Times of India affects salary cuts

The Times of India (TOI) has decided to cut the salaries of its staffers due to the 'recession'. Several editorial and non-editorial staffers are also being sacked.

It is laughable if the TOI managers say that the company is not making profit. For decades the organisation has made huge profits and even if we agree that there is a slight loss this year or lesser profit, the company is not poor enough that it needed to take such steps like cutting salaries.

Sadly, while the employees in other departments can get jobs elsewhere, for editorial staff the options remain less, as they have to search for jobs among the few available newspapers.

Despite being one of the oldest and among the highest circulated English dailies in the world, TOI has failed to earn respect. It was the first newspaper that ended the supremacy of editorial and the editor.

It made the managers all powerful, began publishing junk at the cost of hard news, gave excessive space to news about celebrities and gossip, covered little of the problems faced by the poor and even put the editorial space up for advertising.

Now it has again added a new chapter to its 'rich' history. Sadly, Hindi and other vernacular papers where journalists are paid even badly, can take similar decisions. After all, the Times has done it now.

Shameful. Especially because the Bennett, Coleman and Company has pockets deep enough to survive such meltdowns.

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Varun Gandhi's speech: Why newspapers misinformed readers on anti-Muslim comments?

Even after reading the mainstream newspapers, many readers were left wondering that what Varun Gandhi had exactly said in his communal and provocative speech at an election rally in Pilibhit?

The situation arose because strangley most of newspapers didn't report the offensive parts of the speech. Rather, the less provocative part was mentioned in the newspapers.

Take the example of Hindustan Times. It mentioned that Varun said if anyone raises a finger at Hindus then I swear on Gita that I will cut the hand. But this is the least of provocative part from his speech.

Even if the correspondents had seen the video footage on any of the channels, they could have realised that Varun had said lot more. The speech was inflammatory because he allegedly used the word 'katua' (circumcised) for Muslims and vowed to kill them.

On murder, rape and cowslaughter
The words could have been replaced by asterixes but the newspapers didn't report this at all, leaving the readers perplexed. Even the next day, HT's senior journalist Shekhar Iyer who covers the BJP beat reported the same sentence without mentioning the inflammatory lines about Muslims and wild charges about rapes of Hindu girls and cowslaughter or the comment regarding Pakistan.

The Times of India was no better. The Hindu was an exception. One reason was that print journalists didn't bother to watch the barely 2.36 minute video clip available on the internet and websites of other news channels. There is another reason.

Excess reliance on news agencies
The reliance on news agencies. The agencies like PTI are always extra cautious. They didn't report the harsh words and the extreme parts about the statement. The desk guys didn't take the trouble to find out more. Neither the reporters did.

As a result the readers who hadn't watched the video on TV channels, couldn't understand why the speech was considered so offensive that everybody was gunning for Gandhi junior and asking for his arrest.

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Journalist or politician?

It was interesting to see eminent journalist Chandan Mitra sent as special emissary to Orissa to save the BJD-BJP coalition. Mitra is not just editor of The Pioneer but also its MD and a Rajya Sabha member close to BJP.

But it does raises a question whether it is appropriate for a journalist to take sides and align himself openly to a political party? Doesn't it affect his credentials (as also the newspaper). Though Mitra, who is credited with turning around the 130-year-old newspaper, is not the first of the 'journalists' who nurse political ambitions.

He has surely gone beyond being a pro-BJP editor. He should have realised that the moral authority of a journalist (or editor) gets eroded when you get involved in the game of power. Journalists get more respect because of their supposed fairness.

Once you are not just an editor but also own the paper, do you need anything more? Rather being a political broker hurts the image. As in the case of Mitra, who returned empty-handed. He was not taken seriously by Naveen Patnaik.

In Indian Express, Coomi Kapoor wrote in her weekly column on March 15 that 'when Patnaik learnt that LK Advani had sent Mitra as the emissary for negotiating seat sharing, any little hope of reconciliation with the BJP ended.

Patnaik felt that BJP did not take its alliance with the BJD very seriously else they would not have sent a light-weight who is not even a party functionary'. Though Mitra is surely not a light-weight, it is true that he is no politician either.

A journalist will get far more respect from all the parties and the society if he remains fair. However, if you align yourself with a party, your stature doesn't go up, rather it becomes a liability.

Once you are seen as partisan, it hurts your credibility and your voice or writings no longer carry the same weight. And you can't expect yourself to be treated as a celebrity politician just because you have been a journalist.

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