Posts Tagged ‘News’

18
Apr

Front Page Retractions ….

   Posted by: gargi    in And Finally ..., India, Media, Print

…. are always fun (except for the newspaper concerned), but they take a life of their own when the newspaper masks the fact that it has been made an idiot, by taking the moral high ground….. 

What am I talking about…. well, it is about the famous Maliaka Arora and Arbaaz Khan break up reported in all its glory in the Mumbai Mirror yesterday.

One of the sultriest women in India is said to be single again. Arbaaz Khan and Malaika Arora's 10-year-old marriage has gone kaput. Buzz is Arbaaz has found a new love. The disintegration of one of the strongest marriages in Bollywood has sent shock waves through the industry.  ……Our well-placed source in the entertainment industry also tells us that Arbaaz will not remain single for long. He has already decided to remarry and even has a girl in mind, who is, incidentally, not from the entertainment industry. When contacted, Malaika refused to comment.

Arbaaz, however, said, "I don't want to comment on my personal life or on Malaika." When we asked him whether he's planning to remarry, he said, "Why is the press so impatient? They will know whether I'm remarrying or not in due time. I will probably talk about it soon. At this moment I don't want to say anything further

 However, this morning was the retraction masked in outrage… 'we have been made a fool…but how could they, we trusted them"

 Yesterday, on the front page of this newspaper we carried a story about Malaika Arora splitting up with her husband Arbaaz Khan. We were told by none other than Malaika herself that her husband was "remarrying".

There were many reasons why we thought the story deserved front-page treatment: Malaika Arora is a huge pin-up star and Arbaaz is a celebrity in his own right, and comes from one of film industry's most-respected families. In an environment where celebrity unions crumble faster than cookies the two, who have been married for 10 years and are parents of a five-year-old boy, offered a great example of a happy family unit in the face of relentless public scrutiny.

John Updike defined celebrity as a mask that eats into your face. Apparently it also chews up your integrity. It turns out that our story was false. Not for want of journalistic rigour on our part–the reporter did what any journalist sould do on receiving a tip-off– he called up both Malaika and Arbaaz for their versions. Both, through commission and omission, lied brazenly to the reporter

Why would anyone do something like that ? The answer is simple …

Both husband and wife had been contracted by a cosmetics company to launch a skin-care product, and the campaign, unveiled on Thursday night, revolved around Arbaaz playing Adonis to his wife's Aphrodite. They used the myth to renew their vows on stage, thus the sham of remarriage.

I am not sure whether the outrage is because the journalist got played for a fool (as did the paper) or whether it is because Medianet got left out of the deal……

If you are going to publish publicity as news, then expect those who want publicity to use your paper to their own end…. 

If you are going to lie down with the dogs, expect to catch a few fleas…. 

 I haven't had such a good laugh in years….:)

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2
Nov

Has the Economic Times Slashed its Research Budget ?

   Posted by: gargi    in India, Media, Print

In the Economic Times, Entertainment and Media Section, on 1st Novemer. there is a story that had me scratching my head….

Cosmo Films to invest Rs 225 cr for capacity expansion

NEW DELHI: Cosmo Films, leading bi-axially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) and thermal lamination film maker, today announced an investment of Rs 225 crore for its capacity expansions as it expects its revenue to touch Rs 1,500 crore limit in the next two years.

"We will invest upto Rs 225 crore over the next two years for adding four new lines in our existing three plants," Cosmo Films Ltd Chairman Ashok Jaipuria said.

In all my 13 years of media work, I had never heard of this kind of film. So I Googled it, and this is what BOPP films is:

Bopp Films

Bopp is a bi-axially oriented polypropylene film designed for flexible packaging and label applications. OPP, oriented polypropylene, is a flexible material derived from melting and orienting a polymer called polypropylene. This raw material, an oil by-product, is inert and unaffected by most chemical agents occurring in daily life. Biaxially oriented means that the polypropylene film is stretched in both the machine direction and across machine direction.

Features
The main feature of BOPP films are improved stiffness, high tensile strength, excellent optics and good water barrier properties. They range from 15 to 50 microns and are most commonly 15 to 30 microns. These films can be monolayer or coextuded structures, and transparent, opaque, or metallized. They also have the advantage of being non-toxic and fully recyclable.

BOPP films are printed out of new printing technology, Indigo Omnius. They provide excellent UV light protection, humidity, aroma and light barriers. They have superior strength at low gauges, flatness, clarity and excellent printability. They can be treated with acrylic and PVDC PVDC coatings for better sealability and barrier properties. The films use mainly homopolymer PP and random copolymer PP.

Applications: BOPP films and packaging
BOPP films are ideal for twist-wrap applications and in laminations for use on vertical and horizontal machines. They can also be used for decorative purposes. They are used in an a almost limitless array of flexible packaging applications, pressure sensitive tapes, labels, stationery, metallizing, consumer products and a wide variety of packaging uses.

They are widely used for gift and flower wrapping, paper lamination, textile packaging, release film for melamine plates and plate film packaging. Also used as the anti-counterfeit covering film on the packaging cases. Various packaging products like packaging pouches, packaging bags, electronic packaging, industrial packaging are produced by BOPP films. In fact aluminum foils and aluminum sheets have good combinations of BOPP films to produce efficient packaging materials.

 

And the we wonder why business journalism is so very pathetic in India… It has people of this level of ignorance, stupidity, illiteracy, inefficiency, working for them.

.Like me a whole bunch of people who read the ET media section may scratch their head - and wonder wtf BOPP film was - until google gives them the answer… maybe we should all send the editors at ET links to Google. since their research budget obviously been slashed

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