Dropped Catch?

Has another online news venture bitten the dust? For the last few days, English news portal Catch News, launched by the Rajasthan Patrika group based in Jaipur, has been showing a blank space where the news and photos used to normally appear. A day or so with a barren format could be attributed to technical faults but this seems ominous. The portal’s owners have shown they can be capricious. A former senior editor, Shoma Choudhury, known for taking a strong position on issues, was summoned to Jaipur some months ago and told that her services were no longer needed. No reasons were given. If Catch has indeed been dropped from the owner’s scheme of things, it spells bad news for the portal’s editor, Bharat Bhushan, the former founding editor of Mail Today, and his staff, numbering close to 30.

Storm Warning

Minister for Information & Broadcasting, Smriti Irani, seems to take her brief pretty seriously. When all news television channels were running live reports on the violence in Haryana and Punjab following the conviction of Dera Sacha Sauda chief Ram Rahim for rape, she promptly started tweeting, cautioning news channels to “exercise restraint”. She dug up an obscure clause in the National Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) to remind editors of their duties. She tweeted: “Drawing attention of News Channels to Clause B of Fundamental Std. of NBSA refraining channels from causing panic, distress & undue fear.” Irani was actually in an unofficial meeting with office bearers of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) when the violence was at its peak. The members included Zee TV’s Puneet Goenka and India TV’s Rajat Sharma. The IBF promptly put out its own advisory: “Re Baba Ram Rahim case. Please verify the facts before putting them on air because lots of rumours are floating around.” Ironically, violence was also directed at the media with OB vans set on fire and TV crew attacked.

Stree Shakti

Women’s power was on display during the Kerala Union of Working Journalists (KUWJ) elections. The Union was till now dominated by male members. But when results came in last fortnight, the journalist fraternity in God’s Own Country was in for a surprise—90 percent of women candidates were elected! The results are seen as a major transition for what was regarded for decades as a male dominated organisation. The KUWJ elections are keenly fought and women candidates were fielded in the past as a mere tokenism. But this time around, the women contested in larger numbers and romped home victorious. Three cheers to stree shakti!

Berating the Rest

The war of TV channels makes anchors turn into fierce PR men promoting their channel as better than the rest. Bhupendra Chaubey of CNN TV18 was recently in his elements when he used an interview given to the channel by Union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi to launch a tirade against all hyper-nationalistic news channels. The home secretary’s remark that it was unfortunate that sections of the media wrongfully project Kashmir as an us Vs them issue was the one point that Chaubey pounced on and editorialised. A long tirade followed with thinly veiled references to Republic TV and Times Now. The burden of what Chaubey said was this: Do not trust news channels who throw views at you and present it as news. Neither should viewers believe the jingoistic and vitriolic bilge that is spewed out as the position of the government. He even took a pot-shot at channels which try to emulate the big patriotic boys (was that a reference to News X?) and said that there is a marked difference between news that is real and what is manufactured in the studio. Well said Chaubey, although some would say his own channel has also been guilty of   occasionally crossing the line of no control!