12 gems from a response to a TOI legal notice

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

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Editors’ Guild backs Times Now in libel case

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External reading: Was Times right to take on blogger?

How Sarojini Naidu’s son helped launch a paper

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.”

So, how many journalists cracked CAT 2012?

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

New Yorker carries TOI response, 7 months later

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

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POLL: The biggest news story of last 175 years?

The Times of India, formerly known as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, has kickstarted its 175th anniversary—its dodransbicentennial—celebrations.

Under the rubric “Leading change for 175 years”, R.K. Laxman‘s iconic dhoti-clad Man from Matunga under goes a partial makeover, with one half wearing jeans and goggles.

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On its website, ToI has launched a microsite and there is even a poll on the biggest news story of the last 175 years.

Editorial director Jaideep Bose aka JoJo has a signed piece in the paper, and there will be a full page of archival material in the paper each week for the next one year.

Writes JoJo:

“The fact that this paper has grown from a single edition of a few thousand copies to some 50 editions with a circulation of close to five million — the largest in the world for any English newspaper by a long margin — speaks of its ability to divine the ever-changing mood of this chaotic, contradictory and creative superpower-in-waiting, which lives in many centuries all at once.

“Which big brand in India (and how many globally) can claim to have been around 175 years ago and grown the way The Times of India has? We are often asked, how do you do it?

“The secret, we believe, lies in being contemporary and relevant — the “Old Lady of Boribunder” remains young at heart, nimble on her feet, and razor-sharp up there. Incredibly proud though we are of our heritage, we don’t sail solely on it, but work continually to leave behind a legacy even more iconic than the one we’ve inherited.”

Shekhar Gupta storms into India Today powerlist

Thirteen out of India Today magazine’s 2013 ranking of the 50 most powerful people in India have interests in the media, but only two of them (former Indian Express editor Arun Shourie, Times Now editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta) are pure-play journalists.

The chairman of the press council of India, Justice Markandey Katju, is a new entry at No. 50, just as Gupta is at No. 45, Hindustan Times bosswoman Shobhana Bhartia at No. 39 and Star India CEO Uday Shankar at No. 26.

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No. 1: Mukesh Ambani, chairman, Reliance Industries and “virtual owner” of TV18 (up from No. 3 in 2012)

No. 4: Kumaramangalam Birla, chairman Aditya Birla group, and 27.5% stake holder in Living Media (up from No. 5): “sings Hindi film songs, although only in close family circles”

No. 7: Samir Jain and Vineet Jain, The Times of India, down from No.6 last year

No. 26: Uday Shankar, CEO, Star India (new entry)

No. 28: Kalanidhi Maran, chairman and MD of Sun Group (up from 49 last year)

No. 31: Mahendra Mohan Gupta and Sanjay Gupta, chairman and CEO, Dainik Jagran (No. 31 last year)

No. 35: Subhash Chandra, chairman, Zee television and DNA (No. 35 last year)

No. 39: Shobhana Bhartia, chairman and editorial director, HT Media (new entry): Her home in Friends Colony (West) in Delhi was acquired from the erstwhile royal family of Jind.

No. 36: Raghav Bahl, MD, Network 18 (up from No. 44)

No. 38: Arun Shourie (new entry): His dictum: “We must learn to be satisfied with enough and enough is what we have at the moment.”

No. 41: Arnab Goswami (up from 46): “Plays loud music on his iPod before every show to unwind.”

No. 45: Shekhar Gupta (new entry)

No. 50: Justice Markandey Katju, chairman, press council of India (new entry): The Ph.D. in Sanskrit asked Lucknow lawyer S.K. Kalia who entred his court, ‘Ab tera kya hoga Kalia‘?

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Photograph: courtesy Indian Express

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Also read: 12 media barons worth 2,962, 530,000,000

10 media barons in India Today 2010 power list

26% of India’s most powerful are media barons

An A-list most A-listers don’t want to be a part of

Blogger breaks into Businessweek most powerful list

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The Indian Express power list

2012: N. Ram, Arnab Goswami crash out of power list

2011: Arnab Goswami edges out Barkha Dutt

2010: Arun Shourie more powerful than media pros

2009: 11 habits of highly successful media people

Will Indian readers pay to keep their money safe?

For all the talk about the future being digital, the truth is no Indian newspaper or magazine (or website) is making money at the speed and in the quantum that publishers and promoters feel they are entitled to.

Worse, no Indian newspaper or magazine (or website) has been able to generate the kind of content that readers won’t find elsewhere and will therefore pay to read.

Publishers are still groping around for a revenue model for charging online content. The Times of India is apparently inclined to but will only do so with Hindustan Times also on board.

Notwithstanding all this, Money Life, the personal finance magazine launched by the journalists Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu has gone full steam ahead.

A Rs 780 annual subscription gives copies of the print magazine, access to the website and web content, including the archives from 2006,  daily and weekly newsletters of news and views, and membership of the magazines initiatives. There is also a monthly pass for Rs 99.

External reading: Why Money Life went behind a paywall

It’s all happening at Doordarshan, All India Radio

So, who says government-owned radio and TV stations are boring places, where nothing happens?

Read the full article: DD Urdu in soup over pork recipe

AIR officials sacked for sexully harassing RJs

‘Karanjia, a thorough scoundrel on Shah’s payroll’

In the heyday of the Blitz, Russy Karanjia carried the reputation of a “bulldog of an editor” with aplomb.

In fact, a bulldog was the mascot of the advertisements for The Daily, the daily tabloid he launched to complement the weekend offering.

In a non-aligned, less-insular India of the 1960s and 1970s, the world’s leaders from Anwar Sadat (Egypt) to Nikita Krushchev (USSR) to Marshal Tito (Yugoslavia) gave Karanjia their time.

He met the Shah of Iran at regular intervals, those  interactions even resulting in a book, The Mind of a Monarch.

The rapport between an editor and an emperor led to comments from former Outlook* editor Vinod Mehta, a compatriot of Karanjia—and then a quick apology.

Now, secret cables from the American embassy in India, made available by Wikileaks, throw a question mark on the nature of the relationship between Karanjia and the Shah.

Below is the full text of a cable sent from New Delhi in July 1975, shortly after the proclamation of the Emergency, including press censorship, by the then Congress government of Indira Gandhi:

1. LEFTIST/RADICAL COMMIE-SUPPORTING BLITZ JULY 19 ISSUE FRONTPAGES EDITOR R.K. KARANJIA‘S INTERVIEW WITH SHAH IN WHICH KARANJIA SAYS SHAH “COMPREHENDS THE CAUSES, SOURCES AND LOGIC OF THE EMERGENCY PROCLAIMED IN INDIA AND SUPPORTS THE INDIRA GANDHI GOVERNMENT’S ACTION TO SAVE THE COUNTRY FROM BEING PARALYZED AND FRACTURED BY ANARCHY”.

KARANJIA SAYS SHAH “LIKENED THE INDIAN PRIME MINISTER’S ORDEALS IN DEALING WITH EXTREMISTS OF THE RIGHT AS WELL AS THE LEFT WITH HIS OWN EXPERIENCE DURING THE EARLIER TRAUMATIC YEARS OF HIS REIGN, WHEN ‘A DARK, UGLY AND STRANGE COMBINATION OF MULLAHS, LANDLORDS AND COMMUNISTS JOINED FOREIGN ELEMENTS IN A CONSPIRACY TO DISMEMBER AND DESTROY IRAN’.”

KARANJIA BLAMED “AMERICAN NEWS AGENCIES AND SYNDICATED TRASH” FOR THE ANTI-INDIA ARTICLES APPEARING IN IRANIAN PRESS.

2. WE HAVE BEEN PUZZLED FOR SOME TIME ABOUT THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SHAH AND KARUNJIA AND CANNOT HELP WONDERING WHETHER SOME ILL-ADVISED IRANIAN CONSUL GENERAL IN THE PAST URGED THE SHAH TO PUT KARANJIA ON THE ROYAL PAYROLL. (emphasis added)

(WE HAVE THOUGHT FOR SOME TIME THAT MANY OF THE STAFF OF THE IRANIAN CONSULATE GENERAL IN BOMBAY ARE SAVAK RATHER THAN FOREIGN OFFICE. IN ANY CASE, THEY HAVE, AS A GENERAL RULE, BEEN IMPRESSIVELY UNIMPRESSIVE.)

WHATEVER THE EXPLANATION, IT IS GENERALLY ASSUMED HERE THAT KARANJIA IS ON THE SHAH’S PAYROLL. SHAH’S INTEREST IN THE LARGE PARSEE AND IRANIAN COMMUNITIES IN THIS PART OF INDIA MIGHT, IN HIS MIND, SERVE AS RATIONALE FOR A FRIENDLY PAPER, EVEN IF IT IS BLITZ. (emphasis added)

3. EVEN ADMITTING THE SHAH’S DESIRE FOR A FRIENDLY PRESS HERE, WE WONDER IF HE KNOWS WHAT A THOROUGH-GOING SCOUNDREL KARANJIA IS. KARANJIA IS THE ANTITHESIS OF EVERYTHING THE SHAH HIMSELF STANDS FOR AND THE SHAH GIVES HIM UNDESERVED RESPECTABILITY BY RECEIVING HIM IN TEHRAN AND GIVING HIM EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN IS THAT THE SHAH DOES HIS OWN IMAGE NO GOOD BY ASSOCIATING WITH THE LIKES OF KARANJIA. (emphasis added)

 4. WE DO NOT MEAN TO IMPLY THAT THERE MAY NOT BE SKELETONS IN THE ROYAL CLOSET IN TEHRAN, BUT WE THINK THE SHAH’S CONTINUED CONNECTION WITH KARANJIA MIGHT AT ONE POINT PROVE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. THE ALLEGED CIA INVOLVEMENT IN MOSSADEGH’S OVERTHROW WOULD, AT FIRST GLANCE, SEEM TO MAKE ANY CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SHAH AND KARANJIA IMPOSSIBLE WHEN IT IS REMEMBERED THAT CIA IS ONE OF BLITZ’S MOST CONSISTENT TARGETS, PARTICULARLY NOW.

5. KARANJIA IS PRESENTLY EMBARKED ON A CAMPAIGN TO WHIP UP SUPPORT FOR MRS GANDHI, AND HIS STOP IN TEHRAN OBVIOUSLY PAID OFF. THE KARANJIA INTERVIEW WITH THE SHAH WAS PICKED UP BY UNI AND CARRIED IN THE JULY 18 TIMES OF INDIA UNDER THE HEADING “SHAH JUSTIFIES EMERGENCY STEPS BY INDIRA”. WE CAN’T HELP WONDERING IF THE SHAH REALIZED THIS WOULD HAPPEN AND IF HE KNOWS JUST WHAT HE’S BITTEN OFF IN KARANJIA.

* Disclosures apply

Photograph: courtesy Arab News

Also read: Why Ayub Syed took two empty suitcases to Libya

It isn’t easy to tell tales of even dead editors

Sudheendra Kulkarni: ‘A courageous, committed editor’

External reading: P. Sainath on Russy Karanjia

The journalist who suddenly forgot everything

In the fourth anniversary issue of Open, Forbes India managing editor Charles Assisi recounts  what every journalist dreads—losing the one thing that counts most in our profession:

“To cut a long story short, a little over two years ago, some neurons misfired in my head. I was in my office when this happened. I won’t gt into the sordid details and drama that accompanied the episode—except that my colleagues were witnesses to my falling down in a heap, frothing and convulsing. A couple of them bundled me into a car and drove like maniacs where I was admitted into the intensive care unit.

“A month after I was discharged, my family and friends were told a virus had invaded my immune system, permeated the blood-brain barrier, damaged some parts of my brain, and triggered a bout of viral encephalitis—a rare disorder with high mortality rates in some conditions.

“I was among those who survived.

“The only problem is, survivors have to deal with various kinds of complications, In my case, I had lost my memory. I had no idea who I was, where I was, and save a few people close to me, who everybody around was. For all practical purposes, I was dead, But I was breathing, most of my other faculties were still intact, and I hadn’t forgotten the language….

“Between my wife, brother, parents and a few close friends, they took turns to tell me who I was. But I’d get in a few minutes and get back to being a body of nuisance to pretty much everybody around by repeating the same sets of questions.

“No, how do I know all of this happened? Because my wife Anna began compiling a notebook that outlined I detail answers to my questions. My brother Kolya tried to explain what was happening in my head. And my cousin Niffy wrote me long notes of events, places and things from our younger days when were growing up.

“My colleageues at work—IG [ Forbes editor Indrajit Gupta], [director of photography] Dinesh [Krishnan], and special features editor Peter [Griffin]—pitched in by trying to help put in place the pieces of my day job as a journalist.”

Photograph: courtesy Charles Assisi

External reading: Charles Assisi on Ankit Fadia