarkable or words to that effect. Now suddenly, according to the media, Indian and international, he’s the hottest thing on the tennis firmament and he’s everywhere.

     

    That’s vindication on two counts!!

     

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

    Freaking News: Tendulkar upstages the budget extravaganza

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Pranab Mukherjee owes a big debt to Sachin Tendulkar. By the time Saturday morning dawned, the newspapers it seemed were far more excited about the century of centuries than they were about fisccons, indirect taxation and how do you solve a problem like Mamata.

     

    The Times of India, Uttarakhand, had “Sachin, Thanks a Ton” as its lead headline and story. The budget was tucked below the fold. The Hindu went with convention and the budget, “Dr Pranab’s bitter medicine” but there was Sachin’s “century of centuries just below the fold. The Hindustan Times (Delhi) put Sachin as a banner on top of the budget – “God of All Things” and then said, “Reforms on Rewind”.

     

    The Times of India’s Mumbai edition put Sachin at the top and the bottom. There was the banner “Tondulkar goes where no one ever has or ever will”, then a graphicked-up finance minister with the headline, “Face it. Life’s got a lot more taxing” and then “Thanks a ton, Sachin” at the bottom. DNA, Mumbai went with “Budget bores, Sachin scores” which about put the matter in perspective.

     

    As far as headlines go, I would say Hindustan Times has won, DNA has come second, Times has tried too hard and Hindu not at all.

     

    Interestingly, Hindustan Times, Mumbai’s Sachin banner read “Man of the Century” which perhaps proves that HT thinks that either no one in Mumbai will get the Arundhati Roy reference in the “God of All Things” or that people in Mumbai can’t do maths (man of 100 centuries, surely?) or that the Mumbai edition just felt it had to be different from Delhi. Now that’s a legitimate desire, surely?

     

    Even The Economic Times could not ignore Sachin and tied the two together into one headline, “On Budget Day, Sachin scores”. The Vodafone tax case also got a cricket reference “Vodafone may have to face Pranab’s Doosra”.

     

    Thus the nation’s fascination with cricket and Tendulkar managed to upstage the annual extravaganza that newspapers go through every year.

     

    * * *

     

    In fact, Saturday must have been a news editor’s nightmare, trying to decide which story was bigger. After all, we’ve spent almost a year going on and on about Tendulkar’s 100th century and couldn’t give it second place even if it arrived on budget day.

     

    As for what the newspapers said about the budget, it was more of the same – some people liked it and some didn’t. More than likely: all will be forgotten as Mamata Banerjee plays out some new drama and Akhilesh Yadav loses some of his sheen. Pranab Mukherjee will probably have the last laugh.

     

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

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

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

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

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

    * * *

     

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

     

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

     

    * * *

     

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

     

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

    Freaking News: SP goes UP, Times Now went down

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

    **

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

    **

     

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

     

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

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

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

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

     

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

     

    * * *

     

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

     

    * * *

     

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

     

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

    Freaking News: How the media covered 10 years of Gujarat riots

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Interesting to see that Hindustan Times has gone for all out coverage of 10 years of the devastating riots in Gujarat, while The Times of India has played it down. This is particularly intriguing because at the time, TOI quite beat all other papers when it came to covering the Godhra train attack and the subsequent riots. Disclosure: I was deputy resident editor of the Ahmedabad edition of The Times of India at the time.

     

    Of course, it must also be pointed out that Hindustan Times does not have an edition in Gujarat, only a bureau and as Sujata Anandan, political editor for HT, then Mumbai bureau chief, pointed out in a related piece, she had to send people from Mumbai to cover the terrible events. It is possible however that the Delhi edition of TOI has not picked up the relevant stories, which is even odder because 10 years ago it was TOI Mumbai which shied away from riot-related stories and opinions. Apparently the resident editor at the time did not think it was relevant.

     

    On Tuesday, in the Hindustan Times, Harsh Mander, former IAS officer now social worker who works with Gujarat riot victims, hopes that there will be, well, hope soon. The day before Ashok Malik had asked whether it is time to forgive and forget. I wonder about that and our ability in India to behave as justice is an on and off system which we press when it suits us.

     

    Television, in particular CNN-IBN and NDTV, did focus on the riots and their aftermath: after all both their main faces Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt did cover the riots extensively, perhaps for the same channel at the time, my memory fails me here. As a print journalist however, the strident hysteria of TV reporters and anchors, especially at such critical times, can often be more of a hindrance than help and so it was 10 years ago in Gujarat. Provocative people may make for good television but sometimes it can lead to irresponsible journalism.

     

    * * *

     

    Having spent a few days in Delhi, or more correctly Gurgaon, it is fascinating to see how crime dominates the papers. Is this because crime dominates events here or because local journalists look out for it?

     

    * * *

     

    On TV land on Monday night, Arvind Kejriwal’s remarks about Parliament being full of robbers, rapists and murderers got some play (see what I mean about TV promoting people just to create good television?). Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN wanted to know whether everyone agreed with Kejriwal and the Election Commission’s intent to tweak existing laws to bar people accused of severe crimes for contesting elections, within a certain time limit.

     

    The normally rambunctious Chandam Mitra of the BJP, normally quick to have hysterics was abnormally quiet as he hummed and hawed and said a debate was necessary and suppose the accused was later proven to be innocent? (Incidentally, this problem of later being proved innocent never bothers the BJP where Muslims accused of terrorism as concerned!).  An activist pointed out that the proposal was seven years old and surely that was enough time to debate the matter.

     

    Prashant Bhushan, who defended Kejriwal, said a few innocent people suffering was a small price to pay to keep criminals out.

     

    The Times of India, in its second editorial, slammed Kejriwal and Team Anna for swinging their “bludgeon in all directions while assuming partisan and authoritarian overtones”, which can only lead to the movement floundering.

     

    * * *

     

    On NDTV, Congress leader Renuka Chowdhury got into a made-for-TV fight with an anti-nuclear activist. This was more interesting than the issue itself – foreign-funded NGOs – which got nowhere.

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

    Making fun of Page 3 culture

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Have to say, I just love the new Hindu ads. Making fun of your competition is not just unexpected from India’s most sober newspaper but it is also rare in India. Are these ads a direct response to The Times of India’s Chennai campaign, where the ads alleged that the Hindu put people to sleep? Perhaps not, since the Hindu campaign seems all-India and directly accuses the Times of dumbing its readers down. There is nothing implied in the Hindu ad – we can clearly see that all the idiots being quizzed on their knowledge (or lack of it) claim to read The Times of India, bleeped out though the name may be.

     

    The print ads include one which says “we also have pages 1,2, 4, 6” and so on, a clear dig at The Times’s introduction of society and celebrity news on Page 3 of the Bombay Times many years ago. “Page 3” culture is now part of our lexicon and indeed Madhur Bhandarkar even made a film about it, almost as scathing as the Hindu’s ads. The funny thing is that we always have had a society-celebrity media, what Bombay Times did was to both magnify and expand it. The even funnier thing is that almost every other publication in the country was quick to copy the TOI. Even the Hindu, which may not have a celebrity circus page, was increased its light feature content.

     

    It’s also curious that DNA ran a very similar campaign to the Hindu’s recently – interviewing young people who knew nothing about anything except Bollywood and then it turns out that they only read DNA After Hrs! In DNA’s case, there was apparent pride in ignorance; Hindu mocks it.

     

    In these times, when the media itself has become the news, the Hindu ads – done by Ogilvy – are bound to get attention and approval. There are many who believe that trivialisation of the media is dangerous and that there is cynical marketing manipulation of our apparent obsession with Bollywood. The Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju is probably nodding away happily, especially when he sees line like “Because government malfunctions matter more than wardrobe malfunctions” – another of the Hindu’s print ads.

     

    For my money however far worse than the trivialisation of newspapers is the fact that all celebrity news and gossip is actually fake – paid for by the stars, studios, sponsors and so on. The readers are fooled into believing that what they are reading is the result of some digging up by journalists – as it used to be in the old days, even film news. The truth of course is that it is handed to newspapers by public relations companies or by the marketing department to the editorial staff.

     

    Bad enough that we are trivial, we are also, it seems, foolish and exploited!

     

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

    Time for media to not get jingoistic

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    After all the tears and threats, Salman Rushdie appeared on NDTV and said whatever he wanted – including praising his controversial Satanic Verses – in an interview with Barkha Dutt. So that’s a lot more potential viewers than at a literary festival – so much for fears of riots and violence.

     

    It is amusing to see that “liberals” are now a legitimate attackable category of people in India. Religious and social fundamentalists on television have a field day since liberals uphold the Constitution and other wishy-washy stuff like that. In print, several Muslims, prominent and otherwise, have said that this whole “ban Rushdie” idea is unacceptable – The Times of India has a report – but these presumably “liberal” Muslims do not usually find their way on to TV. The reasons are clear – they may not provide enough provocative drama.

     

    While Rushdie was calling Deobandi’s “dreadful people” on NDTV, Rahul Singh wondered on Times Now whether many Sikhs in the UK were not former Khalistanis! Everyone now in the mood to call spades shovels? TV has got needlessly exercised about this whole Jay Leno-Golden Temple fracas; today’s newspapers tell us that Sikhs in the US are not bothered by it. We also learn that Vylavar Ravi, Union minister for Indian overseas affairs, had not even seen the Leno show and did not know exactly what offence had been committed.

     

    The media needs to stand up and take a call about not getting all jingoistic about perceived insults. I have to side with Markandey Katju here – surely we have other things to worry about?

     

    **

     

    Republic Day tomorrow and I fear it is my cynicism, long years and grey hair which makes me feel like newspapers are really paying lip service and doing nothing new. The last week told us that our children are educated, our babies and young mothers are dying and we have no sanitation or hygiene systems to speak of. But we have to periodically be told what a great and wonderful country India is. The marketers and the believers in “good news” will get upset otherwise. O dear, I sound like Katju again.

     

    **

     

    The upcoming assembly elections are taking up newspaper space but not TV time. The reasons for this are obvious – TV in India thrives on sensationalism, so unless Mayawati sends another aeroplane to Mumbai to buy shoes, we will have to read not hear what she’s up to.

     

    **

     

    Mid-Day turned into a broadsheet for the day, for marketing reasons, but it actually looked quite nice.

     

    **

     

    India’s run in Australia has clearly upset our media so much that cricket is now restricted to the sports shows and pages. This is some change from the usual. Having said that, some very good daily cricket analysis from Ayaz Memon in Mail Today – he doesn’t hold his punches but given his experience, doesn’t fall into our current
    mood of patriotic funk! Insightful and scathing both.

     

    While on sports, it’s good to see tennis and the Australian Open sharing news space with everything else. (Go Federer!)

    Ranji matches have also been getting a fair run in newspapers.

     

    **

     

    And, Happy Republic Day!

     

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

    What the government can’t, Goswami can!

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Last night on Times Now, Arnab Goswami took on the case of an Indian couple in Norway whose children have been taken away from them by the Norwegian authorities. What the government of India could not do, perhaps Goswami will. Child welfare is a concept that Indians know little about (any journalist who has visited orphanages in India or tried to meet any official in the concerned government departments will know what I mean). Therefore, the outrage is all to do with Indians being made to suffer rather than the legality of the case. Indians, as we know, cannot be criticised, attacked, ridiculed, or made fun of. We absolutely will not tolerate it. Look at the anger over a reference to Amritsar’s Golden Temple on American comedian and TV host Jay Leno’s Tonight Show if you want further proof.

     

    Meanwhile, it is amusing to watch Goswami use the BJP’s Mahesh Jethmalani for target practice. If I was Jethmalani, I would ignore calls from Times Now for a bit. It’s not easy to defend the BJP and its Sangh Parivar friends when the debate is about freedom of expression.

     

    TV anchor Barkha Dutt’s American-type accent as she interviewed US talk show empress Oprah Winfrey was also amusing. Where did that come from? Can Winfrey not understand if there’s not a couple of rolled rrrs in every sentence?

     

    **

     

    The Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad has made two arrests in the July 13, 2011 bomb blasts in Mumbai. However, given the police track record in such cases, TV and newspapers both displayed a little scepticism here. The two arrested are already in custody for some other cases and the masterminds are still elusive. Everyone has pointed that out. In which case we must ask ourselves if we really want to see giant photographs (Hindustan Times) of police officials with photos of the accused in their hands? Needless glorification of public servants who are just doing their jobs? Return of favours by grateful reporters?

     

    **

     

    It is a measure of how much Anna Hazare and his friends have faded from the public eye that their letters to political parties did not get the full treatment from the media. They asked many questions to which no party has bothered to provide any answers.

     

    **

     

    The Salman Rushdie controversy continues to intrigue and annoy. It seems to have taken precedence over whether the army chief was born in 1950 or 1951.