War for News a.k.a.
NDTV versus CNN-IBN versus TimesNOW “The All Seeing Spy presents The War for News” is a clunkily-named new blog commenting, often scathingly, on what is being shown on the principal news channels in India. I was first told about this by TIME OUT’s Nandini Ramnath and then today by Shivam Vij. The little flap over whether this blog was firewalled or not seems to be a non-issue; what I like about the site is the role it has assumed as a sort of critical forum for media professionals. It is difficult to have such a thing happen outside the blogosphere, so there’s much to be hopeful for in this new medium. The moderator’s latest blog appealing for civility demonstrates that people seem to be drinking and drowning in buckets of bile. But I want to quickly applaud the “All Seeing Spy”’s purposeful venture. If people with ideas and smart criticism read the blog and comment on it, I don’t doubt for a moment that television coverage in India will be better as a result. In fact, I’m hoping that when the television offerings are particularly insipid, people looking for fun will be reading the blog instead. Here’s a rather positive-sounding, less scabrous and therefore less interesting, post from earlier today by the “All Seeing Spy”:

Dubya Gone, but S U P E R B Television!

If we didn’t have jobs ourselves (which most doubt), we would have chosen to plonk ourselves in an armchair with cold beer and flip between the three channels from the time Bush landed till the time he took his ass north to Pakistan. From the snatches we caught — ok we got more than snatches — we thought coverage was, and predictably, saturated. Almost everything else came to a standstill. One almost forgot about poor Jessica Lall, though we must congratulate NDTV for keeping at it, unlike CNN-IBN which sort of let go of the thread for a bit. On the whole, however, there was only one way to cover Bush’s visit and all three did that admirably well. Times NOW’s rakish exposure of rented crowds, the dizzy coverage of protest rallies all out there just for the cameras, the blindingly idiotic SP protesters outside Parliament, the drone-like US staff, the dogs at Rajghat, an almost moronic Laura with morbid-looking muppets (dude, we didn’t grow up on Sesame Street and we grew up just fine…er.. ok maybe not entirely fine), the screeching security, the traffic. Wow. Current political affairs television in local India had its biggest moments over the last few days. There’s not a doubt about it. And television news rose to the occasion.

“After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.”

Posted on Sepia Mutiny, the anti-Islamism manifesto published in the now famous Jyllands-Posten, signed by Salman Rushdie and others. Opening paragraphs below:

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

The press reports:

Bush began the day by paying respects at a memorial to Mohandas K. Gandhi, India’s independence leader and apostle of nonviolence. Following tradition, the president and his wife, Laura, left their shoes behind. Bush also conferred with the CEOs of Indian and American businesses, religious leaders and the head of India’s political opposition.
Bush and Singh announced new bilateral cooperation on issues from investment, trade and health to agriculture, the environment and even mangoes. Bush agreed to resume imports of the juicy, large-pitted fruit after a 17-year ban.
The president ended the day at a state dinner with Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam under a crescent moon in a lush courtyard of the presidential palace. Waiters in red tunics and red-and-white turbans scurried to serve broccoli-almond soup, seafood and peach ice cream after toasts of mango juice by the two heads of state.

The writer Arundhati Roy is not in a welcoming mood. Baby Bush Go Home, she says. At the same time, a report on the writer’s campaign against the Bush visit offers a quote that she is “at the end of the rope, in terms of this kind of work.”

To put the Bush visit in proper perspective, of course, there is this article by Mike Selvey.