Media Culpa

Here's a look at the front page of today's Times of India, Delhi edition. Let's start with the lead (In Congress, a battle rages for quote crown): HRD minister Arjun Singh's suspected attempt to appropriate the political ownership of the move to introduce OBC quota in Central institutions has finally run into in-house resistance. Suspected attempt? Who is suspecting Arjun Singh of doing anything? The next para says: Social justice minister Meira Kumar has questioned the justification of the HRD...

One of the best ways to tighten a copy is to do away with redundant words. Many redundancies crop up in copies because of a reporter or a sub-editor's desire to add colour to a story. This Reuters creed provides a glaring example (Two former ministers arrested over Kashmir sex scandal; Reuters; June 20, 2006): An angry mob ransacked the house of a woman suspected of running the sex ring in Srinagar, the state's summer capital, soon after it broke in April. The woman and three others were...

Hyphens again, folks. You need to be careful while creating a noun from a phrasal verb. By and large, the rule of the thumb says that you need to hyphenate the noun. Read this (Big names in sleaze story; Hindustan Times; June 25, 2006): While Anand Suman Singh, a Uttaranchal Sahitya Kala Sanskriti Parishad member has been arrested for allegedly procuring call girls to supply them to politicians and bureaucrats, speculations are rife about a massive cover up to prevent more names being made...

Deny does not mean the same as rebut (which means argue to the contrary, producing evidence), or refute (which means to win such an argument). See this (Big names in sleaze story; Hindustan Times; June 25, 2006): "If there was pressure, Singh may have escaped arrest. All the accused have already been sent to judicial custody," stated SSP Dehra Dun SK Gunjyal refuting charges of political pressure on the police. Gunjyal did not refute anything, he merely denied charges of political pressure. He...

There's so much of violence and blood around today that journalists seem to have become inured to the usage of words pertaining to killings, deaths, violence. So much so that many have started believing that from killing to execution, and from massacre to carnage, they all mean the same thing. Read this extract from "Delhi Police bringing Abu Salem to town" (Hindustan Times; June 25, 2006): On Dawood's orders, Salem and Sharma had hatched the plot to assassinate Babloo Srivastava. On November 1...

There are no problems with hypens; inept writers have a problem with hyphens. Most subs have the morbid — almost pathologically irresistible — tendency to insert hyphens as if to assert their command over the language. Consider this sentence from a June 19 Press Trust of India (PTI) creed. Hindustan Times did not think it fit to drop the hyphen either. State police and various security agencies have been questioning the terrorist Manzoor Alam, arrested from Sheshnag, en-route to the Holy cave...

Making a news item out of another news feature is usually a bad idea. It is worse still if the story itself does not stand. And that is what it was with the Press Trust of India (PTI) item of March 26 which told us about Time magazine commending the work of Sunita Narain and Bhure Lal. "And it was largely due to their fight that the last diesel bus had left Delhi by December 2002 and 10,000 taxis, 12,000 buses and 80,000 rickshaws were powered by CNG" is what the report said. So far, so good...

So here it is, after all -- a correction from the New York Times on its description of the Press Trust of India. Corrections: For the Record Two articles on October 11 about the earthquake that struck India and Pakistan on October 8 misstated the ownership of the Press Trust of India, a main source of initial information on casualties and damage. (The error also occurred in unrelated articles on April 18, and May 26.) The news agency is a nonprofit cooperative owned by India's newspapers, not...

The New York Times has been diligently carrying stories on the earthquake that are being churned out by its zealous correspondents stationed in India and Pakistan. In its October 11, 2005 edition, NYT had a poignant story: An Earthquake's Pain Unites Two Rivals, for the Moment. All fine, but somewhere in Somini Sengupta's copy was a mention about the Indian news agency Press Trust of India being "state-run." Trade and tourism has inched up in recent years. Transportation links have been extended...

Outlook has completed 10 years. That's good news of course, considering that its editor Vinod Mehta did not quit the race midway through, as he was always allegedly wont to. Outlook is also known for its oft-brought out collectors' issues. Its 10th anniversary could not have provided an exception. It is a collector's piece all right, together with a section on the media. Outlook, of course, is a journo's magazine, and the media section took all the potshots it takes at those who are dumbing down...