Puff for Meru?

IN Media Watch Briefs | 24/07/2011

Mint Lounge on 23 July had a feature on riding through Delhi in the wee hours. The writer was supposedly checking out police commissioner B K Gupta’s statement that women shouldn’t travel alone at 2 am. A Meru cab is used for the sojourn, we are told, with the writer helpfully explaining that Meru Cabs gave a free lift. And peppered through the feature are nuggets about how many cabs Meru has, the GPS-enabled screen, how drivers bid for passengers. The cab driver is a kind of narrator for the writer about the goings-on at night. Can’t HT Media, which owns Mint, afford to pay for a cab ride for its journalists? Does it have to resort to such stealth advertising?

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.