Tabloid vs tabloid

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Pradyuman Maheshwari’s media-watching tabloid blog, Mediaah!, has been strong-armed out of existence by a bigger tabloid. While I’m no fan of the Times of India, I have no sympathy for Mr Maheshwari either. His criticism of the Times utterly lacked finesse. His doom was self-inflicted. Witness these exhibits: one, two.

When you criticise a publication’s lack of ethics, you do not do it by calling their editor a prostitute, fabricating a story, and excusing yourself with “haha, just kidding.” One unnamed writer has a longer story detailing what ailed Mediaah. It’s well worth reading, including their earlier story announcing Mediaah’s return from a previous demise.

ajju — Mar 16, 2005 4:08:10 AM — # ↩

Yup
I think if you are going to call yourself the media's media, you have to follow some rules. However if this was just someone's blog, I they should be allowed to call the editor whatever they want. It wouldn't be nice, surely, but it wouldn't be illegal.

But TOI is no better. Like check this TOI article about serial killers:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/436586.cms

One of the Indian 'serial killers' whose picture they've printed is actually a tamil comedian called Bhaskar. They found a page titled 'Serial Killer' with his photo on it by googling for it (at the time the article was published the page was amongst the top 10 results for 'serial killer india'), and just copy-pasted his image without even looking at the content of the page (which, amongst other things, contained some material about his role as a serial killer).

http://www.chennaionline.com/columns/chennaichat/chat36.asp

Now THAT is libel.
- frozenaftermath — Mar 16, 2005 11:42:17 AM — # ↩
  
  Re: Yup
  Dimwitted use of the net is one common thing that I have seen in all the newspapers I have worked for. Till this incident, and a few others after it, nobody would even warn the desk hands to not flick images from the net. Even now, it is considered an acceptable practice, even when most places pay through their noses for pictures from Reuters and other agencies.
  - madrasi — Mar 16, 2005 12:40:40 PM — # ↩
    
    Re: Yup
    beg to differ. where i work, in chennai, it has always been explicitly warned against ('flicking from the net') and prohibited. every image has to be individually credited.
    - Kiran Jonnalagadda — Mar 16, 2005 2:45:54 PM — # ↩
      
      Re: Yup
      The same where I last worked, except in text.
      
      quizling used to take much delight Googling for phrases that didn't match the writer's style, or more blatantly, used a different font from the rest of the text. We "lost" a writer or two thanks to his efforts.
      - madrasi — Mar 16, 2005 2:57:18 PM — # ↩
        
        Re: Yup
        some of the 'freelancers' giving their articles in save us even the effort of googling: without identifying sources, articles would just say 'with research inputs' from the net. :)
        btw, am not trying to isolate freelancers. i am sure a lot of the 'regulars' do it too.
    - frozenaftermath — Mar 17, 2005 11:57:37 AM — # ↩
      
      Re: Yup
      Umm.. must be one of those last bastions where things are still done the propah way :)
- Kiran Jonnalagadda — Mar 16, 2005 11:51:21 AM — # ↩
  
  Re: Yup
  If it wasn't so grave, we could kid about the Times's botched attempt at doing a Google News. From their piece:
  
  Bhaskar of Tamil Nadu has murdered around 230 persons.
  
  Bwahahahahahaha!
frozenaftermath — Mar 16, 2005 11:37:14 AM — # ↩

Finally I find someone from the blogs who is not going crazy screaming "murder!" about the Mediaah controversy. I agree with you about the lack of finesse and was really baffled by his wanting to eventually push Mediaah to something like a Poynter institute for India.
tushar — Mar 16, 2005 12:50:40 PM — # ↩

Agreed. The righteous indignation did sometimes get tiresomely vile.
beerbal — Mar 16, 2005 2:28:36 PM — # ↩

The media's media's media's tone isn't much better than the media's media's or the media's. Reminds me of this Kannada T.V. programme called 'Crime Diary'(?).

Speaking of the media, I'm on Shakti's side.
- Kiran Jonnalagadda — Mar 16, 2005 2:41:23 PM — # ↩
  
  What would the media's media's media be without the media's media's media's media to keep watch? ;-)
  
  And I found that report hilarious. One of Yash Chopra or Subhash Ghai (can't remember who) bellowing about Shakti being a real life villain. Ha ha ha.
  - harshar — Mar 16, 2005 4:25:42 PM — # ↩
    
    Some unknown force made me read the Shakti Kapoor article on ToI
    :) so that I could answer your question (Jace's Q) (given my class assignments)
    
    It was Preity Zinta!
    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1051126.cms
themadman — Mar 17, 2005 11:48:07 AM — # ↩

Unless I've missed something, he didn't call the editor a prostitute. He said the Times prostitutes content, which is hardly earth-shattering news. The difference is relevant.
- frozenaftermath — Mar 17, 2005 12:29:07 PM — # ↩
  
  You might want to read the way the post ends, the last para concludes something like this:
  
  "Rather crudely, we'd call it prostitution of journalism. Hey, so what does this make the editor of the newspaper?"
  
  In a weird way you are right, the ed is not being called a prostitute, but a pimp as far as I understand. And that is really not the quality of content or writing that I'd expect from someone wanting to start India's Poynter online. Even though I did love reading Mediaah as something of a P3P sort of set up for the industry people, I have no sympathies for either ToI or PM. They kind of deserved each other.
  
  And in an even more weirder case, I can see that 284 signatures (at the time of writing this) on the petition, at the same time when The Hoot (which I am all for being called a media watchdog) is struggling to keep going. I can't help but wonder how many of those outraged petitioners have seen the appeal for help or even considered helping The Hoot out.
- Kiran Jonnalagadda — Mar 17, 2005 1:04:52 PM — # ↩
  
  His exact words:
  
  Rather crudely, we'd call it prostitution of journalism. Hey, so what does this make the editor of the newspaper?
  
  Does it leave much to the imagination?