It is quite weird when your resident Oil and Gas reporter bitches out a member of his tribe in another organisation, I mean the skeletons that tumble out make you sit back and say - Whoa! You hear of how people have a taste for expensive pens and expensive malts and how others host parties as go-betweens. I won't get into stories about my former colleagues, knowing that many of them read this blog, but my god, the things I have heard - I cannot ever ascertain the veracity of the stories, but knowing that the senior-most editor in the organisation had his honeymoon 'funded' by Air India, I'm genuinely not surprised if some of the stories were true.
So what is journalistic integrity? Do you keep that shiny mobile email device that a Canadian manufacturer gave away at a 'select' press briefing in Bombay recently - heck, the others in the group took it. Or do you like in Indian's least watched English news channel go on junkets like mad taking your 'friends' (from the channel, obviously) along with you (as cameramen!!! How much brains do you need to operate a DV camera?). Or as sometimes happens in my case, discover that your table is piled sky-high with boxes of electronic gadgetry that people sent over for reviews and they have steadfastly refused to take back. I mean, short of going to a PR agency to return a gadget, I have sometimes done everything. Then again, I might have done things earlier in my career that might leave me 'ethically compromised' too - even though I can swear I actually lost the products in question. (Taxi seats have a habit of swallowing things!)
So here we have a group of individuals who now get paid rather well, live the good life and get given products and nice foreign trips in Business Class and use their Press Cards and Press Stickers to try and get away with murder.
So would someone kindly explain to me what's going on?
Later on - more on Inky-Pinky TV, BAG TV (Bhagwan, Allah, God TV and no I did not make this up!) and the Living Media Group's already doomed to failure venture with the Daily Mail Group.
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8 comments:
The first junket is like losing your virginity, a pleasure or a pain depends on the other person, and not something you can repeat. But you have to lose it. I lost mine, Ford/1997 or 98 I think, but wised up real real fast after that.
Keep the scratch pads, keep the ball pens if plastic, return the gifts by courier or award them to readers through your columns. As far as testing stuff is concerned, make a big issue of giving it to the dak section of your company, and getting a delivery receipt. These things catch up, and there are files on such things, which surface at inopportune moments.
For the rest, suggest you take a break from media, join industry for a while. Justify your own airline tickets, learn about real life, and then come back into the media with 6-guns out. Meanwhile keep writing headless stuff under pseudonyms.
Man, I've watched you evolve, and am proud of what I read here. Congrats.
BTW, the 737 winglet, on 9W, was it an -800 or was it their lone -700with winglets? And did you check out the music selection on their IFE?
VT-JGH is a retrofitted winglet 737-85R - no IFE on this plane as yet.
I'm sure my file won't make for pleasant reading - remind me to destroy records at some PR companies sometime!
Haha - speaking of PR files on journos, have a look at MS' booboo in the US with Wired:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/business/media/02wired.html
Do desi PR firms keep files on journos?
Sorry - Blogger doesn't do word wrap on links. The Wired-MS pr booboo is here
Desi PR files are cogged from each other, because most current practitioners came out of the Cutlet School. Typically, they slot all Indian journalists as left-wingers for the benefit of their foreign clients, and as easily managed soaks for the benefit of their Indian clients.
I do recall seeing once, on the Internet, a collection of dossiers on Indian journalists, but that was a year or so ago. It has since vanished, and though I trawl mightily, am unable find it again.
K's dossier has him slotted as the leftie son of a rightie. Well, so be it, but it is more and more the Internet that will decide credibilities.
So . . . +++
VT-JGH retro-fitted winglets, interesting. Though that doesn't do anything to their average age/new fleet position, which is now moving closer to 7 years for the domestic fleet. Against less than 1.0 for Indigo and SpiceJet.
Still, 2A is a grand seat to have on 9W . . .
+++
GBO : Seat 4A actually 9W 822, how is their IFE. Plus I flew on the Whale recently, read mag for details.
Leftie - ME! I feel insulted!
Abhi - The 8800 incident is getting funnier - seeing that more than half of the Blackberry connect subscribers use Nokia E-series devices - RIM is trying to 'buy' publicity without advertising. In the past two days I have seen three journos with 8800's!
Bona - It ain't THAT bad everywhere, anyhow one of the worse ones seems to have decided to join his former paymasters at RelEnt!
Their IFE is very good, infact I would rate 9W audio channels way above anybody else on international circuits too. But then, I have a weakness for classic retro rock and soul, too, so you get the drift. I put some pictures up on my flickr pages look for vm2827 and that includes a cute one that has us hovering over DEL with the distance to go and minutes to go all mixed up.
As of now, most of the planes with IFE operate the metro routes, but they invariably surprise us on my favourite route, too.
5 of their top guys left in a day, hmmmmm, what's deeper?
See you on 17th at TP, then, I guess.
Okay so i am dying to put my sudden burst of anger against Indian media and i think this blog is appropriate enough,i am putting my two cents in your headline "Don't trust Indian media",well,-actually i would very much like to comment on another side of media--The Moral Policing side.
Mr.Richard Gere actively takes part in charities and AIDS awareness programmes in India.So today he was in Delhi along with "that girl"..what her name,she won Big brother in UK.Richard kissed her on cheek once and than suddenly he started kissing her like crazy obviously he was just having some fun infront of hundreds of people there but AAJ TAK "sabse pagle" are showing that all day long and are saying Richard "nay saari maan maryadon ko tod kar whats her name kay saath bhadda vyavhaar keeya"..I think media just want you to stick to your TV sets a little longer no matter how shameful they themselves look.Our media is embarressing.
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