Defamatory, but who cares?

IN Media Watch Briefs | 08/05/2017

Republic TV is certainly breaking new ground. One April 8 it conducted a murder investigation in a TV studio, and kept calling the death of Sunanda Pushkar a murder before anything had been conclusively proven. At one point Arnab Goswami also described Shashi Tharoor as a cold-blooded murderer. Defamation is evidently not an issue. Nineteen audio tapes were presented as circumstantial evidence before a large panel of studio guests, where the two politicians present were both from the BJP. The only representative on the panel who was described as a long time associate of Shashi Tharoor was drowned out by a shouting Goswami whenever he tried to speak. Finally, there were ample hints right through the programme that Goswami and the reporter had the incriminating tapes when they were at Times Now but that the channel had not been allowed to put out the tapes because of pressure from Tharoor.

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Shashi Tharoor Arnab Goswami Republic TV

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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.