News

If uplinking of Rupert Murdoch’s Star News forced the government to change its television rulebook last year, the recent controversy over reprinting of International Herald Tribune (IHT) may lead to a new set of laws for the print media. At present, the government’s focus is on "enforcement", as the current guidelines have no provision for penalising the dafaulters. So, the government is weighing...

The government has decided to take the legal route in the International Herald Tribune (IHT) case. According to a representative of the information and broadcasting ministry, the government is ready to file a caveat in the Andhra Pradesh and Delhi high courts. This move would ensure that the government view is considered in case the printer of International Herald Tribune in India, Midram...

The information and broadcasting ministry has taken the view that the printing of the International Herald Tribune in India violates the existing norms regarding the print media. It also thinks that the government has a strong case to ask the printers to stop publication of the newspaper. "This is a complete violation of the norms. Besides, the government was taken by surprise. The paper has kept...

When political bloggers bay in the blogosphere, do political reporters hear them? The answer, I quickly learned, depends on four factors: how you define "political blog"; which political bloggers you mean; which political reporters you mean; and--not to go all Bill Clinton on you--what the meaning of "hear" is. Blog, for the uninitiated, is shorthand for "Web log," online journals of thought and...

It will be interesting, now that the presidential campaign is over, to see if the nonfiction bestseller list gets back to its usual diet of biography and history and sex. Surely the Swift Boat guys will float away and the Kitty Kelleys and the Lies and the Lying Liars will hibernate for another four years. Or will they? Maybe a taste for partisan prose and image has taken hold. The number of...

You have probably noticed by now that journalism is being phased out. Our once noble calling is increasingly difficult to distinguish from things that look like journalism but are primarily advertising, press agentry, or entertainment. The pure news audience is drifting away as old readers die and are replaced by young people hooked on popular culture and amusement. We used to think the young...

Two weeks ago, I assessed the readability of the electronic editions of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times in this "Press Box" column. If you're joining the discussion late, electronic editions differ from standard Web renditions of newspapers: Rather than throwing up individual stories from a long list of headlines, they impose the complete look and feel of a print...

The big difference between the general elections of 1999 and this year's elections is that this time round, a large number of news channels - especially Hindi news channels - covered the elections fairly exhaustively. While allied media such as radio, the Internet and newspapers played a part in giving a blow-by-blow account of developments at the hustings, given the fact that political drama...

New York, May 17, 2004–Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, twenty-seven journalists have been killed covering the war and its aftermath. Nearly all of those killed in 2003 were foreign correspondents, from the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, Germany, the United States, and elsewhere. In 2004, however, 12 of the 14 killed to date were Iraqis. Six Iraqi media workers have also...

While evening papers (or eveningers) are extremely popular in India's commercial capital, the concept has never quite clicked in Delhi. As per IRS 2003-04, while 7 per cent of readers in Mumbai keenly follow eveningers, in Delhi, a mere 1 per cent of readers (12+ age group) read evening papers. Of course, the percentages for Delhi are likely to have risen since the time these findings were made...