There’s something decidedly execrable when a media company thinks it is well within its rights to use its might to silence another media company or media professional with a fire-and-brimstone legal threat.

Even more so, when a 175-year-old media giant like The Times of India group picks on a 22-year-old girl.

In April, lawyers representing Times Publishing House, a Times subsidiary, tried to scare Aparajita Lath (in picture), a student of the national institute of juridical sciences (NUJS), with civil and criminal action for writing a 669-word blog post in February 2013 capturing the Times group’s long-drawn trademark tussle with the Financial Times of London.

The Times lawyers probably expected a cowering apology.

What they got instead was a rocket from Shamnad Basheer, the founder of SpicyIP.com and a chaired professor of IP law at the NUJS, who also recommended an IQ test for the Times lawyer.

Usually, lawyers go all weak in the knees when taken on by a Goliath. But Basheer’s 5-page response to the Times‘ 7-page notice “most unapologetically” speaks truth to power with candour. It’s an object lesson to media companies which try to silence critics, and an even bigger lesson to law firms.

Here are 12 standout sentences from Basheer’s response:

1) “We strongly object to the vile language and the highly aggressive tone used in the notice. We can respond in kind, but we choose to be a bit more civil with you.”

2) “You choose to issue this highly malevolent letter, hoping to intimidate us into a meek apology. Unfortunately, while the meek may inherit the earth, they are bound to be shown no favour by corporate powerhouses such as your client.”

3) “So, let’s cut to the chase and explore your alleged grievances articulated rather flatulently in over seven pages of a highly intemperate legal notice.

4) “We could send you stacks of material originating from your client that cause the same [shock] effect on us, particularly the numerous page 3 images that continue to assault us on an almost daily basis.

5) “As any law student in a decent law school will inform you, in order to constitute the legal wrong of defamation, you need to prove that the statements made by us necessarily lowered the reputation of your client in the eyes of a “reasonable” public.

6) “We assumed that as a qualified lawyer, you are well aware of the distinction between an opinion and a fact…. If the law has changed in this regard, please to intimate us, so that we may notify our readers of this sea change, which has gone unnoticed, without so much as a whisper.

7) “… we are prepared to issue a clarification. However, we will do so only upon your sending us a more polite letter seeking this clarification. ‘Please” and “thank you” are words that have unfortunately become relics in this fast pace world of ours, and even more so with fast paced lawyers such as yourselves.

8) “We fail to understand how any reasonable reader would have arrived at such a fanciful conclusion. And those that do are in dire need of a serious IQ check. We believe there are several robust online tests floating around these days, should you wish to take one of them.

9) “Apparently you’ve not sent Mint a legal notice as yet. We can only guess that you’re averse to picking people your own size…. We’re guessing that you’ve shied away from sending a legal notice to Harish Salve, widely acknowledged as a leading legal luminary and heavyweight [quoted in the Mint article and the blogger's story].

10)  “We are particularly amused at your allegation that a 22-year-old law student caused “irreparable injury” and “loss of reputation” to a powerful media house by highlighting a highly technical trademark dispute of public importance and reflecting on the protracted nature of the litigation. Continue to amuse us, and we may begin to reciprocate.

11) “It is surprising how you’ve twisted simple sentences . We belong to the land of yoga, no doubt, but this is simply too much of a stretch. Clearly, neither your client nor Financial Times Limited are ‘hapless’ when both have been spending crores of rupees in fighting this protracted legal battle for more than 20-odd years!

12) “If you continue with this character assassination and threaten us any further, we will be constrained to initiate legal proceedings against you. This will needlessly fill the coffer of two sets of lawyers but perhaps that’s what you really want. In the sincere hope that your client is smarter than you, we remain, most unapologetically yours.”

For the record, advocate Ashish Verma signed the Times legal notice for the Delhi-based K. Datta & Associates.

Also for the record, a similar notice was served on Paranjoy Guha Thakurta for writing the Mint article, although Mint, which is owned by Hindustan Times, has been spared the agony.

Photograph: courtesy Spicy IP

Also read: Thrice-bitten, will FT find real love again?

Financial Times takes on The Times of India

Now The Times of India takes on Financial Times

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The Hindu threatens to sue The Indian Express

Bloomberg threatens to sue CNBC-TV18

Shekhar Gupta threatens to sue Vinod Mehta, et al

Editors’ Guild backs Times Now in libel case

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External reading: Was Times right to take on blogger?

The Times of India has turned 175; its rival in Hyderabad, Deccan Chronicle, has turned 75.

Despite the travails the publicly listed company is publicly going through, Andhra Pradesh’s No.1 English daily has kicked off its 75th anniversary celebrations through 75 artists who have joined hands to pay tribute to the spirit of Hyderabad with an exhibition at the Salar Jung museum.

And on the pages of the paper, the paper’s embattled owner T. Venkatram Reddy has a short note:

The Deccan Chronicle is as integral a part of Hyderabad as the Charminar. Deccan Chronicle was conceived by three friends — a journalist Theodre La Touche, an advocate, B. R Chari and Sarojini Naidu’s son, a homeopath, M.N. Jaisoorya. They sold the idea of an “everybody’s paper” to Mr Rajagopal who supplied papers to the Nizam’s government Press. Thus was born the Deccan Chronicle in 1938.

“From those patriotism-filled pre-independence days, Deccan Chronicle has retained its position as the leading newspaper and has only grown stronger as the ‘people’s paper’.

“The expansion and modernization of Deccan Chronicle began when my father, the late T. Chandrashekhar Reddy, acquired DC in 1977. As the city changed and evolved, so did its people. And along with them changed and grew the Chronicle.”

The paper’s editor, A.T. Jayanti, writes:

“As we complete 75 fantastic years, we look forward with excitement and energy. We are ready for the learning curve that the changing technology of the ‘now’ generation will demand of us. This is a familiar challenge.

“Each time a new medium of communication has been introduced, the pundits have predicted the end of newspapers. On each occasion, we have integrated the new with the old and converted it into a win-win situation for you, the reader, by providing the latest news, views and visuals, and for us by garnering increasing readership.

“We find that the explosion of news and views on every new platform — 24×7 live TV, Internet news sites, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and online comments — has only helped make newspapers more relevant. Readers depend on newspapers to make sense of all the cacophony, filter and present the fragmented picture in a sober and fuller manner.

“TV depends on the print medium to promote its programmes. Online achievements and apps benefit from newspaper coverage. We can say with quiet pride that when something goes viral, the readers learn of it through DC.”

Malvika Singh, the publisher of Seminar magazine, in The Telegraph, Calcutta:

“A pathetic scam that is plaguing the Indian Premier League has been making headlines for days, as though nothing else of any importance is happening in India. The media has been grossly irresponsible in this regard. This has not only made public discourse mediocre, but the truth has been systematically blotted out from news and reportage.

“How news is reported and presented is governed by higher powers and personal leanings. Half-baked news stories, a foggy truth and self-promotion come together, causing disaster.

“The electronic media — particularly the English language channels — report much like local city channels do in the United States of America, where even the slightest of things makes headlines. Ironically, the quality of news on the regional language channels and the state channels is better; it is far more cohesive and centred around real and dominating socio-economic and political issues.

“On TV channels, the same boring, predictable faces spout their personal views and positions with abandon, collect their performance fees, and go home. Outside broadcast vans have been known to arrive at private dinners to get a ‘bite’ from people who are guests at another person’s house, thereby rudely disrupting the get-together for the other people present there.

“There is something utterly ugly about this kind of uncultured, uncivilized and unabashed self-promotion. On the superficial social circuit in the capital, such television appearances titillate the performers more than the audience.”

Photograph: courtesy The Indian Express

Read the full article: Service by the people

Also read: ‘Indian TV is like a nautanki, a real soap opera’

In the Bangalore neighbourhood of Ulsoor, newspaper vendors slip pamphlets, flyers and other materials into the Sunday papers before heading off to doo-deliver them.

Photograph: M.S. Gopal/ Mumbai Paused

Also read: So, how many journos cracked CAT 2012?

Every picture tells a tale. Babu‘s tells a tome

When Chamundi betta relocates to amchi Mumbai

If our TV stations cannot even put out numbers of their viewership which have a faint whiff of credibility, can they real put out news and views that news consumers can trust and believe?

NewsX, the news channel which has already seen three sets of owners since its launch, is running crawlers on its screens and advertisements on websites, claiming that it was the “most watched English channel” on May 8, when the Karnataka election results came out.

By splicing and dicing TAM data, NewsX manages to show that Times Now was the least watched of the five major English news channel.

On the other hand, Times Now too is running print advertisements of its viewership on results day. Not surprisingly, this shows that Times Now was the most watched, with NewsX not even in the frame.

Also read: The most-watched TV news show at 9 pm is…

Lots of people watch Lok Sabha TV. Surprised?

Headlines Today claims it has overtaken Times Now

It is not often these days that news consumers have something good to say about newspapers.

And magazines.

And TV stations.

And blogs.

And websites.

Individual and institutional transgressions—paid news, private treaties, medianet, Radia tapes, shrieking anchors, sensationalism, jingoism, corruption, etc—have all contributed enormously to the cynicism of the media among the consuming classes.

How heartening therefore to hear Debasweta Banik.

At 22, one of youngest to pass the civil services examinations this year, the NOIDA girl tells the Wall Street Journal‘s India Realtime, that she didn’t reach out for textbooks or attend coaching classes. Instead, she dipped into newspapers to keep abreast with current affairs and frame her essays better.

Yes, newspapers.

WSJ reporter Preetika Rana writes:

“A typical day, Banik says, would begin by studying three out of seven English-language news dailies her father – an engineer at a Noida-based state-run firm – subscribes to. Her staples were The Indian Express, Hindustan Times and The Hindu, but she would also dip into others.

“‘I made cuttings out of articles – commentaries and news stories – which interested me,’ said Ms. Banik, who ranked 14^th in the exam. ‘These were my notes.’

“Opinion pieces written by political analyst Ramachandra Guha and economist Abhijit Banerjee helped her better frame long answers in the exam, she added….

“‘People underestimate the knowledge in newspapers,’ said Ms. Banik, who is from Noida. ‘I don’t know how I would have done this without them. They were my lifeline,’ she said.

Image: via Facebook

Link: courtesy Nikhil Kanekal

Read the full article: How I aced India’s toughest exam

Also read: Shekhar Gupta on Express and the Hindu

The Hindu: the most readable daily in the world?

What goes around comes around in the world of magazines*.

Six years ago, Time magazine hailed you, yes You, as the person of the year: “You control the information age. Welcome to your world.”

In circa 2013, it bemoans the “Me, Me, Me” generation addicted to phones, tabs and notebooks: “Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents.”

Just.

* Disclosures apply

Also read: Do Time magazine’s lists means anything at all?

Time, Sandesh and the six degrees of separation

Richard Stengel: Do weekly newsmagazines have a future?

Serving warm, uplifting news first thing in the morning is an integral part of The Times of India‘s sunny credo, a point which comes up over and over in presentations made its managers, and on the pages of the paper.

Today, the paper serves it up by the bucketful with the story of N. Shiva Kumar, a newspaper vendor in Bangalore—the son of an illiterate mother and a truck driver—who has cracked CAT 2012 and is headed to the Indian institute of management, Calcutta, as a student.

“Shiva Kumar found an opportunity to be a vendor and started his own agency when in Class 10. “I’d learnt the tricks of the trade by then. My vendor had some 50 extra copies to sell and I took them from him. That’s how I started,” he said. The 50 copies have now grown to 500.

“After school, I would take my cycle and identify new buildings and residents. I would approach them for business and ensured the papers reached before 6am. I had my own targets for a month,” he explained his marketing tactics. He still delivers the paper along with four of his delivery boys.”

The story is the second lead in the Bangalore edition of TOI; it is the bottom anchor in Bombay and Delhi.

Read the full story: Newspaper boy walks into IIM

Image: courtesy The Times of India

Also read: Another substandard post by unqualified journo

Yes, Kofi Annan is a dish, Teesta Setalvad is an actress

The newspaper world has found its own Kalawati.

On April 25, at a traffic light in Bhopal, Kaushal Shakya, an 11-year-old newspaper boy, had a life-changing experience when his potential buyer turned out to be Rahul Gandhi.

Writes Rasheed Kidwai in The Telegraph:

“Akhbar kyon bechte ho? (Why are you selling newspapers?) Do you go to school?” the Congress vice-president asked the boy holding out a newspaper.

Kaushal, who has been selling newspapers at traffic signals for two years now, said he went to a government school and wanted to be a doctor. He said he sold newspapers in his spare time to help out his family of five, including his parents and two sisters. “My father is a labourer and there are days he doesn’t work,” the boy said, asking the VVIP in jeans and kurta to buy the paper.

“Akhbar le leejye. Aap hi ki khabar hai (Please buy the newspaper, you are news),” he told Rahul.

“Those who were accompanying Rahul that day said he was moved. He took out his wallet and extracted a crisp 1,000-rupee note. A baffled Kaushal handed over the newspaper to Rahul without taking the note. “I don’t have change,” he said.

“Rahul handed over the note. “Please keep it,” he told the boy. “Become a doctor. Never let your dream die.”

One more incontrovertible piece of evidence of what television and the internet can’t do?

Image: courtesy Hindustan Times

Exactly seven months after The New Yorker carried a nine-page profile of Samir Jain, Vineet Jain and The Times of India by its acclaimed media critic Ken Auletta, the magazine has carried a response from TOI’s executive editor, Arindam Sen Gupta, in its May 5 issue, on medianet, private treaties and other subsidiary issues.

Image: courtesy The New Yorker

Also read: Samir Jain, Vineet Jain & TOI in New Yorker

The Times of India and the Commonwealth Games

How The Times of India pumped up Anna Hazare