Several Indian newspapers which have tie-ups with the New York Times have re-run Heather Timmons‘ piece on people of Indian origin returning to the United States because they find it difficult to work in the motherland.
Surprise, surprise—or perhaps no surprise, no surprise—almost all of them have excised former Mint editor, currently Washington Post managing editor, Raju Narisetti’s damning quote on “the troubling nexus of business, politics and publishing“.
The “national” media in India—a loose moniker that alludes to Delhi-based newspapers, magazines and TV stations—are routinely accused of picking up stories from the regional language press and passing them off as “exclusives” when no one is watching.
Fingers are now being pointed at the northern editions of The Indian Express which on November 23 “broke” the contents of the Liberhan Commission report on the demolition of the Babri masjid.
The “leak” resulted in the report, 17 years in the making, being hurriedly tabled in Parliament, and the paper published a mandatory ad on its pages the following day crowing its scoop.
But a group of anonymous journalists say in an email say that the Liberhan report contents were actually revealed by The Tribune, Chandigarh, almost five months earlier in two page-one stories (here and here) on consecutive days by Naveen S. Garewal.
This is the text of a chainmail doing the rounds:
The Indian Express claims is now claiming that the story on Liberhan commission indicting Advani others has been first reported by the Express.
This is nothing but lies.
The Tribune, a 127-year-old newspaper published from Chandigarh, broke the story on July 1, 2009. The Express only copied (a major portion of that the story) and passed it off as its own.
NDTV please note.
Should so-called ethical journalists not give credit to Tribune, which broke the story?
Be true to your profession.
Newspaper facsimiles: courtesy The Tribune, The Indian Express
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has named advocate Ankur Chawla, son of Prabhu Chawla, editor of the leading English newsweekly India Today*, for allegedly acting as a conduit to pay a bribe to a quasi-judicial official for “a favourable verdict in a case concerning a media house”.
The Hindustan Times reports that junior Chawla represented one of the two feuding factions of the Hindi daily newspaper Amar Ujala, and had arranged for Rs 10 lakh to be delivered to the acting chairman of the company law board (CLB), R. Vasudevan, who has been arrested for taking the bribe.
The Times of India, quoting CBI sources, says Ankur Chawla had approached Manoj Banthia, a secretary with the Ujala management, with Rs 10 lakh to get the case settled in favour of the daily’s management. “Banthia kept Rs 3 lakh. Chawla’s name is also in the FIR.”
According to Press Trust of India, Banthia was nabbed while he was emerging from Vasudevan’s house in South Delhi after allegedly paying the bribe. A further sum of Rs 55 lakh was also recovered from the residence of the 58-year-old officer.
The Economic Times quotes a CBI spokesman as saying it was “a double-trap”, in which the bribe-giver and the bribe-taker were arrested.
Atul Maheshwari, managing director of the Amar Ujala group, has clarified he had no connection with the case, but Chawla’s house in upscale Defence Colony was raided and a file relating to the case was recovered “establishing his links with the case“.
Indo Asian News Service reports that Chawla, who was reportedly out of India for two days, has professed ignorance about the bribery but has said he will co-operate with investigators.
However, Financial Chronicle reports that Ankur Chawla was among the three arrested along with Vasudevan and Banthia. But the official CBI press release makes no mention of a third arrest, much less the name or pedigree of Chawla.
The Hindu reports that CBI has registered a case against Vasudevan, Banthia and Ankur Chawla under 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and Section 7 (public servant taking bribe other than legal remuneration in respect of an official act), 8 (taking bribe, in order, by corrupt or illegal means, to influence public servant) and other sections of the prevention of corruption Act.
To its credit, Mail Today, the tabloid newspaper owned by the India Today group for which Prabhu Chawla writes a weekly Monday column, gave the most space to the story among all Delhi dailies without, however, revealing the link.
It quoted the CBI spokesman as saying “an advocate acted as the conduit for giving this bribe,” and that “raids at the advocate’s house revealed documents belonging to multiple offices of the media house.”
Guwahati: Veteran journalist Naresh Chandra Rajkhowa, who broke the news about the Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet through Tawang in March 1959 and his seeking asylum in India, passed away at his Chandmari residence here on Monday. He was 87. He is survived by his wife Aparajita, a son and three daughters.
Rajkhowa was also the first Indian journalist to have interviewed the Tibetan religious leader.
The Dalai Lama’s request letter for asylum had reached Rajkhowa by mistake in Shillong, where he was based as the correspondent of the The Assam Tribune, a local English daily published from Guwahati.
The messenger, who carried the Dalai Lama’s request letter written in English, reached Rajkhowa instead of a government official to whom the letter was addressed and who was residing near the journalist’s residence.
Rajkhowa used to recall how he first copied the whole letter before sealing it once again for handing it over to the messenger for delivery to the official and thus broke the story about the Dalai Lama’s flight in The Assam Tribune.
Born in Phukan Nagar in upper Assam’s Sivasagar district, Rajkhowa started his career as a sub-editor with The Assam Tribune in 1946. Later he joined the Shillong office of the English daily in 1951. In 1973, he shifted his base to New Delhi and worked in different national newspapers.
Rajkhowa was also a member of the Press Council of India.
MEDIA RELEASE: “Advertorial: Selling News or Products?“, a documentary film on the blurring of the line between editorial and advertising in Indian news media, will be telecast on Wednesday, November 25, at 10.30 pm on Doordarshan News.
The film, directed by journalist and academic Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (in picture), has been produced by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT).
India’s war on Maoists, described by prime minister Manmohan Singh as the “gravest internal threat” facing the country has begun to ensnare journalists too.
Laxman Choudhury, a stringer with the Oriya daily Sambad, picked up eight weeks ago because eight leaflets of Maoist “literature” addressed to him were found with a bus conductor, is still in jail.
The writer Rudyard Kipling was once on its rolls; the former British prime minister Winston Churchill served as its war correspondent.
Now, The Pioneer, New Delhi, has announced its best editor who wasn’t: Eric Arthur Blair
In a front-page story, the right-wing paper reports that the left-wing novelist and political thinker (born in Motihari, Bihar) received a letter from The Pioneer offering him a job as editor.
And on February 12, 1938, Blair wrote to the India Office in London:
“My object in going to India is, apart from the work on The Pioneer, to try and get a clearer idea of political and social conditions in India than I have at present. I shall no doubt write some book on the sub-continent and if I can arrange it, I shall probably contribute occasional articles (to English periodicals).
“ps: I should have said that I usually write under the name of ‘George Orwell‘.”
sans serif records the sad demise of Arun Veembur, a former journalist in Bangalore who went trekking to China “on a whim” to escape the humdrum of routine journalism.
According to a report in The Hindu, Arun, 28, suffered serious head injuries after a fall while hiking in the mountains of southwest China on Monday.
Arun, son of a DRDO scientist, who worked at Deccan Herald and Mid-Day, had to moved to Yunnan after hearing the story of the Stilwell Road built by the Allies during World War II to ship supplies from India to China, and was working on a book. The road runs from Assam through Myanmar to Yunnan.
The full text of the press release issued by the Foundation for Media Professionals (FMP) of the address made by Prabhash Joshi at a seminar held in New Delhi on Wednesday, October 28, 2009, on the blurring of the line between editorial and advertisements in the Indian media. Joshi, a former editor of the Hindi daily Jansatta, passed away last week, nine days after the address.
The Great Wall between India and China is not made of bricks and mortar; it is made of freedom and liberty. Any debate, any discussion, anywhere, on the superpowers-to-be is sealed, signed and delivered by the roaring presence of those essential ingredients in plentiful on our soil, and the utter lack of it in our great neighbour.
China notoriously detests dissent—and democracy.
It bars foreign media from freely moving inside its boundaries; Tibet is off-limits to them as is Tiananmen Square. BBC was famously taken off Rupert Murdoch’s Star Network at the behest of the comrades. Google and Yahoo effortlessly dance to the tunes of the Chinese dictators. Chinese citizens routinely can’t log into YouTube, Facebook and other media. And so on.
But has difference between “us” and “them” been erased by the Congress-led UPA government?
In barring foreign journalists from going to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh to report the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama’s week-long visit to the northeastern State which China off and on claims as its own, has the Manmohan Singh government thumbed its nose at India’s great democratic traditions?
Has India missed a trick in showing its inviolable sovereignty before a global audience? In behaving much like China would, has the Congress-led regime obliterated the difference between democracy and dictatorship? Or was the government right given the war-mongering that has recently been on display?
Guwahati: Veteran journalist Naresh Chandra Rajkhowa, who broke the news about the Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet through Tawang in March 1959 and his seeking asylum in India, passed away at his Chandmari residence here on Monday. He was 87. He is survived by his wife Aparajita, a son and three daughters.
MEDIA RELEASE: “Advertorial: Selling News or Products?“, a documentary film on the blurring of the line between editorial and advertising in Indian news media, will be telecast on Wednesday, November 25, at 10.30 pm on Doordarshan News.
sans serif records the sad demise of Arun Veembur, a former journalist in Bangalore who went trekking to China “on a whim” to escape the humdrum of routine journalism.
The full text of the press release issued by the 
