Blogs

When a law does not exist pertaining to an issue at hand, good journalists abide by a sense of ethics. Good journalists, of course, are an endangered species. The debate regarding whether rape victims should be named is not a new one. But most news establishments in the West have clear policies against publishing victims’ names. Legally, rape victims’ names are part of public records, specifically those dealing with law enforcement and the court system. But good journalists typically avoid...

It was a sunny winter afternoon, and as cold as it gets in West Bengal. We, a group of journalists, were on a press trip to Mahishadal in West Bengal's Midnapore district. It was one of those occasions when seniors would be tied up, giving a rookie an opportunity to report. With barely a year in the profession with news agency Press Trust of India (PTI), and that too on the desk, I needed this break. Chief Minister Jyoti Basu was to address this rally. With kar sewaks at their dance of death in...

Every now and then someone or the other asks me about how they should ensure their privacy on Facebook. Then there are quite a few others who are not on Facebook simply because they are mortally scared that their much-cherished privacy would be intruded upon. Those who seek advice may not be Facebook-savvy. And those who are scared, their fear is not that misplaced either. What most don't know is that existing tools on Facebook go a long way in helping you keep your privacy. Quite a long way...

Maintaining bookmarks is a wonderful practice. But when one has to make a selection of 20 from hundreds of bookmarked items, not many of which you would remember anyway, it doesn't seem to be a very wonderful task at hand. It is tedious. One has to go through every second item to remember what on earth it was about. Of all the things that I do, I had been maintaining a bookmark folder dedicated to articles on Kashmir. I, initially, thought of compiling a list of 10 articles that all non...

For those think the Commonwealth Games have been all about the art of swindling, here's some news. An art project is aiming to create a memory of the Games and Delhi, in the tradition of "memory making" through photographs, postcards and souvenirs. The Delhi Commons project includes a series of mail/ public art projects including a mobile photo studio, a Delhi souvenir project and a postcard series. As creative practitioners, the artists hope to add to the discourse on mega events such as the...

India is the biggest censor of The Economist, the magazine has said on its website. Since January 2009 The Economist has been banned or censored in 12 of the 190-odd countries in which it is sold, with news-stand (as opposed to subscription) copies particularly at risk. India has censored 31 issues. However its censorship consists mainly of stamping “Illegal” on maps of Kashmir because it disputes the borders shown. China, however, is more proscriptive. Distributors destroy copies or remove...

Americans now view secrecy about possible terrorist attacks differently, depending on the type of the plot. There are dramatic differences in the willingness to accept government secrecy across various types of threats, a new study has found. Policies that would withhold information about terrorist plots involving commercial airlines will not be acceptable to more than 80 per cent of the people, but information about threats to airports or the financial system can be withheld from the...

When Facebook introduced its "like" button, the idea was liked across the social networking site. The lazy ones liked it because instead of having to undertake the arduous task of having to type "hot" or "awesome" or even "nice" in the comments box, they could just click on the button and carry on with their task of liking posts, links and status messages all over the place. Then, of course, are there are those people who do take the trouble of keying in "hot", "awesome" or even "nice". But do...

The online world is one of such hoaxes that it gets my goat quite too often. My mailboxes (I have loads of them, and they collectively get me hundreds of mails every day) collect email hoxes far too many for my sanity. Either I am too steeped in work or simply too lethargic to respond to the senders. The average sender, usually, is a friend who is blissfully naive or unaware of email hoaxes or both. He or she would have, in turn, got the mail from some friend of his/hers and would have forwarded...

Hidden tribes make an esoteric subject for films. But, this one was for real — one that did not quite make news. A man belonging to the only uncontacted tribe in South America outside the Amazon basin has been sighted near a region targetted for deforestation by Brazilian cattle-ranchers. When spotted, the man hid behind a tree, and later fled. The next day an abandoned camp, a clay dish, and game ready for cooking were found nearby. The man, according to Survival International, is one of an...