IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |05/01/2018
The Adani group has filed a Rs 100 crore civil defamation suit against The Wire for an analysis published on November 11, 2017 which asked if it made economic sense for the state-owned Indian Oil Corporation and Gail India to pick up stakes in the Adani group-promoted LNG terminals in Odisha and Gujarat...
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |06/01/2018
Alt News reports that eight websites deleted their stories on Ambani junior, Anant Ambani's speech at Reliance Industries' 40th anniversary event. His speech apparently took social media by storm, with lots of memes surfacing on Twitter. Stories on that trend which appeared on sites like ScoopWhoop, Storypick and DailyO were soon taken..
The Sahara-Birla papers: such reluctant coverage!
BY SEVANTI NINAN| IN MEDIA PRACTICE |07/01/2017
Now that the Express has turned up some hard evidence, will Google searches on this story continue to yield spectacularly sparse results,
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |08/09/2016
Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani thinks the controversy over Reliance Jio’s launch ad using a picture of the prime minister is baseless. “He is as much your prime minister as he is my prime minister. He has given a Digital India vision which I am personally inspired by…there is nothing political..
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |08/06/2016
The Mukesh Ambani owned news network is expanding. This article describes how. Network 18's ETV network has just soft launched 3 more news channels in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam under the News18 banner...
Keeping the veil on Reliance down
BY PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA| IN MEDIA BUSINESS |25/09/2015
By and large, coverage of the Sheena Bora murder has excluded a 2013 official report suspecting fraud in Reliance’s links with the Mukerjea-owned INX/NewsX group.
BSES vs ToI: a defamation biggie
BY PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA| IN DEFAMATION |08/09/2015
BSES Limited, a company in the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), has sought a stupendous Rs 5,000 crore as damages from BCCL for a series of stories in August based on a draft CAG report.
BY PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA| IN MEDIA BUSINESS |14/06/2015
After Reliance took over Network18, how have its TV channels fared as compared with rivals
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |09/06/2015
Did an Ambani group entity give an interest free loan to Prannoy and Radhika Roy and their private holding company RRPR Holding Pvt Ltd. in 2009, which was actually a bailout and takeover in the guise of a loan? Moneylife has published today the details of a loan agreement under..
IN MEDIA PRACTICE |18/03/2015
The media has plunged into infamy in recent years because of paid news at election time and journalists working as the paid agents of corporations.
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |16/02/2015
Talk about the nexus between politics, business and the media. Rajat Sharma epitomises it all. A detailed profile of one of India's most high-profile television anchor-owners by the Economic Times highlights how individuals and firms associated with the corporate conglomerates headed by Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani have been generous..
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |08/12/2014
Who is the most influential media person in the country? If you judge a journalist-entrepreneur by his power to draw the powerful to celebrate his success it should be Rajat Sharma. His 21st anniversary of Aap ki Adalat had the president, the prime minister, most members of the cabinet, chief..
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |05/12/2014
CNBC TV18 was running an hour long exclusive interview on December 4 with Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries (who owns the channel) on growth in the different sectors Reliance is in. It was repeated at night. The Economic Times meanwhile was saying on its website that comments made by Ambani during..
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |11/11/2014
The CBI now says there is enough evidence to prosecute chairman of Aditya Birla Group KM Birla and former coal secretary PC Parakh, in the Hindalco case. The Hindu, TOI, Indian Express and others carried it on page one. The Hindustan Times played it down to a tiny item on..
'The negative media campaign just crushed us'
IN MEDIA PRACTICE |27/06/2014
Yogendra Yadav tells PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA and MOHAMMAD GHAZALI in the second part of their interview with him.
Batting for Mukesh, Nita and Modi on Twitter
BY The Hoot| IN DIGITAL MEDIA |24/06/2014
Tweets from the Reliance crowd populate Twitter. Theirs is another take on the service this company and its owners do the nation.
BY sevanti ninan| IN OPINION |12/06/2014
The past fortnight has underscored the triumph of media proprietors over media stars.
Raghav Bahl: felled by his own philosophy?
BY VIVIAN FERNANDES| IN MEDIA BUSINESS |31/05/2014
That he did not expect Mukesh Ambani to formalise control is evident from the Think India Foundation set up last year and his plans for it.
BY hoot| IN MEDIA BUSINESS |30/05/2014
One of the recent irritants in the run up to RIL's formal takeover of Network 18 and TV 18 has been the coverage of AAP by its news channels.
The Ambanis and the freedom of expression
BY ARUNODAY MAJUMDER| IN BOOKS |28/04/2014
While the near ban on 'The Hindus' was widely reported, that on 'Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis' by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta was barely covered by the media..
BY PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA| IN MEDIA PRACTICE |28/04/2014
As the book 'Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis' gets a third legal notice the message goes out that just doing a solid journalistic job is not enough protection.
BY PRANATI MEHRA| IN BOOKS |31/03/2014
The 'innovative' ideas of Medianet and Private Treaties are discussed with some generosity and without examining what it did to journalists and their trade.
BY sevanti ninan| IN OPINION |13/11/2013
Just how much surrogate ownership is there in media? The intricacy with which this is done is fascinating in the latest case to come to light..
BY PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA| IN MEDIA BUSINESS |12/11/2013
"Thus, it can be seen that the buyer and seller were one and the same group, that is, Reliance. The maze of companies and web of fund movement was created only to hide the identity of the group"
'Serious fraud' and self-censorship
BY PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA| IN SPECIAL REPORTS |07/11/2013
A government agency is investigating possible fraud in RIL's links with INX (9X) Media four years ago, and the role played by multinational private equity firm, New Silk Route.
Bal, Open and the perils of political journalism
BY PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA| IN MEDIA FREEDOM |15/11/2013
"What Manu has verbally communicated to me is that Sanjiv Goenka told him that because of Hartosh, I am making a lot of enemies...political enemies."
IN OPINION |19/10/2013
TV news went delirious with delight. Programming for three days was assured. But a large part of the print media firmly stuffed a handkerchief into its mouth.
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |16/10/2013
Kumar Mangalam Birla does not own the Hindustan Times. But his loyal relatives there have ensured that the paper completely blacked out a story which everybody else had as a first lead--the filing of an FIR in the coal scam against Birla. Or was it some loyal senior staffer who.
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |15/10/2013
India Today's website carried a PTI story on the fact that the CBI filed an FIR on Tuesday naming Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla in a criminal conspiracy regarding a coal block allocation. But on Headlines Today, despite double decker news headlines scrolling away, the news could not..
Ownership, self censorship, etc
IN OPINION |18/10/2013
Some media owners are people in public life and will be in the news, for good or bad. How should they be covered? How much self censorship should there be if the news is bad, how much publicity if it is good
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |31/08/2013
Now it's the turn of Bloomberg TV India. On Friday more than 30 people were sacked by the business channel. Those who lost their jobs included directors, camera persons, editors, producers and an anchor. Each one was given three months' salary, in addition to the August salary. Anil Ambani is..
BY sevanti ninan| IN MEDIA PRACTICE |01/07/2013
Welcome step in the reforms process, or a concession to benefit Reliance Industries? Major newspapers could not agree, or chose not to comment.
Exits over ESOPs attract attention
BY PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA| IN MEDIA BUSINESS |10/06/2013
The Forbes India departures highlight how vulnerable even senior journalists have become in a media environment that has become increasingly uncertain and volatile.
Reliance's pre-emptive legal notices
BY PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA| IN MEDIA FREEDOM |20/05/2013
Can legal notices be deployed to prevent a publication from coming out with an article
BY sevanti ninan| IN OPINION |02/05/2013 ?
It is difficult to get too sanctimonious about media ownership. Family owned media have also had proprietors who were occasionally up to no good. ??
Self correcting, but not on ethics
BY sevanti ninan| IN OPINION |27/12/2012
The industry is set to self correct where its financial viability is concerned. On cleaning up its ethics, it is going to need a lot more prodding.
Current costs and future prospects. Decoding BCCL, Part IV
IN MEDIA BUSINESS |18/11/2012
"We were a content company that used technology. Now we are a technology company that uses content."
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |30/10/2012
While Ravi Dhariwal, CEO of BCCL, was busy praising his newspapers (TOI & ET) at a CII seminar in Delhi, Amit Khanna, chairman of Anil Ambani’s Big Reliance Entertainment told Dhariwal that he had once approached one of his newspapers to cover a film festival but was asked to contact BCCL’s Medianet team, which..
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |26/09/2012
Some companies have strongly disapproved of a song from Prakash Jha’s film Chakravyuh, to be released soon. The song called 'Mahangai' takes a dig at big corporate houses like the Aditya Birla Group, Batas, Tatas and the Reliance group by saying that these groups have “exploited the nation for their own..
BY ANJALI PURI| IN ARCHIVE |25/09/2012
A HOOT SPECIAL REPORT-close to two years after the Radia tapes emerged, media management remains a hardy industry.
Convergence implicit in consolidation
BY PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA| IN MEDIA BUSINESS |15/08/2012 ?CONVERGENCE AND CONSOLIDATION - PART II. The three latest corporate investors in the media industry signal the entry of non-media players, two of them with telecom interests.
BY sevanti ninan| IN OPINION |07/06/2012
Now that we are into a different season of need, the corporate acquisition of media is growing again.
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |08/01/2012
Karan Thapar’s show The Last Word says it is the first of its kind weekly show on Indian television which debates issues related to the media. It is on CNN IBN, which is part of the Network 18 Group. Last week the big media story of the week was the..
BY sevanti ninan| IN OPINION |31/12/2011
Consolidation has begun. One by one, India's original TV entrepreneurs who grew at an impressive pace, are being bailed out by big business.
BY Padmaja Shaw| IN MEDIA PRACTICE |09/09/2011
On prime time news on Sept. 8 NDTV, CNN IBN and Times Now all chose in their synchronised wisdom to go after Mr Praful Patel. But lost steam when it came to the second CAG report on the Petroleum ministry and Reliance.
Media ownership: interesting indicators
BY hoot desk| IN MEDIA BUSINESS |04/03/2011
Interesting indicators emerge from the mandatory March declarations. About the investments made by the Ambani brothers in media, and about the presence of companies registered in Mauritius in the shareholding of media companies.
BY sevanti ninan| IN MEDIA BUSINESS |13/12/2010
As Outlook unveils more tapes, more Ambani connections to the media pop up.
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |24/08/2009
When Anil Ambani writes a loaded piece about trust in the Speaking Tree column of the Times of India ("Trust is everything, nurture it" August 22) you wonder who will turn spiritual next for the benefit of the Times. Brother Mukesh? And how will they repay the paper for the..
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |19/08/2009
When the Ambani brothers are at war it is good for the media in more ways than one. It gives them news stories emanating from both sides to live off, and it also yields advertising. On August 19 morning every newspaper in Delhi and doubtless other cities, had huge front..
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |06/01/2009
On the latest talk show "First Ladies" on NDTV¿s Good Times, Nita Ambani in her clipped accent exclaimed that the Rs. 250 crore luxury jet was not her birthday present. The real gift, she quipped, was a film on her life specially commissioned by husband dear. Wonder what the other Ambani Bahu with a yatch worth Rs. 200..
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |18/11/2010
The Open Magazine tapes also have Vir Sanghvi talking to Nira Radia about what he can do to give Mukesh Ambani a platform.
Reliance Power sues Statesman for Rs 1000 crore
BY hoot| IN MEDIA FREEDOM |30/10/2007
A series in the run up to Reliance Power’s IPO has attracted a defamation suit. The Bombay High Court declined to order restraint on further publication and the series continues to run.
IN MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS |10/09/2007
That media has become immensely paying is borne out by the news that the second and third highest salary earners in India are Sun TV CMD Kalanithi Maran and Joint MD Kavery Kalanithi, whose annual remuneration was Rs 23.26 crore each in 2006-07. They are second only to Mukesh Ambani..
Performing cartwheels for Mukesh
BY Thakore| IN OPINION |27/06/2006
It is not the task of a newspaper to bring investment or be a partner in the progress of a state.
| IN OPINION |20/06/2005
An avidly followed soap opera ends and draws very cautious comment
IN MEDIA PRACTICE |07/07/2003
The President of India delivered the first Dhirubai Ambani memorial lecture and the media coverage was both riveting and revealing.
IN MEDIA PRACTICE |01/09/2002
Cast your mind back: which Indian in recent memory has so overwhelmed the media with his death
The Indian Media Takes On The Prime Minister¿s Office
IN MEDIA PRACTICE |31/08/2002
One newspaper, the Asian Age has taken to keeping up a daily barrage of investigations into the transactions of India’s most politically powerful industrial house, Reliance, owned by the Ambanis
