Censored

India, Media 4 Responses »
Oct 282007

Project Censored has a list of the top 25 censored stories of 2007. This is obviously in the USA. And here censorship does not necessarily mean reports or reportage that the Government bans in a ham handed manner. Oh, those will get reported no.  It is rather, a compbination of multiple stake holders who ensure that certain reports and reportage in Public Interest that a) don’t get printed, b) if they do get printed they are tucked away between tender advertising & stock market reports., c), Are allowed to die with the ‘system’ closing ranks….

I would be very interested to read about the top 25 stories that were killed or ignored inIndia. My own list :

a) Floods in Bihar & Orissa – 1200 dead , and God only knows how many made homeless. The media – atleast the English Language Media ignored it. They possibly thought that it put the middle classes off their breakfast.

b) Where is the investigation into the 2000 crores of monies that Pravin Mahajan claimed that Pramod Mahajan had made & not shared. Why is everyone quiet about that.

c) Where is the Main Stream journalism that looks at the environmental consequences of the Sethu Samudram Project.

d) What is happening on the [tag]Parliament Bombing Case[/tag] and why has everyone gone quiet on it.

e) What is the link between the setting up of retail food giants and the increase in the price of onions ?

f) Political Party Funding in India - wouldn’t you be interested in reading this in the run up to the elections?

g) In Mumbai, with outsourcing of essential maintenance services to private vendors, employees are being moved into a contract labour status with no rights and lower pay…… News on the hidden costs of privatisation. and, this is news because your tax money and mine has gone towards building of these services. And now they are being handed over on a platter to someone…..

h) Discrimination against Dalits – we all know it happens, so why the coyness in addressing the issue. or is the MSM afraid of pissing off an audience that doesn’t want to acknowledge caste or worse, beleives that discrimination is their right.

They have obviously compensated by paying attention to other areas:

  • The forest fire in Californa – after all California is closer to Mumbai than Patna
  • Abhi Ash – Our own version of inane royalty
  • Branjalena – Our focus on visiting royalty
  • Shilpa Shetty – discrimination becomes news when a nubile nymphet from India gets called a ‘Paki ‘ by some uneducated bimbette.
  • Bobby Jindal & Sunita Williams – why is this obsession with foreigners ?
  • The P Note — it is obviously very important —- what does it do, and why does it get so much weightage.

Do add to the list…


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Posted by gargi at 4:52 pm Tagged with: , , , ,

Corruption, the Media, and Opinion.

India, Media, Print 1 Response »
Oct 222007

The NYT has an excellent op-ed on corruption. Specifically, corruption in the context of the Iraq war. Called Suicide is Not Painless (a kind of hat tip to MASH whose theme music was "Suicide is Painless"). It starts with the suicide of a civil servant who could have been indicted for corruption… and then it articulates the level of corruption in Iraq

Set against the epic corruption that has defined the war in Iraq, Mr. Riechers’s tragic tale is but a passing anecdote, his infraction at most a misdemeanor. The $26,788 he received for two months in a non-job doesn’t rise even to a rounding error in the Iraq-Afghanistan money pit. So far some $6 billion worth of contracts are being investigated for waste and fraud, however slowly, by the Pentagon and the Justice Department. That doesn’t include the unaccounted-for piles of cash, some $9 billion in Iraqi funds, that vanished during L. Paul Bremer’s short but disastrous reign in the Green Zone. Yet Mr. Riechers, not the first suicide connected to the war’s corruption scandals, is a window into the culture of the whole debacle. Through his story you can see how America has routinely betrayed the very values of democratic governance that it hoped to export to Iraq. Look deeper and you can see how the wholesale corruption of government contracting sabotaged the crucial mission that might have enabled us to secure the country: the rebuilding of the Iraqi infrastructure, from electricity to hospitals.

Read the entire opinion piece and mourn the absence of this level of incisiveness, articulation and analysis in the Indian News Media – being the largest is not going to be enough… occasionally, just occasionally you also need to be the best.

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Posted by gargi at 3:20 pm Tagged with: , , , ,

The Ax Effect

India, Media, Politics, TV 6 Responses »
Aug 242006

So we can watch U & U/A, but not A, on our Television sets. Hurrah!!! The Ax(e) has fallen on the next quarters revenue targets for movie channels across the board. While everyone is mourning the loss of "Freedom of Expression" let me try and cry for the "freedom to do business". Imagine restricting the right of a business to earn money doing a legitimate buisness – providing legitimate entertainment to a TG that legitimatally demands it. I have grave reservations with the idea of the state as my parent or the parent of my (hypothetical) children. The state is not a nanny. And, the state being petitioned to act as one, takes away from the responsibility of being a parent. If parents took out the time to? instill ‘good’ values in their children, if schools & organised religion did the same -then we really wouldn’t be in a position where we ask the state to intervene. I had earlier blogged about the tyranny of the individual in a democratic state being worse than the tyranny of the state — i stand by that. A bunch of people who are unable to teach the next generation the differnce between right and wrong, expects the government to do the same. To ensure that they are absolved of the responsibility of ‘good parenting’ – and i use the word parenting in a very broad sense – we all get our freedoms restricted. This is not about freedom of expression, it is about freedom. All freedoms. And, special interest and minority groups (nor necessarily religious but across the board) that can scream, shout and threaten to do damage — are restricting not just our freedom to express but all our basic freedoms. Amit Varma pointed out yesterday that we need something like the American Constitution’s first ammendment to guarantee our freedom of expression. To be very honest for me it is not so much a difference between the spirit of the 1st ammendment and the Fundamental Rights accorded to us in the constitution, as much as a difference between the ACLU and the PUCL.The role of a body like ACLU in ensuring that the 1st ammendment went beyond words on paper and became something that challenged restrictions on freedom is phenomenal. What we need in India – beyond a strong Broadcasting Industry Body – is a civil liberties organisation with teeth – — and citizens who are apalled at the violation of their Fundamental Rights coming out to challenge the tyranny of a minority.

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Posted by gargi at 9:16 am Tagged with: , , ,

Blank Out

India, Media, TV 19 Responses »
Aug 222006

Last night millions of homes in Mumbai had their first conversation in ages. The reason, television channels were blanked out by cable operators. The reason, Cable operators were protesting against police raids following a High Court Order in December to restrain

cable operators and service providers from showing any film with an Adult’s only (A) certificate on television.

Before we all cry out freedom of expression being gagged or the Goverment/System/Judiciary/Police are out to curtail our freedoms – including the freedom to do business, let’s look at what the high court ruling was about. It was really about a political science teacher from an elite Mumbai college deciding TV channels are showing obscene content, and filing a PIL to prevent them from doing so. The matter was compounded by a tech illiterate judiciary – which instead of instructing TV companies to create time bands & watersheds and put out clear ratings warings and take responsibility for the content that they put out – instructed the Police to penalise cable operators, who are mere carriers of the signals. As i had blogged last year on this, the ruling is bizzare because :

They have placed the onus on what we get on our Television screens, not on the broadcaster but on the cable operator who brings the feed to our homes. It is incomprehensible because the cable operator has no control over the content of the channel. There is one way that the cable operator can be absolutely sure that he is complying with the ruling – and that is by dropping the channel. This in itself has implications on revenue and profitability for the channels concerned. If the channels go ahead and stop buying films with adult certification – then it is going to impact the film production company. Afterall, in today’s day and change cable and satellite rights form a key part of revenues. Also the ruling does not apply to DTH. Nor does it apply to the friendly neighbourhood DVD/VCD wallah!

If this had been a Government ruling, we would have all been screaming blue murder – but, when this is a judicial ruling based on an appeal from a member of the public – what do we do? Whom do we hold accountable for loss in revenue, entertainment and information? The Police – they were doing their job as directed by the High Court. The High Court – they were responding to a member of the public -who obviously had built a good case. The petitioner -she has the right to appeal to the court. The channels – they show what is popular, the Cabel operators – they supply what we want. SoWho? The tyranny of a ‘well meaning individual’ is far worse than tyranny of the state. (as with all fast posts, the crucial phrase left out here is the last – in a democratic society)

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Posted by gargi at 11:54 am Tagged with: , , ,
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