Is Decline of the Fourth-Estate Here and Happening?

Alimony is as bad as dowry-giving. Alimony is to divorce what dowry is to marriage. Alimony is an invitation to divorce.

In this scenario, the world - wide attention of females drooling at the fantastic sums of money extorted from Mr. McCartney of the UK is harmful to marriages worldwide.

http://www.petitiononline.com/alimony/petition.html

Please sign this petition, protesting the UK courts decision and in support of our brothers in the UK. It takes only 2 minutes.

Kindly make this a success by getting as many signatures as possible. We will submit the petition to the British Commissions in India.

Re: # 53
The writer is a former editor of Reader’s Digest, The Indian Express and Khaleej Times
....So, this fellow has some Dubai connection...I wish, they write one article on how M F Husseine, Dawood Ibrahim etc... is discriminated in India.

Re: # 53
Hmmm... very worried about Indian journalism. The journalism has changed a lot. Newspapers presents what the readers want. The sad story of The Statesman,The Hindu and growing popularity of TOI in Southern States, speaks that. Between The Hindu/TOI battle, there is no political party involved. But The Hindu is loosing ground. Ragarding MJA, it is not a loss at all. We have got rid of a crap, who is driven more by agenda than reliant on statistics and analysis.

Quite sad really. I liked MJ Akbar a lot.

He and MVKamath both were shown the door because they both are opponents of Indian nuke deal which she wants to promote, because quatrochi has been (recently) hired by US high authorities to lubricate this deal through sonia.......U know who is that authority....starting with C

From an Op-ed article in the Dawn:

Whither the Indian press?

By Rahul Singh

THE Indian media takes great pride in being independent and fearless, among the freest in the developing world. Indeed, the press is held up as one of the mainstays of Indian democracy. But is this really so? Take the abrupt and recent sacking of one of the country’s most distinguished editors, Mubashar Jawed Akbar.

On March 2, the erstwhile editor-in-chief of The Asian Age was on his way to his office in New Delhi when he got an SMS on his cellphone from one of his staff members, asking him to look at the masthead of his paper. To his astonishment and dismay, he found his name was missing! When he arrived at his office he was met by an editorial staff in mourning, some of whom broke down.

Word had clearly reached them of their boss’s unceremonious ouster. MJ, as he was known to his friends and colleagues, quickly emptied his drawers, said farewell to his staff and departed.

He had launched The Asian Age almost two decades ago and made it into probably the country’s most outspoken and readable newspaper. With publication centres in several parts of the country, it boasted a daily circulation of close to one million copies, second only to The Times of India in the English-language category of papers.

Many questioned its financial viability, since it carried few advertisements. But Akbar claimed that the paper was ‘franchised’ out to various businessmen-cum-politicians, which is how it survived — and apparently thrived.

One of the franchisees was a certain Venkatram Reddy, a successful entrepreneur who owned the Deccan Chronicle, a money-spinning publication centred in the south Indian city of Hyderabad.

Deccan Chronicle Holdings became a publicly listed company on the stock exchange a few years ago and its IPO (initial public offering) brought in a considerable sum of money to Reddy.

This enabled him to buy out the other major franchisees of The Asian Age, so that he was able to corner 90 per cent of its shares, the remaining ten per cent being held by Akbar. Though the details have not yet been made public, it seems that Akbar also recently sold his shares to Reddy, which ultimately cleared the way for his removal.

Word has it that Akbar had seen the writing on the wall some months back.

Reddy was keen to enter politics by getting into the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament. He wanted to be nominated by the Congress Party. But there was a problem: The Asian Age had been critical of the present government, the Congress-dominated United Progressive Alliance (UPA), in particular over the proposed nuclear deal with the US on which both the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have staked their prestige.

Was Reddy told that the Congress Party would support him for a Rajya Sabha seat, provided he got rid of Akbar? That is the speculation and it will be confirmed if such a scenario actually comes to pass.

For the record, Akbar is arguably the most outstanding journalist of his generation. He started as a trainee in the Times of India, moving on to its sister publication the Illustrated Weekly of India, which was then edited by Khushwant Singh, who happens to be my father. (I was the editor of Reader’s Digest at the time.)

Akbar then became the founder editor of the hugely successful Sunday magazine, brought out by the Kolkata-based Anandabazar Patrika group.

He had several political scoops to his credit. With the same group, he also started The Telegraph, a daily paper from Kolkata which soon overtook the then dominant Statesman. Following differences with the Anandabazar Patrika group owner, he started The Asian Age.

In between, he flirted with politics when Rajiv Gandhi persuaded him to stand for parliament in 1989 from Kishanganj in Bihar, his home state. To everybody’s surprise, he won.

After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991, however, he seems to have drifted away from the Gandhi family, in particular from Rajiv’s widow, the Italian-born Sonia. So he went back to journalism and also authored a number of highly acclaimed books, including one on jihad, Shade of Swords.

Akbar is by no means the first successful editor to have been fired in humiliating circumstances. Khushwant Singh took the circulation of the Illustrated Weekly from 100,000 to over 400,000, making it a power to reckon with. He was close to Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay, and supported their dictatorial ‘emergency’ rule from 1975 to 1977.

When the Congress was routed in the 1977 election, the new prime minister, Morarji Desai, sent word through his son to the owners of the Illustrated Weekly, the Jains, that he should be removed.

His contract was not renewed. But worse was to follow. Thinking that his farewell editorial would contain something damaging to them, he was sent a letter of dismissal, asking him to leave the office immediately.

The same thing happened to George Verghese, the most eminent and respected editor of an earlier generation, in the Hindustan Times and to H.K. Dua, when he was removed as editor of The Times of India (he is now editor of the Chandigarh-based Tribune, which is run by a trust and is one of the few truly independent papers in the country).

In the confrontation between Rajiv Gandhi and V.P. Singh (who later went on to defeat Rajiv and become prime minister), Prem Shankar Jha, then the editor of the Hindustan Times, decided not to take sides and to treat news stories on their merits. A clear message was sent from the Rajiv Gandhi camp to the owners of the Hindustan Times that Jha should be asked to go. He was.

Independent editors have become a rarity in India. The Times of India, which boasts of being the largest circulating English broadsheet in the world, has not had a proper editor for over a decade, with various ‘editors’ given meaningless designations and put in charge of different sections of the paper: edit page, news, sports, supplements. The owners of the Hindustan Times and The Telegraph, the biggest dailies in north and east India respectively, are the real editors of their papers.

The four Fs now rule the Indian press — films, fashion, food and frolic. The wedding of Amitabh Bachchan’s son, the shenanigans of Sanjay Dutt and the liaisons of Saif Ali get front page treatment.

The marketing departments, not editorial, run the show, often making editorial appointments and deciding how the front page should look and what it should display.

Indian newspapers have become brands and products, not agents of change and enlightenment. This trivialisation of what is one of the main pillars of democracy should disturb all thinking Indians.

The writer is a former editor of Reader’s Digest, The Indian Express and Khaleej Times.

singh.84@hotmail.com

Ref nkg #51

[I know of regional movies like Tamil, Malayalam and Bengali movies, which were of great quality.]

You will change your opinion of Tamil movies if you get the lyrics to the song "Ottakatthai Kattikko" translated by one of the Masanamuthus on Chowk.

Re: # 50
Iran is not corrupted by western influence. Every alternate Hindi movie script/scene/music is stolen from USA. So, the mainstream media. I know of regional movies like Tamil, Malayalam and Bengali movies, which were of great quality.

mohar11:

I don't think that you read The Statesman of yore. I do agree that all of them had a Nehruvian bias but that was true of all institutions in India, including educational institutions, during that period.

There is good journalism in India these days in magazines like India Today. The Op-Ed pages are not bad in today's newspapers, there are good columnists in TOI, for example, like Gurcharan Das, Shashi Tharoor and Swaminathan Aiyer. It is the news coverage that is very sketchy and sensational and there is very little investigative journalism, at least in TOI. I believe that Indian Express has a better record in this respect but the marketing guys at TOI and HT seem to have driven them out of business. The media has become like Bollywood - very successful commercially be catering to the lowest common denominator but way behind countries like Iran when turning out quality product.

Re: # 46
Hi Mohar..., every day in week, there used to be one special column based on day of week. So, literature,science, art/cinema etc. used to be covered in a day in every week. Every Sunday, you will be gifted with a sort story. That culture had vanished. I can not read beyond 5 minutes the famous Times of India ( Some Sundays yoyou get some good columns). I don't find worth reading. I can remember one special column by Manohar Malgaonkar on Monday (or Tuesday) on The Statesman. The title used to be Time Off. What a language, what content!!! I am not talking about MJA or KN. Their writing will be always some sort of anti-BJP tone, and will never leave you with happiness in your mind. What I have liked about Manohar Malgaonkar was almost apolitical writing. You will enjoy the article and in the same time you will carry something with you. In present generation, I read Swaminathan Ayar of TOI, TJS George of Indian Express. They write quite balanced way. The standard of writing in West Bengal is also declining. I know few writers ( Pathik Guha...), who used to publish science related articles, packed with history, drama and basic knowledge about the topic. MJA and KN are like political cadre. Always carry some agenda and try to convince people. They are not good writers (both of them have long association with Congress Party).

India is in serious need of makeovers in various ways... May be the media is a start... Hopefully the over-commercialism will be balanced out down the road... but we don't need no more bull from "intellectuals" like MJ Akbar, Kuldip Nayar and their kind...

I would rather see air-head bimbo from bollywood on the front page, rather than these dour-faced geriatric air-head from Janpath or wherever these losers live... these bumbling fools who have no idea, shouldn't even be appointed to be dog-catchers in a decent country....

Media may have gone overly commercial - but I also see more human-interest stories in the front page, more coverage of business, on leaders in commerce and otherwise... Not the grinning photos prime minister that we always used to see in good old days of "heavy analysis" - full with all sorts trivia about movements and rantings of the politicians...

Re: # 37 DM
[...". I really miss The Statesman." That makes two of us...]

I don't... anything that came out of calcutta has been equivalent of loud intellectual farting, big in sound and fury but stank to high heavens, that's putting it mildly...

I mean - all those years heavy "intellectualism" and "substance" - what exactly did it give us?... poverty of all kinds in general, poverty of imagination in particular... all the heavy-minded "analysis" of everything under the sun never led to better governance, administration, policies... Not even common sense - these "intellectuals" couldn't even gather common sense... forget about any deeper or long term thinking or planning...

I am sorry to be so harsh - but Good riddance with these fools and their fellow-travellers...

Re: # 41
MJA is fully avaibale in Bangladesh, Pakisthan and Middle East (Khaleej Times...) news groups. His topic will be similar to most of the moslem writers - Moslem oppression in Iraq, India, Israel, UK, France etc...
(How peaceful Hamas/Hezbollah actvists are tortured by Israel. How police/army tortures peaceful Kashmiris and their Pakistani friends. How moslems are discriminated in UK, France etc...)

Re: # 40
The Indian Missile supposed to reach Beijing, disintegrated at only 12 Km; the event which should have brought the Scientists to their knees was skillfully covered by Prince, a farmer boy, who slipped into a 'deliberately' made small manhole barely 7 feet deep and the event was covered like a ceremony;

Ans: People are not bothered about Missile nowadays. These Prithvi,Agni etc... are far bellow the standard of USA/Russian products. In a globalised world, when you are exposed to best of the products (like Camera, Watch, automobile), why will you bother about a missile, which is far inferior than EU,Russia,US counterpart?

Re: # 41
I know that, for any human, it is extreamly immoral to critisize (harmful) a person, from whom you have received favour. If you have any suggestion, please inform him/her. This moslem was provided parliamentory ticket from Congress from Bihar (Kishangunj). Courtsey Mr. Rajiv gandhi (he never bothered about party. The Last Emperor). So, he should (by normal human standard) keep quite as per as Sonia Gandhi is concerned. He is not sparing her also regadring some issues which pertains to moslems (Sonia Gandhi has not taken contract to speak on belalf of moslems alone.).
To Mr. Mahesh Prabhu,
Sir, if you are really good and touch people's heart, you will definitely win.