Over dinner last night I was told that China is hosting a summit on Human Rights next month and had invited some very senior journalists to take part to talk about how 'Human Rights' in the east is different from the western view of the topic. Now, even though I find the main argument dubious, the invites to the summit were sent out way before the recent crisis in Tibet. It sems that one of the invitees has pulled out citing illness, though he told me that it is the 'prudent' thing to do and the Chinese are very touchy of criticism. The NHRC Chief who was supposed to go has found another summit in London to attend and is sending a lowly B-grade officer - though the NHRC is 'officially' attending. But guess who the keynote speaker at the 'Human Rights' summit will be - N.Ram of The People's Daily of Chennai. I wonder what he will say? Even though given that Xinhua will give the summit wall-to-wall coverage, I'm sure we will read about it.
Talking of China, I would like to see what happens on Thursday in Delhi when the Torch is carried through the streets. I've got a funny feeling with all the bandobast (which is why a parallel relay will be run), there won't be too many protests but given that there are so many journalists who have gotten stoned at the cemetary at St Johns in the Wilderness at McLeodganj and have slight pro-Tibet sympathies I'm wondering if a member of the Fourth Estate will do something silly. I'm not going because there will be far too many cops and it'll be too hot.
In other news, NewsX has made onto Tata-Sky. Damn, now I will have to watch it soon. And Financial Chronicle has (supposedly) launched in Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore (though no-one has seen it) but no website is still in sight for either news organisation. I though media companies have a web strategy in place nowadays before they have a physical product ready - internet age and all, so launching with no website in plain sight (first page of Google) is a problem methinks! And UTV's new biz channel is launching on the 25th (supposedly).
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3 comments:
saw 9x english news...OH MY GOD. soooo bad. hinglish reporters, anchors who look oh so lost. The only thing going for them is the colour scheme....thank god it isnt red.
The Chronicle group's website has the metatag :An English newspaper. With it's largest sales in Hyderabad". I think that just about describes the scope of their ambitions and abilities.
In fact, if any of the existing newspaper group's could go down in a ball of flames, then this would be the group, thanks to their affinity for dodginess, shady accounting policies and strange valuation norms. And of course, wild diversification.
China's organizing a Human Rights summit? Wow. It's like hitler holding a summit on racial equality and george bush holding a summit on planning!!!
And no no!! Don't watch 9x. It's worse than Doordarshan in the 1980's.
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