Swamped by ads

IN Media Watch Briefs | 01/10/2016

You know the festival season is here when the news becomes really hard to find in your daily newspaper. Today (1 Oct) if you add up all the advertising in the first section of the newspaper, 16  plus pages out of  32  in the Times of India carry ads, preceded by another four full pages which don't enter the paper's page count. For the Hindustan Times the figure is even more adverse for news seekers.  Seventeen plus pages out 26 pages carry advertisng, also preceded by another four pages of advertising before page 1 begins !              

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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.                   

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.                 

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