‘Network 18′s multimedia Modi feast, a promo’

As news channels bend backwards to give flight to Narendra Modi‘s prime ministerial ambitions, the Indian Express‘ television critic, Pratik Kanjilal, writes on the Mukesh Ambani-controlled Network 18‘s unquestioning schmoozefest with the Gujarat chief minister:

“Modi also addressed a business forum in Kolkata, but the big one was the multimedia love-feast organised by Network 18.

“TV, blow by blow Web updates, social media, the works, with Modi hosted by Sanjay Pugalia, one of the first television journalists, and the discussion led by media entrepreneur Raghav Bahl.

“With no trace of journalistic scepticism, this was a promo. The guest was so much at ease that he asked after Sagarika Ghose and Rajdeep Sardesai. It’s sobering to recall that Sardesai had done excellent street-to-street reporting on the Gujarat violence of 2002.”

Read the full column: Twitter alert

Also read: ‘For cash-stuck TV, Modi fetches TRPs’

‘For cash-stuck TV, Modi is cost-effective TRP’

Shailaja Bajpai in the Indian Express:

“If it’s Saturday, it must be Narendra Modi. If it’s Sunday, it must be Modi. If it’s Monday, it must be Modi and even if it’s Tuesday, it must be Modi. You get the general drift?

“Every day is Modi-day on television news. One morning, they telecast his speech live from Ahmedabad, then it’s Delhi, followed by Kolkata. Boy, does the chief minister of Gujarat get around. Looks like he’s on a Bharat darshan and TV news is on Modi darshan.

“The media is, quite literally, the medium for his message….

“It suits the media to promote Modi, and not only because he’s the front-runner in BJP’s prime ministerial race. At a time when advertising is becoming a serious concern for many news channels and TRAI is trying to restrict advertising to 12-minutes per hour on TV, they need to keep costs down.

“And like every other malaise that afflicts the country, Modi seems to offer a cure: he’s charismatic but contentious and therefore generates conflict and strong reactions — ideal for TV. He offers high viewership at low cost for cash-strapped TV news.”

Read the full article: Much ado about Modi

 

Plug for Modi gets ‘Organiser’ editor RSS boot?

Radhika Ramaseshan reports in The Telegraph, Calcutta, on the editorial movements in the mouthpieces of the sangh parivar:

“Ostensibly unconnected to Narendra Modi‘s [re-election and elevation to the BJP parliamentary board] was the recent exit of the editors of the Sangh’s Hindi and English weeklies, Panchjanya and Organiser, Baldev Sharma and R. Balashankar.

“When contacted, Balashankar refused to comment on his departure. But sources said a senior RSS pracharak was “unhappy” with the Modi splashes in the two weeklies. For instance, the BJP was muted about Modi’s December election win but the RSS publications had celebrated it.

“We do not exercise editorial control. More often than not we don’t know what’s going into the publications,” Sangh publicity chief Manmohan Vaidya said. But sources said Vaidya, whose run-ins with Modi had cost him the job of a Sangh state propagandist in Gujarat years ago, had an ‘axe to grind’.”

Read the full story: Sangh pinpricks at Modi

When nothing’s sacred, everything’s suspect

In the cynicism that now envelopes modern Indian journalism, even the Ramnath Goenka awards for excellence in journalism awarded by the Indian Express are not beyond ideologically motivated barbs.

This letter to the editor of The Pioneer was published by the right-wing daily on Wednesday, 28 July, and it leaves no room for doubt about the writer’s (or the paper’s) political persuasion.

Doubtful excellence

This refers to awards for excellence in journalism that have now become fashionable.

When the ethics of journalism have reached rock bottom, do such awards make any sense?

It seems that fabrication and sensationalism have become the motto of this new age ournalism. The reporting style of Jason Blair (sic) of The New York Times is a good case in point here. The media tends to sit in judgement and tries to wrongly mplicate a particular organisation or a person, especially in cases of communal violence.

Like in the Jhabua nun’s rape in 1998, Hindu organisations were initially blamed for the incident, which turned out to be false later.

Similarly, in the Sohrabuddin `fake’ encounter case and related events, a section of people is of the view that some information, as it suits the designs of the powers that be, is being withheld from the public. It is unfair that fake encounter cases that happened during the Congress regime are not being talked about at all.

Sunil Kumar, New Delhi

Also read: The K-word, the G-word, the P-word and the A-word

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