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I was always worried I would die without knowing enough about Arindam Chaudhuri. But last week, The Hindu and Tehelka put me at ease. Thanks to these two highly respected publications, I will leave this world armed with better information about the management mogul, his life and his works.

Arindam, the management guru turned academic turned author turned editor turned film producer has a way of staying in the news.  The latest is a 110-page “success book” titled “Discover the Diamond In You” that he wrote in five days flat on his mobile! That was provocation enough for these two publications to do lengthy articles followed, a few pages later, by paid advertisements from Arindam’s IIPM. (That’s another way of staying in the news.)

At 48, it’s a bit late for me to try to succeed at anything based on the wisdom of a book written in five days on SMS and, anyway, Arindam says he has written it for the young, in their language and idiom. If the diamond in me is destined to go to the grave without being discovered, so be it.

At least, I’m getting some serious insights into the life of a “discovered” diamond (more about that in a while). The Hindu wrote a glowing piece and aptly titled it “This gem’s aglow” (Metro Plus, Dec 10). “Anyone seen Arindam Chaudhuri without an impish grin on his face? Anyone? Well, chances are pretty bleak considering the man believes in turning every calamity into an opportunity,” the article began. The calamity in reference is the economic slowdown and the opportunity is the five days’ time that Arindam could afford as a result to tip-tap the book on his mobile (because he can’t still handle the desktop).

I quote him from the article: “I took five days for the book. Two days just to jot down the things I wanted in the book. Then I typed out the contents on my mobile for the next three days. I SMSed it to my designer.  Mobile is such an uncomplicated way of communication that I am not used to a computer even now. I prefer to speak the language of 140 characters than long mails.” (I can’t figure out why writing 110 pages of a book on the mobile is not the same as writing long mails…it takes a diamond to understand a diamond and I’m not one as I told you at the outset.)

The reporter now poses a profound question: Writing a book in times of economic recession makes perfect sense… but when did he (Arindam) realise he had the diamond in him? “The process of discovering the diamond in me started when I was a student. I aspired to be a teacher seeing a couple of my teachers. Then that unpolished diamond got exposed to good light and the urge to emulate only got stronger.” (Those damned 40W bulbs during my childhood… they destroyed the diamond in me.  Philips will pay this!)

The reporter is not done yet. Another profound question follows. With his quick read, is he (Arindam) not treading in the territory marked as his own by Chetan Bhagat who too speaks in the language of the young? Arindam is accommodative: “I have heard of that comparison but I have not read Chetan’s book.” (Chetan’s loss entirely.)

This glowing piece on Arindam appears as the cover story of Metro Plus and on the back page is a half-page ad of Arindam’s IIPM. The ad has nothing to do with the launch of the book, but it helps you understand the article better, if you know what I mean.

Luckily for people like me who strongly feel the media just doesn’t give us enough of Arindam, Tehelka also tried to address the need gap. On its Society and Lifestyle pages (Dec. 12 issue), it ran a two-page interview of Arindam with the launch of the book as the news peg. But Tehelka’s literary correspondent who did the piece — rather half-heartedly, I suspect — obviously did not think much of Arindam’s literary prowess.

The book is just one passing question in the two-page interview-biography that gives us critical, “you-can’t-die-without-knowing-this” kind of information about the author such as that Arindam:

• Lectures at IIPM campuses
• Writes the editorial for and oversees the cover story of “The Sunday Indian”
• Writes his books and reads potential scripts for films
• Gets his news primarily from print
• Doesn’t watch television except for the odd spurt of breaking news
• Is frank about his fear of addiction, particularly of the Internet
• A staffer operates his blog since he doesn’t know how to upload content
• Occasionally uses Facebook to interact with students but barely touches email
• Instead, claims to write mostly on SMS, including all of his latest book

Twelve pages later, on the inside back cover, is a full page IIPM ad. As with The Hindu, the ad has nothing to do with the book but helps us understand the report in better light.

It is quite possible that the editorial in both the publications did not know that the ad would appear in the same edition but the tone and tenor of the write-ups make one suspicious. While The Hindu is completely in awe of Arindam without once suggesting it has read the book (so forget about critiquing it), from the Tehelka piece it is clear that their literary correspondent did not even think it was worth commenting upon the book. Yet, there it is, the two-page piece.

There are two reasons to worry here. One, The Hindu and Tehelka (especially the latter) are two institutions that still revere honest journalism. So this kind of surrogate advertising (or is it surrogate editorial?) appearing in them is not good news for news.

Two, Arindam has just about started on his 22-city publicity binge for the book so you know there’s a lot more to come in the near future…

The Hindu is right. It’s hard to find Arindam without his impish grin. If you had the nation’s media eating out of your hands, you would grin too.

After all, 24×7 news channels need meat and blood to sustain viewer interest but one-upmanship in breaking news seems to have created a virtual storm in a tea cup in the trainjack case.

More at expressbuzz.com

When was the last time we saw a prime-time debate on the issue of the drought and the impact it will have, not on the prices of Tur Dal in Mumbai or Delhi, but on the mere survival of crores of Indians? I remember watching one discussion on the subject on NDTV two months ago.

After 40 years in journalism and running 12 newspapers I have to confess to two passions. Aviation and the pursuit of human dignity. In the second category, the judgement by the colour of one’s skin has always burned me up and I see it as the worst form of racism practised with sinister malice in India.

The agony and pain and mental degradation it spawns is criminal. Millions have been seared by our viciousness. So, even though I am not an expert on Bollywood (although I did work on Filmfare for a year) one of the guys I have had a pretty decent opinion about is Shahrukh Khan. Just a good sod.

A man like him who trumpeted about racist America not a few weeks ago now makes money telling 80 per cent of racist India that unless they are fair they are damned in the depths of hell and can never make the grade. Apartheid rightwingers could make him their poster boy.

We screwed the female psyche for years with all that ‘if you get dark no one will marry you’ crap, then we condemned all dark women to that nether world of self-loathing, flung the word ‘gori’ into all our songs and are now putting the colour sword to the men.

To shame millions because success and failure are fair and dark is sick and I am revolted to the pit of my stomach. Yes, I feel violently about it. I said that first up. My grown up daughters tell me I am being a phony, pious pratt and Khan has a right to be making his money any which way. It is commercial and not a pulpit pounding philosophy. “If someone paid you a million dollars to sell a skin fair cream, would you say no?”

I hope to hell I would have the courage to say no. Because I have spent years researching this issue and I have seen a great amount of the hurt and the confusion, the drop in self esteem and the ugliness of what we do to the darker amongst us.

Sorry, Mr Khan, you don’t get a free pass on this one…for what it is worth, shame on you, Sir, for perpetuating a national grossness. And shame on anyone else who would do the same. What’s wrong with you, man, why would you would do this?

And, hey, you, the media, where are you?

— B V Rao, administrator

By S B EASWARAN
Is a Maoist the more interesting for having gone to Doon School, for coming from an affluent and urbane Parsi family of Bombay? Is he the more interesting for his naive psychology of minor or ritual brutality in preparation for human violence and death of hundred-fold magnitude? Is he the more interesting for the polished affluence of his fruit-icecream fortunes? Or is he just a more interesting story for all that?
 
In the weighing of a man and his story against each other which one comes out the more heavier with the power to evoke empathy? Is a writer’s quaintly silly adoration of a man and his condonation of mindless violence worthy of circulation and revulsed consumption through print and cyberspace? Is all this bollywoodised news-script at its very best, with the power to hold you, the reader, in mild syrupiness you don’t want to regret being held in? Do you, Everyreader, object to the wiles of story-telling rhetoric, its swirling, snaking, greased ropes holding you in weak, suspended awe?

There is something called ethical intelligence, a mere wisp of a faculty in most of us, but a complete weather system in those who have cultivated and amplified it over the years through years of attentive use. Coverage of stories like Kobad Ghandy’s–in which the telling of the story casts fierce black linations, like an interfering line cartoon on the film we are watching on our mindscreen–is a test of that faculty. It is a test Everyreader shies away from, lazily ducking it like the sudoku or crossword or bridge puzzle that catches attention but one is too lazy for. It is a test and a bracing mindgame. It is a foundation drill in navigation through a cross-section of that complex weather system.
It is an exercise in watching our minds read. It is a riddle to test our ability to discern the building from the magical but interfering shadow of the scaffolding suspended about it, a perceptual grid and, at the same time, a perceptual cage.

I’m not saying that. Kobad Ghandy, the top Naxalite who was recently arrested in Delhi, is saying that. And he’s saying that courtsey Jyoti Punwani, a Mumbai freelance journalist and courtsey the Hindustan Times.

Jyoti is clearly impressed with Kobad’s ideology and friendshio (he stood witness to her wedding and served his family’s ice cream at the dinner that followed). So the tone of the write up is one of admiration for the man. Which is all very well. But while discussing his early days in Mumbai the writer slips this in:

“After a whole morning of wrestling with Lenin’s “Imperialism” at some open-air camp outside Mumbai, Kobad would start making lunch, insisting that we learn to wring the necks of chickens, else how would we stand the sight of blood when the revolution actually came?”

Now, that nonchalance might suit a hardened Naxal teaching his prospective comrades but what about the writer? Is it the norm these days for journalists to draw such vivid imagery of violence with the same nonchalance? If the writer is swayed by the subject, the editors at Hindustan Times seemed to have relished the ghastly quote even more to have thrown it up into a blurb to ensure nobody missed it. It seems that any talk of chicken is toast for HT.

One can understand Kobad espousing violence. But what was the point and purpose of the writer in bringing such stomach-churning stories from Kobad’s kitcthen to millions of breakfast tables? Shouldn’t somebody at the HT have used the editorial scissors?

Help me figure this one out by making your comments.

By B V Rao

“Our editors run their businesses without any commercial consideration. Let me give you an example. It came to me as a compliment from somebody the other day. On CNN IBN our film Welcome (a film we’ve taken a huge bet on) was reviewed by Rajeev Masand on his very popular show. Rajeev said: “The film is so bad that anyone who goes and sees it and enjoys it, I will personally pay for his psychiatric treatment.” This was his line, on our own channel, about our own film. There is no influence on our editorial…

I am an editor. I know that the only thing you sell as a news media company is credibility. The moment there is a question mark on your credibility, you’ve actually bartered away your entire asset.”

That was Raghav Bahl, managing director, Network 18 Group, in an interview to exchange4media late in 2007. I remember citing this example to support the line that there are still businesses in the news media that believe every square inch of real estate need not be sold to make a venture successful.

But alas, Bahl’s friends are not watching his channels or Bahl’s friends are not telling him any more; there has been a steep fall from those lofty editorial ideals. One Sunday afternoon (4.30 pm) during summer CNN IBN ran a full half-hour paid show on L M Thapar University. It paid glowing tributes to the university (which is ok, we do that these days even without getting paid!) but the highlight of the 30 minutes was how the channel tried to hoodwink the viewer.

Firstly, it did not mention, not even once, that it was a fully paid-for feature wherein a client such as L M Thapar University would sponsor every bit and byte of eulogy.

Secondly, the feature was put together by Paras Tomar. Tomar was one of CNN IBN’s most recognisable faces in its birth years but quit some time later. Either by design or by default, the channel’s marketing team seemed to have roped him in to do the feature (a damn good one he did, I must admit) so that the cycle of deceit would be complete.

Without any disclaimers from the channel and with a familiar face doing the reportage, the average viewer would think that it was a fully legitimate editorial assessment of the university by the channel. God knows how many parents and students invested their monies and futures on the university based on that illegitimate half-hour.

Network 18 is now a news and entertainment media conglomerate. Its many arms keep promoting each other, which is ok, but many times they forget the “disclosure” clause. World over, honest and transparent news channels “disclose” their filial links when they report about group companies. Rarely so in India (“Mint” is one definite exception) and definitely not so on CNN IBN and IBN 7.

Some time in June, when the Star Plus’ nine-year domination was hanging by a thin thread and all that Colours needed was a push and shove to dislodge the former, CNN IBN hosted a prime time show (8.30 pm) on the seismic changes in Prime Time entertainment. On the face of it, the channel took a detached editorial perspective but the subtext was clear: half an hour of plug for Colours.

Everything was about Colours, Colours and Colours from the theme of the discussion (“no single channel is guaranteed to stay at the top”, a taunt for Star Plus) to the thrust of the discussion (“Colours has changed the GEC scene with Balika Vadhu”) to the choice of the guests (Ashvini Yardi, programming head, Colours, who spoke of Balika Vadhu as “creativity at its peak” and Rajeev “what’s-his-connection-to-TV-serials” Masand). For form’s sake they had Smriti Irani as the third guest and Masand, to his credit, did not plug for the group channel.

It was patently dishonest of the channel not to disclose its lineage. Especially because there was a legitimate provocation for a half-hour show as Colours had indeed caused seismic changes in the genre. A disclosure would have actually added to that legitimacy but, no, we have to steal even that which is legitimately ours.

As you can see, I’m not unused to Network 18 news channels deviating from base principles as defined by Bahl in that interview. So, it needed to be a deviation of giant proportions to shock me. I got my shock about two months ago on IBN 7 (and have been getting it every day since).

As important as Bahl’s answer was Anurag Batra’s question: “With business interests in multiple areas, how does one support other ventures from the group without interfering with editorial integrity of an individual media product?” (Anurag also asked Bahl about private treaties, but I have omitted it for this discussion.)

Thus you can see that the basic question was about how the Network 18 group manages its cross-promotions without the “editorial integrity of an individual media product” being compromised. That “integrity” was what Bahl was illustrating so eloquently when he gave the Rajeev Masand-Welcome example.

Well, at nine thirty every morning (except Sunday and Monday) I wouldn’t expect Raghav Bahl to be watching IBN 7. But he should. For, here is an example of the grossest form of cross-promotion that makes a mockery of the “editorial integrity” of IBN 7. Five days a week in this slot, IBN 7, a licenced “news” channel of the group, plays the recording of the entire Balika Vadhu episode of the previous night!

Yes, thirty minutes of a prime time entertainment serial, just plucked from Colours and played on a news channel, almost frame by frame. The ad breaks in a news channel are more and longer so they eat up about 5 minutes of last night’s Balika Vadhu. I stumbled on this abomination some time in July and it’s been there regularly. The average length of Balika Vadhu on Colours is 20 minutes. I have clocked IBN 7 playing, on an average, 15 minutes of it going up to 18 on the odd day.

It’s all done with a ridiculously mock seriousness to make it look like a “news” story. It has a story “sting” (the name and overall branding of the story which appears before and after every ad break), “live” anchor-links, voiceovers and headlines in the normal IBN 7 style running up and down. For example, the first day I caught it, this was the hilarious run of headlines: Suguna ne ki bagawat (Suguna rebels). Suguna par nahi chala Dadisa ka hukm (Dadisa has no hold over Suguna), Ek hi thaali me khane se kiya inkar (Refused to eat in dinner plate used by husband), Shyam ne diya Suguna ka saath (Shyam backs Suguna), Bigad gaya Jagdish (Jagdish has gone astray).

In the middle of all that, the announcement: Balika Vadhu sirf Colours par; somvaar se shukrvaar raat 8 baje (Balika Vadhu only on Colours; Monday to Friday 8 pm). That’s a lie. They must now start advertising it for IBN 7 at 9.30 am Tuesday to Saturday.

And then that comic sequence of stings. The “Dukhi hain Suguna” (Suguna is sad) story sting would be followed each time by the channel’s signature sting “Khabar, har keemat par” (News, at any cost).

All channels have an afternoon show that is devoted to a general update on what’s happening on serialdom. IBN 7 has its own show at 1.30 pm, but chooses to showcase Balika Vadhu as a news story every day. This kind of transgression of news space must be hard to find anywhere in the world. It’s great credit to Star News and NDTV India that they have resisted similar urges.

Here, we are not talking about disclosure. When a news channel is openly ducking the law (news channels should not be airing GEC serials) and cheating its viewers (by inventing news around last night’s stale soap) you don’t care about disclosure. You care about closure. A closure to the farce called the Balika Vadhu news show.

It’s time for that friend to call Raghav Bahl again.

First things first – I’m not an avid TV news watcher..I’m a TV listener (genre of people who listen to TV news, while they continue to do other things, yes, we do exist). Since I was almost quarantined in my room due to a severe bout of flu, I decided to do the impossible – watch the news channels.

A massive, heavy duty, noisy, debate on Times Now caught my attention as they have been following the Aussie racism attacks for a while. The channel created quite a stir when India-born British writer Farrok Dhondy actually asked Indians in Australia to retaliate against the racist attackers. Buoyed by the fact that Aussie PM Kevin Rudd actually saw their report (that’s what TN claims), the second part of the debate on Thursday night, went on to make TV history.

Amidst frequent interruptions by Arnab Goswami (which none of the panelists cared for much), Dhondy threw a doosra that would be music to the ears of babus eager to slap a code of conduct on news channels. “The only punishment to the racist attackers would be to remove one of their testicles.” Also, in another Talibansique imposition, he said” “They should have a tattoo carved on their bodies symbolising their gruesome acts,” Dhondy fumed.

Even as a red-faced Goswami tried hard to make light of this comment on live national TV by dubbing it “funny”, an unsmiling Dhondy was not to be made fun of. He quickly reminded Goswami that Adolf Hitler too had one testicle and the racists deserved to be in his company..

While G Parthasarthy, former Indian ambassador to Australia made valid points like the need for the Indian community to be united and why there would be no such attacks on say the Chinese out there, the confusion and chaos on the show never allowed the viewer to dwell on these issues at all.

For non-TV lovers like me, this is catastrophic. And for the journalist inside me, it reflects three things. The moderator (in this case, Goswami) often has no control in his own newsroom (in this case, his studio). Despite his interruptions to ask questions, he was totally ignored by all. Second, the moderator must focus attention on all panelists and especially the one who makes most sense. And third, the more noise everyone creates (which TV channels believe delivers good TRPs) the more I am actually puts off.

Bottomline – a valid newsy subject for debate lost in sensationalism.
PS: Wonder what Kevin Rudd must have thought of the show. “Mate, these Indian news channels are kinda funny, huh?”

Smita Deshmukh is a senior journalist based in Mumbai and now runs her own media company. She can be contacted on smita.meenu@gmail.com

By B V Rao

News channel editors are like horses. They wear blinkers to work! That need not necessarily be a bad thing. Horses are forced to wear blinkers so they see only the road ahead and stay on course. We all call that focus, staying on the job, and any manager worth his salt will tell you that that is a great asset.

Unlike horses, news channel editors wear the blinkers voluntarily. They seek but a few “good” stories on a normal day and are ecstatic when a mammoth story such as that of a missing chief minister lands in their lap early in the morning, as did YSR’s. This story had all the trappings of a great TV event and more: it had power, politics, fear, uncertainties, search and rescue, bad weather, air force, greyhounds, choppers, Sukhois, shades of terror (Naxals), high drama, emotion and mystery and rumour. What’s more, it was open-ended.

News channels love nothing more than an open-ended mystery. It lends itself to many “theories” such as did the copter crash or land or crash-land? Then the anchors get to throw a lot of jargon, some of which they themselves have heard for the first time such as ELT, physical assets on the ground, repelling, slithering, winching, etc. And then a story without an ending means endless programming which is like a gift from the Gods themselves. It takes care of every channel’s legitimate worry of how to occupy the viewer the next minute, for the next 30 hours.

 To the extent that focus is important, this obsession with one story is great. But a few hours into the story, the channels are so deeply entangled in it that they do not know how to get out of the story’s clutches. They don’t “have” a story; the story “has” them. I call this the Abhimanyu syndrome. The nature of the medium demands that channels plunge headlong into breaking news and try to get a grip on it as they go along. But what often happens is the story gets a stranglehold on the channels, instead of the other way round and the channels don’t know when and how to extricate themselves, just like Mahabharata’s Abhimanyu. He knew how to get into the “chakravyuh” (a certain enemy formation) but not how to come out of it.

As a result, channels have a penchant for overstaying. Each channel stays on the story not because it has new information but because the other channels are staying on it. They all keep parroting the same stuff over and over again and every once in a while when they sense falling energy levels and fear viewer fatigue, they try to inject fresh life into the proceedings. They do this by starting to run faster than the story which manifests itself in many ways such as the anchors suddenly raising the pitch and volume (like somebody suddenly stuck a pin in the bottom); talking faster and faster to suggest urgency; and bending facts, introducing half-truths and telling open lies such as talking to dead chief ministers on mobile phones and blaming the tribals of Nallamala for the cruel joke on the viewers.

Look at what happened with the YSR story. In 30 hours of TV time, the story inched forward just a few times: the news break, the launch of the search operations, the centre joining in, Sukhois joining in, ISRO being called upon, US help being sought, a few press conferences (which said much the same), the chopper’s remains being spotted, the death being announced. That’s hardly content for 30 hours. But the channels were prisoners of their own self-generated excitement. The world wouldn’t have ended if they ventured on to other stories while keeping a close watch on developments in the YSR story, returning to it when required.

 But everybody was fixated. According to figures from the Centre for Media Studies’ Media Lab, NDTV 24×7 spent 431 minutes out of 480 minutes, a whopping 90 per cent of its entire prime time (7-11 pm) on Sept 2 and 3, on YSR. Times Now spent nearly 77% and CNN-IBN 70%. (See table for details.)

 Time spent on YSR story on Sept 2 & 3 prime time (7-11 pm). Source: CMS Media Lab

As you can see, purely in terms of the airtime they gave to the story, the Hindi channels kept their composure more than the English ones. Star News, which spent the most time on the story, gave it just 37.5% of its prime time and other private channels even less.

That is great, but what did they do with the rest of their time? Did they give any play to the other “big” news of the day, the Delhi High Court’s judgement that the Chief Justice of India’s office is covered under the RTI Act? Considering all the recent controversies about the higher judiciary’s assets and the people’s right to know, this was the mother of all legal stories. In terms of its long-term relevance for the country, this story had far greater significance than even YSR’s disappearance which was, I recognise, much more dramatic. So, how did the “national” news channels handle this story? See the table, courtesy CMS Media Lab:

 Prime Time (7-11 pm) Coverage of Delhi HC Ruling on CJI Office, Sept 2 & 3

Yes, that’s right. As the table along side shows, they just ignored it. The CJI-RTI story just did not exist for them. It was fully and completely blanked out by the national news channels. We must be grateful for NDTV 24×7’s two gracious minutes but when you take into account that the channel has instituted the first RTI awards and is promoting the same as its commitment to the national cause, it’s a pittance, a joke on the RTI movement.

 That brings us back to editors, horses and blinkers. Blinkers are meant to keep the horse on course, not to blind it. In their preoccupation with “the” big story, editors become blind to the other stories of the day. They give up the very job of the editor which is to decide the order and merit of stories and allot time accordingly. If news selection is all about running one story endlessly at the expense and exclusion of all other stories, do we really need editors?

 Think about it.