Filthy Lucre & Indian Media

The invitation, from 'Media Watch', a newly minted penniless outfit of people deeply concerned about the state of media in India, was for a talk on 'MEIDA MATTERS'. (Their spelling.)

The speaker: 
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, left-leaning media maven

A couple of hundred people turned up. Most of them from the host school of mass communications. It turned out to be a master class. In a melodramatic outpouring that lasted about an hour, Paranjoy shared with us some of the things that he said were bothering him and that we should be wary of.

Paranjoy's big concern is the increasing role of money

His erstwhile employer TV18, operator of the channels CNBC-TV18, CNN-IBN, Colours etc., is now controlled by the Mukesh Ambani Reliance group. That is somehow not good for TV18, for media at large and for the country.

The India Today group, operator of the channels Hedlines Today, Aaj Tak etc. is now to a large extent owned by the Aditya Birla group. That is somehow not good...

The ND TV group is independent but highly connected to the establishment - witness Barkha Dutt in the Radia tapes -  and that is somehow not good...

Paranjoy flew business-class to Bangalore

The Pioneer is sponsored by the Sangh Parivar and that is somehow not good...

The Hindustan times is owned by the Birlas and wired deep into the establishment - witness Vir Sanghvi on Radia tapes - and that is somehow not good...

The Times of India is independently owned, but it is also wired deep into the establishment. The fact that Arnab Goswami ceaselessly hounded Suresh Kalmadi and A. Raja, and yells and screams nightly at the hapless Manish Tiwari or the idiotic Digvijay Singh does not fit this hypothesis so we will not go into it. But whatever it is, it's somehow not good...

Paranjoy arrived in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes

The Dainik Jagaran, has succeeded financially beyond anyone's expectations and they are now shamelessly siphoning out money earned in media operations to other businesses and that is somehow not good...

The Deccan Chronicle on the other hand has failed miserably, both in media operations and dumb forays into other ventures, and will now have to be bailed out by injection of funds earned by other people in other businesses and that is somehow also not good...

The list goes on, shareholdings, directorships, matrimonial linkages etc. and finally,

Doordarshan is really the pits for it is a pathetic mouthpiece of the establishment, which controls the purse strings, and dictates content and stance. This can't possibly be good...

Paranjoy stayed at a five-star hotel

Hobbled miserably by success and by failure, and by money - internal, external, too much, too little - Indian media is down in the pits and headed deeper. Unfortunately, and with scarcely hidden glee, even Paranjoy does not have a solution.

Meanwhile, it is all very lucrative for Paranjoy, thank you. A media star, he rakes it in off media twice. First when he makes paid appearances on TV or writes for the press. Second when he makes paid criticism of his paymasters or goes on all-found junkets to do what he does best - talk. 

The problem is real and we do need checks and balances but solutions will probably be found by people who do not feed at the same trough.

The Kudankulam Saga

With frightening ease the establishment has managed to confine the Kudankulam discourse to a local problem that concerns only a few illiterate villagers who have some very personal and trivial concerns. Spiced up a bit by 'foreign' funded NGOs, out to divert us from our shot at greatness and superpowerdom.

Civil society at large, the 'professional' intelligentsia as also the scientific community have been lulled into acceptance of a totally fake assurance that safety is not an issue.

Over the last few years public pronouncements have been of the type where the prime minister says he has full faith in the nuclear scientists of the country. This is followed a few days later by some employee of the Department of Atomic Energy, which controls all activities nuclear, saying he has full faith in the prime minister.

Not to be outdone Abdul Kalam pipes up shortly thereafter to the effect that he has full faith in the prime minister and the nuclear scientists of India, and that he has satisfied himself that all available state-of-the-art safeguards have been built into our nuclear power plants.

Therein lies the rub. State-of-the-art isn't good enough.

As we lathi-charge and fire tear-gas at the Kudankulam villagers, another voice opened up yesterday. In a prime editorial-page piece in the Hindu titled "The Real Questions", one Rahul Siddharthan, employed by a DAE funded outfit, came out strongly against scaremongering and suggesting that 'an independent safety regulator" is needed to reassure misguided, ignorant and ill-informed people.

Siddharthan does not present any personal credentials to show that he knows whereof he speaks. He cites instead an eminent authority on the subject, one George Monbiot, a zoologist, author and journalist. Said George has converted recently from 'neutral' to 'pro-nuclear power' because, hold your breath, no one died as a consequence of the Fukushima disaster.

The fact that radiation fallout forced the evacuation of about 160,000 people surrounding the plant and left about 132 square kilometers as a no-go zone, some of it uninhabitable for decades does not merit mention.

As I finished reading this mischievous work designed to misinform and obfuscate, Sajal Lahiri, the noted International Trade economist and Japophile,  posted a BBC news report that the Japanese have decided to totally phase out nuclear power.

Do we know something they don't or is it vice versa? If we do, we should capitalise on that by selling that knowledge to Germany and Japan.

Snippet: The other expert Rahul Siddharthan cites is Randall Munroe, the creator of the web comic XKCD.

Previous: Nuclear Business Opportunity
First:  The Nuclear Mess

Todd Akin, Crossfire & Arnab

Seeing an effete Pierce Morgan struggling on CNN to moderate a two-woman debate on the Todd Akin instigated "legitimate rape" topic, I wondered if many people remember Crossfire, a faux debate programme that was a keystone of CNN programming for long starting in the nineteen eighties.

The format was very simple. Two loud, fast and ferocious debaters. One liberal the other conservative. One hot political topic of the day. No moderators. No hold barred.

Rather unlike Krishi Darshan

At that time an open debate in a mass medium between extreme schools of thought was unknown in DD land where everything was an extreme grey.

Crossfire ran for over 23 years, with some minor changes, and boasted of a number of eminent hosts, who went on to play key roles in the American political space.

The most striking of these was Pat Buchanan, who later worked with Nixon, Reagan and Ford, as their policy wonk and speech writer.

Others notables were Geraldine Ferraro, the first female VP candidate for a major party and Lynn Cheney, a VP candidate aspirant in 2000 who, in another first, lost the spot to her husband Dick. 

The death of a long distance runner
The 2004 presidential race and its coverage also spelt the death of the 23 year old Crossfire at the hands of comedian Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show.

Invited to the show as a guest, Stewart gently skewered and roasted the show and its hosts mercilessly. The demolition, a TV classic by now, and well worth a watch, can be seen here.

CNN was virtually left with no choice but to cancel the show. Today, American TV is still replete with loud, deeply partisan anchors and speakers, and saner voices are generally drowned.

The birth of Arnab Goswami 
Meanwhile we have landed Arnab Goswami, Barkha Dutt et al who preside nightly over political and social discourse on TV. Louder than early Crossfire, only more shrill.

They are unable to express an informed opinion or take an intelligent stance. Nor are they able to control, far less moderate, their motley crew of often ill-informed, ill-prepared or inarticulate guests.

One wonders how and when they can be laughed out of existence. Also whether we might be better off getting on to a "two able and well-informed debaters with or without an equally competent moderator" format.

Snippet: Krishi Darshan, a DD programme aimed at the farmer marches on as the longest running TV show in India.

Independence Day Exodus

The South-Western Railway yesterday announced that it will run two special trains to Gauhati.

This is to accommodate over 5000 people from the north-eastern states fleeing Bangalore / Karnataka after a recent spate of racially motivated attacks and threats.

One can only hope that there is a writer at the other end to record the travails of this Train From India!

To read the news report click here.

Olympic Hockey & Onset of Cynicism

Nostalgia is not what it used to be. 

This post is triggered by today's last page headlines.

The year is 1960. I am in the 11th standard. The headmaster is a graceful gentleman. Stern but kindly. Tough but fair. Well-built but not over-weight. Taller than the other teachers. Handsome in a Balraj Sahni way, only more so.

He turns up just-about-moist eyed at one late-summer morning school meet. "It is a sad day for India", says he, starting his daily address, "our Olympic contingent will return without a medal."

A youngish know-it-all, not me, chirps up, jumping right into the trap, "But Sir, we won the silver in hockey."

"If you leave behind gold, bringing home silver does not count."

The hockey gold is something we have always taken for granted. Much breast-beating follows all over the country. Pundits propound various theories. Pundit Nehru chips in with his two bits worth. Unanimous conclusion: something must be done.

The Punjab government, feeling guilty as the supplier of a majority of hockey players, announces a path-breaking and Olympics-busting plan to encourage sports of all varieties.

All schools are required to have training programmes. Each will cover at least five disciplines of their choice. There will be weekly competitions for individual and monthly ones for team sports at district headquarters .

The first three in each category will get a "collar pin". Three different colours. The school getting the maximum number of pins gets a rotating shield. The school getting the maximum pins over the year gets to keep the shield.

When the first pins adorn school uniform shirt collars of a few of my fellow students, I am happy for them for I know that they have worked hard to earn them. Not having adequate athletic skills to go up against the best, I also feel a little bit sorry for myself.

The turnaround comes very fast. In no time, the better endowed schools have figured out that if you send different, but able, kids every week, you improve your chances of the annual win. The students, or their parents, have figured out that you don't really have to win it; there is a price for every 'pin'.

Within a few weeks, the city is full of coloured pins. Everyone and his brother is wearing one or more pins testifying to their athletic prowess. The scheme collapses.

Snippets
1. We were to win the gold only twice after that. In Tokyo 1964 when we beat Pakistan in sweet revenge for the Rome 1960 loss. And later in Moscow 1980, when no other team of any standing turned up to play.

2. In short order both Pakistan and India were relegated to lower ranks by the white man who "will never learn how to tackle our wily dribblers". Not qualifying for Beijing 2008 was the nadir. Qualifying for London 2012 merited front page banner headlines; seen in a sports context only when India wins a cricket world cup or Maria Sharapova wins or loses anything.

3. The enormity of what had happened in 1960s became clear to me only in the early seventies when I travelled by road around England and Europe one summer. Over a matter of two weeks and hundreds of kilometres I never ever saw a field hockey ground. Or anyone playing it. Every village I passed through had two or more football grounds, though.

4. The year we first lost the hockey gold, I was a member of my school's junior hockey team. The shortest, slightest and the only 11th standard player in the whole district; most were in the 8th or lower. This lead to much resentment and charges of under-reporting of age. My coach did not let me play a single match for fear that the opposition would go after me with intent. My team won the championship. I still have the certificate.