The Hoot : Articles

BY The Hoot| IN BOOKS |01/09/2014

What is monetarily beneficial for broadcasters is less so for viewers who earn very little, some of them reported cutting back on food and savings to meet the increased costs of watching television post digitisation.

Batting for Mukesh, Nita and Modi on Twitter

BY The Hoot| IN DIGITAL MEDIA |24/06/2014

Tweets from the Reliance crowd populate Twitter. Theirs is another take on the service this company and its owners do the nation.

Did the media manufacture consent in this election?

BY The Hoot| IN MEDIA PRACTICE |22/05/2014

Is the press so powerful in India that it is able to manufacture consent?

Driving justice: the Tejpal-Telheka coverage

BY The Hoot| IN SPECIAL REPORTS |18/03/2014

It was a case of sexual assault with no physical evidence, but plenty of verbal evidence. And the media went completely overboard. Over 12 days Times Now spent more than 50 per cent of its news time at 8-10 pm on this story.

Dealing with libel chill

BY The Hoot| IN OPINION |15/01/2014

Sahara India gets a book stayed, Praful Patel gets another book withdrawn from circulation. How to keep the powerful accountable if they can thwart exposÃ©s on wrongdoing ?

Professional vs family editors?

BY The Hoot| IN MEDIA PRACTICE |28/04/2011

Many journalists within the paper will welcome the move, even if Varadarajan’s rival claimants do not. The problem in the Hindu has always been, how far up the editorial ladder can a truly talented professional go?

Dark times

BY The Hoot| IN MEDIA FREEDOM |18/07/2010

In less than twenty days of this month there have been six assaults on journalists and one arrest in Manipur, Kerala, Kashmir, Maharashtra, Orissa and Delhi.

Winners and losers on the box

BY The Hoot| IN MEDIA PRACTICE |16/05/2009

NDTV and Headlines Today were way ahead of the rest of the pack with the numbers, particularly the alliance position, throughout the early hours of leads.

Defending TV news

BY The Hoot| IN MEDIA PRACTICE |24/02/2009

"The job of a journalist is not to be an inanimate, unthinking robot. You are seeing the liberation of TV as a news media. TV is speaking its mind."

PIL No.56 and more guidelines

BY The Hoot| IN LAW AND POLICY |15/02/2009

The Bombay High Court admits a public interest litigation on TV news coverage during the Mubai siege, and the New Broadcasters Association comes up with more guidelines.

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Media Watch Briefs

Amazon resisting voluntary censorship

The new term for self censorship is voluntary censorship, as proposed by companies like Netflix and Hotstar. ET reports that streaming video service Amazon Prime is opposing a move by its peers to adopt a voluntary censorship code in anticipation of the Indian government coming up with its own rules. Amazon is resisting because it fears that it may alienate paying subscribers.

Let the games begin

Clearly, the run to the 2019 elections is on. A journalist received a call from someone saying they were from Aajtak channel and were conducting a survey, asking whom she was going to vote for in 2019. On being told that her vote was secret, the caller assumed she wasn't going to vote for 'Modiji'. The caller, a woman, also didn't identify herself. A month or two earlier the same journalist received a call, this time from a man, asking if she was going to vote for the BSP.