Menlo Park junket

IN Media Watch Briefs | 29/09/2015

Mr Modi wasn't the only one who went to Menlo Park. A bunch of Indian journalists from top newspapers did too, as guests of Facebook. As the debate in India over Net Neutrality and Facebook's Internet.org grows, the company evidently decided on a PR corrective. As Mark Zuckerberg tells both the Hindu and the Indian Express, it is very important for Facebook that India "gets the Net Neutrality debate right." Hence the hosted junket. But TOI, HT, Mint, BS don't seem to have joined the party. And while the Hindu on September 29 has an op-ed interview with Zuckerberg by the man who went, it publishes a counter view right below it by their digital media columnist.

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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.