What would you say when a media outlet exhorts readers to vote not based on the ability of the candidates in the fray, but on geographical location?
This isn't about politics, but about the Indian Idol finals. But don't shrug it off. Will you vote for someone in a game show just because he's from your city? Or your region? or religion? or caste? or would you rather go on ability? And what do you think of a newspaper which prefers to toss out ability in favour of more sectarian reasons?
Well, this is the Mid-Day--which both exhilirates with its embedded coverage and exasperates with its cheap tawdryness (remember the Kareena-Shahid tongue touch on the front page?) I think Bombay's got itself a classic tabloid--warts and all.
Update (March 21): I'm closing comments on this post. Not really interested in knowing more about silly fans of Amit and Abhijeet. Especially from those who confuse opinion with fact.
While reading this in today's TOI, I had a strong feeling of déjà vu. I was right. The Times cooly picks up stuff from Steven Lynch's Cricinfo column and all the attribution it will deign to give is "according to a website."
Why am I picking on the Times when it wasn't the only newspaper to pick up the story? Because all others credited cricinfo.com
Aside to Gaurav: this is the kind of behaviour which deserves a bashing.
Ok. This is a rant. I can be nice when I want to, but this time I want to vent some steam about last Sunday’s piece on blogging in the Indian Express.
The very first thing that hit me about Murali Menon is that he didn’t know anything whatsoever about blogs and worse he hadn’t even visited any. The lack of homework and the endless repetition of stereotypes irritated me. Come on, all you need to do is hit google. Search for blog, blogging, bloggers, top blogs, etc.
When requested for an interview I generally ask the reporter to email me a list of questions, and we can take it forward once he goes through my replies. This way if he’s going to quote me, he has the quotes exactly as I want them. The subtitle of the article claims Mr. Menon is an emailer, but I got no emails. He just called and asked if we could meet face to face. Well, what the hell, I met him for lunch. In hindsight I should have done what Rajesh Jain did.
Jain … prefers terse e-mail replies supplemented by appropriate links than one-on-one meetings
If we’d done some email, I could have answered 75% of what he asked – with links to blogs. And well I wouldn’t be misquoted. Two examples: I was asked why I blog instead of writing for a newspaper / magazine. My reply “I like being my own editor.” What came in the paper: [likes playing] ‘‘judgmental journalist without worrying about an editor’s scalpel’’. Wow! I like the phrase, but I definitely did not say it. And maybe the journalist at Express should be trying his hands at advertising, or fiction.
Menon also kept putting words in my mouth. One of his mantras was blogs as “alternative media.” I agree, but too much is made of it. But this is what he quoted me “Ultimately, and this is a romantic view, I want my blog and others like it to be a form of unbiased, alternative media.” Unbiased? Unbiased? My blog, as with every other medium of information, is biased. I did specifically talk about media biases as well. I have no idea where the unbiased popped in. It ruined my sarcasm – “romantic view” and all.
read more »
This is why I like the Mid-Day. They actually get their journalists to go out on the "field." Bravo!
The story itself is one of the reasons why I like Bombay. The city gives people a chance to make money and improve their lot. The piece also gives clues on who all come in the way. No prizes for guessing the main roadblocks to earning a living!
There is a very interesting exchange of views between Tavleen Singh and Teesta Setalvad in the Indian Express. Teesta and Javed Anand (her husband and co-editor of Communalism Combat) also list a sample of Communalism Combat cover stories and special reports since 1993 which go a long way in showing that they're not just anti Hindu fundamentalism, but anti "any" fundamentalism. A very good read. Especially for certain sceptics.
Update (December 5): Tavleen Singh has a rejoinder in today's Indian Express. And drips with heavy sarcasm. Are we seeing the journalistic equivalent of a bitch fight?
The Sena tiger was always spotty, but now he's going potty.
In an expletive-laden 800-word editorial in the Saamna mouthpiece yesterday, Thackeray used uniquely Marathi abuses like ‘Lavanda,’ ‘Akkarmashi’ and ‘Upatsumbha’ to describe Sardesai and attacked the nature and style of his journalism.
Mid-Day was a bit shy of translating the words. Lavanda sounds very close to "lauda" or cock. Akkarmashi approximates to "one with many fathers", basically a bastard and Upatsumbha is a person who gives useless advice. (The translations are courtesy the Marathi speaking staff in my office, bloggers and cartel members are free to correct me)
The best way to counter such trash is with a nice Sanskrit shlok -- "Vinash Kalein Vipreet Buddhi" -- when destruction is close, wisdom is lost. The Shiv Sena needs to look at why it's base of supporters is shrinking instead of concocting conspiracy theories and badmouthing journalists. The irony is that NDTV and Sardesai, in my opinion, are very even handed and if anything lean more toward the BJP / Sena than the Congress / Left.
Update (October 20): Sameer, the "Opti Mystic" has an interesting post analysing why the Shiv Sena is going downhill.
A sure sign of poor journalism is not following your own advice. Vinay Kamat & Harish Dugh present an argument in favour of Sachin retiring now. Regardless of the merit of their points, they spoil it all with this:
Why can't we just let him be. Or not be.
At least have the courage of your conviction guys. If that is what you are going to conclude with, then why write the article at all?
It would be great to have a non-partisan fact check website in India. I came across two via an article in the CS Monitor.
FactCheck.org is punchier and directs itself towards the statements and "facts" bandied about by politicians. In their own words:
We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.
Campaign Desk run by the Columbia Journalism Review also acts as a "media monitor" and runs a blog.
Our goal is to straighten and deepen campaign coverage almost as it is being written and produced. The Desk is politically nonpartisan; its only biases are toward accuracy, fairness, and thoroughness. Its focus is not on what politicians say and do, but on how the press is presenting (or not presenting) the political story to the public. It will monitor not just news reporting, but also political analysis and commentary, assessing the accuracy of the facts behind the argument and the fairness of the framing. It will be a resource not only for conscientious journalists, but also for all citizens who want the best possible version of a free press at a time when it matters most.
There are media trackers in India like the Hoot, but one focussed on political campaigns is missing.
Cricket madness has seized this country once again and Sony is back to televising the tournament with its regular band of clowns, freaks, and other assorted circus characters in "Extraaa Innings". (No sign of Venkatesh "Mumbling" Prasad so far, but nobody has silenced Kris "Switched Mouth with Arse" Srikanth yet.)
The tarot card reader Ma Prem Ritambhara is back as well. Ritambara, whose record of correct predictions is hardly more than that of regular chance, was today asked specifically about Sehwag's batting by taklu Charu Sharma. Consulting her magic deck of cards, she got one of a guy riding on his horse. And confidently she pronounced, "he's going to come charging on his horse. He'll do good." (paraphrased)
Sehwag threw his wicket away in a silly way by swinging his bat wildly at a ball that missed it by a mile and hit the stumps.
He scored a huge 17.
Watching journalists unravel their biases is an engrossing though time consuming activity. (and often others do it better). Here are two examples that caught my eye today.
Aniruddha Dutta exposes the anti-gay prejudices in the press coverage of the recent double murder in Delhi.
Davids Medienkritik has a nice satire on how the German media condones crimes against women by the Iranian government.
Apart from prejudice, the other connecting theme in both pieces is sex. More specifically, sex as "forbidden fruit," giving me a peek into how cultures look at out-of-the-ordinary sexual practices.
A letter in the Economist.
SIR –The Economist has offices in London, New York, Hong Kong, Chicago, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, Paris, San Francisco and Singapore—exceedingly expensive cities to employ journalists. There are doubtless thousands of English-speaking journalists in Delhi and Chennai who would bash away at keyboards for far less pay and expenses. I look forward to the offshoring of your position and a reduction in my subscription fee.
And what about all the excellent journalists in Bombay or Bangalore or Hyderabad or Calcutta or . . ?
But yes, I think it would be a great idea if it ends up with the Economist reducing its subscription fee -- one reason why I don't buy my copy is the high price.
The latest issue of Outlook magazine has a piece titled The Body Electronic that I found... strange.
It masquerades as an article about exposing the Indian sex sites on the Internet and how they're hawking women to willing customers. If I didn't know better, I'd call it an "advertorial" for the sites in question. The writer goes all out to provide every last bit of contact information for the people involved in this business.
Examples:
"Business is good.... Earlier, we had services all over India...but stock was proving to be a problem...we are looking for customers for a lifetime..." —Sameer, who claims to be an MBA with specialisation in marketing, on the Mumbai mobile number 098216-86191.
www.indiasexguide.com, true to its name, is more pan-Indian, giving contact details for most big cities.
In Mumbai, you can contact one Robert or Ashok, reachable at 09819437751, who will do the needful. The duo has offices in Churchgate and Andheri (W).
A registration at the indiatimes.com dating site in Kashyap's name (Is Outlook ready with my bail money?) led me to Arun, available at 098218-44021. "I can sure provide the service in Delhi. Just call me two hours in advance," he said. Based in Mumbai, he needs just an hour's notice there.
The author concludes with:
My intention is not to raise awareness about Sameer, Arun, Purnima, Robert, Ashok, or their websites. I wouldn't dream of doing that in a magazine that's read by my mother. My honest intention is to make cyberspace a little more worthy of our kids' eyeballs. So I spoke to the cbi about it, whose spokesperson expressed surprise and wanted the addresses of these websites.
Gee, by publishing it in a magazine read by thousands of people, he's certainly raised awareness. Just what we need - a journo on a moral crusade who writes articles like advertorials. If he wanted only the CBI to investigate, he could've given them the mobile numbers in question. What purpose did printing them in the magazine serve?
Go read the article and tell me if you too find it stinks.
I am amazed at the rich variety of perspectives for the same story. Read Rediff's view and compare it with what the New Scientist has to say.
Google News has more.
(I am taking this back. See here)
In response to my post on Rajeev Srinivasan's Innumeracy, one Mahesh writes
Three conclusions that I can draw from [yo]ur response to Rajeev's article: 1. You are a non-IITian(so am I..). Thats why you tend to pick on what his background is rather than the article first.2. I think he has a well-explained logic than what you do, in 3 lines. His logic seems to be reasoned out better and is more acceptable.
3. "Nehru Penalty" was an apt term and that was the basis of his article, and he explained it quite clearly.
The BBC is showing a three part series on capitalism in February. I missed the first part shown over last weekend, but will catch up with the other two. I'm not so sure about how they intend to tackle it, knowing the Beeb's biases well. I suppose they're going to be "even-handed" looking at the intro.
Capitalism has brought with it radical changes, both good and bad.What interests me is this part to be shown in the second episode this weekend.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests look at the developments of Keynes, Milton Friedman and Hayek and their relationship to the societies that they critiqued.Lots of Hayek in the news recently!
When I was in school, the pre-eminent news program was Prannoy Roy's The World This Week (TWTW). Friday nights were sacrosanct. Like all good things on Doordarshan, India's only TV channel then, it was shelved after a good run.
After the launch of his NDTV 24/7, Roy restarted TWTW last September. I watched it for a few weeks and then got bored. Seeing it again today, it suddenly struck me why TWTW bored me. I had seen every item a few days earlier on some blog. It was peddling stale stuff! Todays 30 minutes contained 3 stories and 1 "newsmaker."
# 1 -- Democratic Presidential primaries in the US -- specifically, the Iowa caucus. This is so beaten to death. Every political blog in the US had spewed forth on it. NDTV itself ran a major item during the 9 o'clock news on January 21st. I'm not making a list. Browse thru my blogroll. You'd find it mentioned in at least 10 blogs.
# 2 -- The French Scarf Scandal. Very deja vu. The Sikh connection was not new either. One more very-blogged story. Gautam Bastian has a take right here on AnarCapLib.
# 3 -- A "culture" story about Basement Bhangra in New York. Om Malik was already missing it last July. NDTV woke up months later.
The "newsmaker" was Churchill's 104 year old parrot with a flowery vocabulary. Sheesh. This was all over the web. Samizdata blogged on it on Monday. Check out Google News for 50+ news stories on Charlie.
In an age of 24/7 news channels, TWTW is outdated. When conceived, it was a refreshing change from government controlled news a.ka. "Rajiv-darshan." Its weekly roundup of news and events did open a window to my limited world. Today, news and views abound and not just on TV. The web and specifically the blogosphere adds a vitality that continually surprises me with its variety and freshness.
Time changes, Dr. Roy. Maybe an NDTV blog might help!
JK is 5 votes ahead of me in the blog mela and this is a disgrace to all you readers of Anarcaplib. If you haven't voted for me today, go right away and do so now. Remember that you can vote once a day. You can, and should, vote from both your office and from your house. Ask all your colleagues, friends and relations to vote for me everyday till the end of this month.
Remember that a vote for me is a vote for capitalism. I will spend the 10 dollars entirely on myself. On the other hand, a vote for JK is a vote for a Mallu. As we all know Mallus are closet communists. They are also secret admirers of Arundhati Roy. Whatever his public views on Arundhati Roy, the fact remains that he owns many copies of her book "The God of Small Things" and plans to buy another copy with the gift voucher. So if you vote for JK, you are indirectly funding the verbal terrorist's activities.
P S. Yazad, sorry for mentioning Arundhati Roy and her book on your blog, but the truth had to be told.
I've nominated my post The death of a Law to the blog mela being hosted by Shanti. This time you can vote for the best entry and Shanti will give the winner an Amazon gift voucher for 10 dollars. So please vote for me and make me rich beyond my wildest dreams!
Psst. Don't tell Yazad or he will demand a cut as rent for hosting my blogging on his site.
Tech Central Station has an Asia Pacific page with a lot of friends writing. Browse through. The pieces are succinct and a refreshing change from the muddled leftist Indian media blatherings (Prafool and his foolowers).
The tripe that is published these days is astonishing. Like this "story":
Indian, Pak actresses can save Earth from Mars omen
If some of the popular Indian and Pakistani actresses dress up with full make up and offer prayers as the planet Mars comes close to Earth on Wednesday, it would be a good omen for the subcontinent.The Nation quoted Professor Fazal Karim Khan, an astro-palmist, as saying that these actresses and other beautiful women should pray to ward off bad omens likely to arise out of this unique phenomenon, which is recurring after about 60,000 years.
I'm not going to waste time and spacing bothering to point out why this story is absurd. The readers of AnarCapLib (which itself sounds disturbingly like a new sun sign name) are intelligent enough for that.
The title of the post asks the question. Who's the bigger idiot - the nutjob who makes this "prediction", the nutjob who believes it, or the nutjob at the Trash of India who actually considers this newsworthy and publishes it in the tabloid newspaper?
PS: The photo in the middle of the ToI article is not the astrologer palmist astro-palmist in question, but an ad for TimesClassifieds.com, yet another site that continues the Times Internet group tradition of knowing absolutely nothing about interface design and usability.
While reading this article in Time, I clicked on the map provided. Quite informative it turned out to be. Look carefully where "Iraq" is.
Time does what Saddam wanted to do years ago -- invade Saudi Arabia and make it part of Iraq!
One of the great pleasures of Sunday is to laze in bed reading through a pile of newspapers. Of late, I've been more and more disappointed with the quality of news and readable articles in mainstream papers, the TOI of course is the main culprit. I went through 4 papers today, and here are the articles that intrigued me.
TOI has only one. Swami Aiyar draws some interesting parallels between India-Bangladesh in 1971 and the US-Iraq in 2003. His bottom line is chilling: Never expect "liberated people" to be grateful to powerful "liberators" who, using military might, are actually fulfilling private agendas.
Both the Mid-Day and the Asian Age write on censorship. The Age talks about Aakrosh, a documentary on the Gujarat riots being denied a censor certificate (shades of War and Peace again?) Mid-Day's Khalid Mohammed writes about the censors penchant for banning top quality western films just because it's members happen to live in the 18th century. Curtis Hanson's 8 Mile, Oscar winner this year is on the list. He notes the disturbing trend of films (Boogie Nights, Eyes Wide Shut) not even being submitted to the censors because the producers are wary of the censors prejudices. The question to ask is -- who decides what adults should see? [Neither article is on the net right now. As and when they come online, I'll post the URL]
The Age does some indulging in junk science. Fat drivers may be more prone to smash ups. The basis? A study done in New Zealand. The supposed link? Obesity causes disorders like sleep apnea which makes fat people more prone to sleeping on the wheel. The premise seems ok. But could we please follow the simple rules that guide epidemiology before making sweeping statements? Otherwise we have a blurred line between good research that leads to better health and junk science that causes needless scares.
Mid-Day continues with it's anti-Israel stance. Mahmoud Farooqui's Why I am outraged by this conflict is a hash. For the pro-Palestinian bleeding hearts, here are a few facts.
The Sunday Express was the most satisfying read by far. A well written piece on the custom of boys marrying older women in tribal Gujarat shows us an interesting vignette on the connection between land and fertility and the respect women get due to the skills and seniority they bring to the wedded union (they work for it!).
For all you anti-war wallahs, there's hope after the US victory. Paul Farhi writes on the benefits the film folk have garnered from the media spotlight voicing their (often crass) anti-war views. Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore, Janeane Garofalo, even the Dixie Chicks whose album Home hit No. 1 again last week. [Damn I can't find the URL of this one too!]
The Express also boasts of top drawer op-ed writers. They've got Soli Sorabjee to jump from the TOI, and his Soli-Loquies is as enchanting as ever. P. Chidambaram's piece on Inflation being the worst form of taxation is good ole Milton Friedman in Indian garb.
Tavleen Singh's Licence raj, with retro effect is a sharp reminder on how the large number of laws supposedly there to "help" the poor actually do the opposite, creating parasitical babus sucking our blood. Excerpt:
One of Nehruvian socialism’s most unfortunate legacies is that it created an India in which making money legitimately was considered ‘‘profiteering’’ while living off the fat of the land in some official capacity was considered ‘‘serving the nation’’.
The idea so captured the public mind that it went beyond politics into popular cinema, always an accurate gauge of middle class attitudes. Remember those Hindi movies with some villain or other playing the greedy, cruel sethji? Remember the hero, often Dharmendra or Manoj Kumar, as the impoverished, idealistic young government servant working selflessly for the poor and poverty-stricken Bharat Mata? How proud we were of our poverty, how we wallowed in it and how fooled we were by those who "served the nation".
ET rounds off my Sunday with a piece on blogging. Till next week then.
