Offstumped – Commentary on Indian Politics

Icon

Politics and Public Policy in India

Paid News scandal – related tweets

Yesterday P. Sainath writing in The Hindu alerted us to the fact that the much touted Press Council Report on “Paid News” was being archived without being made public. In response to his appeal, the Outlook Magazine made public the full text of the Press Council Report. After having perused the report can understand why the PCI may have wanted to archive it into cold storage. This report is an embarrassment to its authors and its sponsors. 

The reasons are below:

  • Not a single whistleblower in any of the media houses to expose Paid News, tells us of the degree to which Media in India is compromised
  • That the Press Council failed to find even shred of hard evidence while in the same breath claiming its widespread stands testimony to this
  • The bottomline on Paid News scandal is that for all the whistleblowing media does there are no whistleblowers inside Media house
  • The Conclusion section of the report stands out for its lameness
  • With all due respect to Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Press Council of India, a couple of part time Interns could have produced this report
  • Frankly all the report seems to have done is complied information already in the Public Domain and reproduced articles and speeches
  • Having speed read the 71 pages of much touted Paid News report must say it has been over hyped
  • Circumstantial evidence that News items on Ashok Chavan were paid news – PCI opinion, Paid news scandal
  • Times of India and CNN-IBN singled out for plugging in for Products – Paid News scandal
  • Paid News Investigation Report praises “Mint” for code ethics
  • Kudos to Outlook Magazine @SundeepDougal
  • RT @SundeepDougal The ‘Paid News’ Report :Full text of controversial report by Press Council of India’s subcommittee http://bit.ly/9UJekn

Filed under: betrayal of aam admi, CNN-IBN Boycott

5 Responses

  1. [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Offstumped, Center Right. Center Right said: RT @offstumped: Paid News scandal – related tweets: http://wp.me/ptnDV-KY [...]

  2. [...] compiles important tweets discussing the controversial report of Indian Press Council on “Paid [...]

  3. Vikas says:

    One mediocre TV anchor who has made it big, not because of merit but courtesy early bird advantage in the nascent TV journalism, has a favourite cliche – “Hamam main sab nange hain.” It turns out that the man was brutally honest, speaking the truth for all, including himself.

  4. Raghavendra says:

    In case some of you missed it, article by B Raman

    http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers40/paper3971.html

    …………………..Thus, according to American investigators the LET and Al Qaeda were responsible for the Samjauta Express blast and the HUJI for the Mecca Masjid blast.If the American investigators, who have better sources in Pakistan, are correct, how can our investigators claim that some arrested Hindus were responsible for these incidents? Justice and fairplay demand a thorough investigation into the two different versions that have emerged from Indian and American investigators. While the American investigators have blamed the LET, Al Qaeda and the HUJI, Indian investigators have blamed the Abhinav Bharat. Both cannot be correct.

  5. Amit says:

    Here’s some extensive coverage of Paid News issue in the Indian blogosphere:

    http://canarytrap.in/tag/paid-news

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

RSS Now playing on Offstumped Live

  • On Third Front day dreams and Uttar Pradesh nightmares – Wrap up Podcast March 14, 2012
    A podcast conversation with  @dubash (http://phalaka.com) where we wrap up the Uttar Pradesh polls discussion with a look at the final numbers and analysis of vote shares. We also look ahead on all the buzz around Akhilesh Yadav, the rise of the Samajwadi Party and all of the day-dreaming over a possible Third Front Government [...]
    admin

Live Tweets

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 6,709 other followers

Offstumped Archives

Disclaimer

Opinions expressed on this site using the alias Offstumped are the blogger's personal opinions and do not in any way reflect the views of the blogger's Employers.