News blackout

IN Media Watch Briefs | 17/05/2012

180 nurses, 80% of them from Kerala, have been on strike at the B M Birla Heart Research Center, Kolkata, since May 7^th demanding better wages, overtime and eight-hour duty schedules. There has been hardly any media coverage on this.Local Bengali newspapers, English dailies with Kolkata editions and local Bengali 24x7 news channels have largely ignored the demonstrations by the striking nurses. Today the nurses handed in mass resignations after informing the news organizations - both print and audio-visual - but hardly anyone turned up to cover this. Now if this was happening at a government hospital, the media frenzy would have been very visible. Is it because it is a Birla Hospital that news organizations dependent on corporate ads are ignoring the plight of these 180 nurses and the demonstrations within the hospital campus?

TAGS

News blackout

Subscribe To The Newsletter

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.