Applying Standards: Media Owners and Journalism Ethics

Recent focus in global discussions of media ethics has been on establishing and raising standards for rank-and- file journalists, including reporters and lower or mid-level editors. But there is a nascent effort to refocus a critical lens on the proprietors of media. When it comes to codes of ethics for media owners, the traditional organizations concerning themselves with ethics in journalism have been noticeably silent. Scan the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) code of ethics, considered the...

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Are Social Networks the New Media?

‘Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to mention just a few have become powerful tools of communication,’ says Kiran Agarwal of Dum Dum Road, Kolkata. They are meant to connect people, enabling them to interact, revive childhood friendships, keep in touch with distanced friends and family, and keep aware about current changes and so on. Anyone can be a part of it, provided ethics of internet etiquette is maintained.      Danah M. Boyd and Nicole B. El...

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BOYS DON’ T CRY GENDER-STEREOTYPING IN REVERSE?

  Vogue India is currently running a public service campaign on satellite channels protesting against domestic violence. The well-written, tightly-knit script is built up of collages that show boys of different ages from toddlers to adult young sportsmen being urged not to cry. The climax shows a quiet, grave-faced, handsome young man pulling at something you cannot see. The camera tracks behind and one gets a glimpse into the man twisting the arm of his wife whose face is already badly bruised th...

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Day-old news won’t cut it in print anymore

If you asked me what are the three main challenges of any newspaper company today, my answer would be: first, to evolve from mono-media companies to multimedia information engines;  second, to integrate all your editorial and business resources into an open multimedia newsroom;  and third, to rethink and reinvent the editorial models of your print products in this new multimedia landscape. All of them are unavoidable. The first one must be led by owners, CEOs, and publishers. The sec...

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Does the Media Shape the Woman’s Body?

The advertising media, as seen in print, online, and on television, has been overtly and covertly instilling in women across the world, the concept of a beautiful body that cancels out everything to do with a high body weight, in other words, obesity. Obese women are thus made to feel guilty about their bodies even if the obesity is due to severe genetic or sometimes incurable medical conditions. In Indian cinema, actresses such as Tun Tun and Manorama, good actresses both, were trapped in the stereotypic...

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E-groups for Scholars

Every year, millions of news items on Kerala appear in print. With the proliferation of district-level editions of Malayalam newspapers that localise sub-district news in inner pages, it has become impossible for any journalist to keep track of every news story in one state, even within one’s own narrow topics of interest. A similar information overload problem confronts the academic. Thousands of scholarly journals are published in the social sciences and humanities, and academics are flooded by...

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INDIAN WOMEN IN JOURNALISM

The percentage of women in Indian journalism has been rising every day spanning the many areas of media ranging from print through radio, television and the Internet. Women have taken leading roles in news channels and even on the boards of some national newspapers of course, via family ties the paper already has. This is not confined to the English media but reaches out far and wide to embrace the languages recognized by the Indian constitution and has publications or channels or stations delivering in t...

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