Is Decline of the Fourth-Estate Here and Happening?

He always write....

36 nkg,

I dont agree with u fully but the advertisements for Deccan Chronicle (under MJA) ran something like this:

An arab man (Iraqi, I think) with a keffiyah and the caption is - MY IDENTITY, MY NEWSPAPER (i.e. Deccan Chronicle).


What a laughable advt? Wasnt he advertising for Muslim readership though 90% of his readers are not Muslims? In anycase the newspaper has nothing 2 do with the religions in the first place.

How a kala chamda Hydi Muslim has anything to do with an arab Iraqi and using such irrelevant motifs for advertisement of a newspaper (supposed to be a normal newspaper)?

These newspapers also carried out headline photographs and newsitems that are used by the 24*7 anti-Indian guys on Chowk. MJA, obviously prmomoted a bunch of 'we ruled these niggers' type Muslims in his newspapers. Farzana Versey is one such namoona.

Same goes for SNM Abdi who contributes to foreign newspapers from Calcutta (I think). He always writes - never he contributes normal news/analysis - abt a woman marrying a donkey or that kinda stuff.

Something or the other some major incident on the opposite of this is eclipsed, surely.

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; when the emotions from the 'BOMB 2 BEIJING' resigned as media was counting and measuring , prince remained in that Gutter, rather kept there for that many days and captivated every stupid watching eye.
Smart Media and Stupid Sheep public.

Re: # 27
Man Steve Jobs of Apple ( the founder) was fired from Apple. He had used that opportunity to form NeXT Computer.
I have read couple of Swami Vivekananda writings. After Chicago Religious parliament (in 1893), he had toured Europe and North America. He was amazed by the people's attitude in those continents. The positive energy and "wrok hard, part hard" attitude (the path documented in Vedantas).

Re: # 35
President of India is mostly a decorative post. Pratibha tai is no inferior than A P J Abdul Kalam. Some, neuclear test (with the technology provided by USSR), does not prove anything. He was part of DRDO and the technical failure of DRDO is quite well known.

I am dead against Sonia Gandhi. She has dubious record and Congress people tries to project her in different way, but she has brough couple of nice changes in congress party.

#36:

". I really miss The Statesman."

That makes two of us.

I think, what is meted out to M J Akbar is perfect. In his recent book, he had revealed how "Islam" has added value to his ancestors, and his focus was mostly concentrated on moslems and anti-india activities. How can a Govt./secular institution will tolerate such a person? If you see Indo-US civilian neuclear deal from the angle of muslim anger( Iraq, Palestine, Iran, Afghanisthan... so many places on earth, but India. This fellow does not bother to use Internet and other US technology to publish his views), then you are better placed to represent Jamat..., SIMI,some mosque etc. The journalism has changed to worse side. I really miss The Statesman. In , India there are 1000s of issues, which needs to be looked into. Excessive highlighting of moslem poverty and misery (I was quite surprised how this valueable Islam was not able to guide the moslems to better placed in a society, where upward mobility is very much possible for everybody). Congress has several times assured that Indo-US neuclear deal is not against any community. With it, we will be provide flurry of technologies, which we have failed to create. He is kind of Joker( or Jakir) Naik. There is no place for such person in Govt./public institutions.

Mahesh,

This is not new. Living in the US we had to disconnect all the indian news channels from our dish network seeing the quality of the reporting. It is gross tabloid journalism. The sacking of MJ Akbar, who in my opinion is one of the best figures in the news media is not surprising. It confirms the trend. Dost had written an article on the pakistani news media being better than ours and he's right on his money.

Sadna,
Lemme add to sonia aunty and her chamcha's list of praiseworthy deeds. Remember Rajasthan anti-conversion bill and how the then governor of Raj. Smt. pratibha Patil refused to sign it. And now she's the president in place of Abdul Kalam. You can put 2+2 together.

This is the state of affairs of our country. One 12th class pass foreign woman runs the indian show with jokers replacing excellence be it in media or governance. But the best part is that these things are not even touched in media as Mahesh correctly points out. Instead we are made to feel proud that we have a woman president before even US.

Adios

Dostji,

Lemme make a confession. I too like ali's provocative style, esp on UP.

VRV:

It's futile to blame slyder; chowk wants to maintain a certain flavour to this website and slyder, along with many others, provides that flavour. It is not his fault if he excels in that genre or that he is on the opposite side.

Arjun gadhey,

Why don't you direct some of your fire-power towards the Thackerey duo - who pose a REAL threat to the concept of India as we (or at least I) know it?

#29 Posted by harimau on March 8, 2008 4:04:28 pm

Farzana Versey writes, chowk's own NRI(not really indian), for the asian age. I just read one of her columns...same crap she writes here on chowk...

This may not be a very well-written piece but the point Mahesh makes is quite valid. There has certainly been a decline in the quality of news media in India; there is hardly a difference between spreadsheets and tabloids. Today's newspapers are all sizzle and very little meat. The job of the editor has been downgraded and it is the marketing manager who rules the roost; Akbar's firing, which would certainly be a hot topic of conversation in the media offices and cafeterias, does not make it to the news while a minor bollywood item girl visisting Delhi gets a big write-up. Even Blitz had more substance in the old days.

So M J Akbar got fired?

Don't worry, there is an endless supply of journalists to sing the praises of pseudo-secularism and the Nehru family.

Ref sadna #25

[In 2005?, the Jharkhand Governor, an old Gandhi family associate, who was reportedly in constant touch with Sonia Gandhi during that period, asked the smaller political grouping(the Congress-led one) in the Jharkhand Assembly to form the govt. Rajdeep Sardesai of NDTV criticised the decision as did many others. But he directly mentioned Sonia Gandhi's name and perhaps named her as being responsible for the Jharkhand Governor's essentially unconstitutional decision. Sardesai left NDTV soon after he did that.]

Syed Sibtey Razi is the Governor in question.

He probably consulted the Only Book that Needs Consulting aka -al-Quran and came up with the equivalent of Jinnah-bhai's reasoning. If Jinnah-bhai could ask to equate a 30% minority Muslim population with a 70% non-Muslim population, clearly 39 Congresswallahs are greater than 41 BJP-wallahs.

It is a sad fact of life that the world does not appreciate Islamic arithmetic.

Re: # 26

Jang:

Firings truly are good for talent. String of successful ventures in Silicon Valley have been formed by the talent which was fired. That is why, what I said in my post to Sadna MJ Akbar should think out of box and go for new media to connect middle class youth to fountainhead of news.