by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, News, Politics
Venkaiah Naidu
Guwahati : Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday said the media was supposed to avoid sensationalism, report news without coloring with views and appealed them to create awareness about the challenges confronting the nation.
The media must always be free, fair and objective to champion the cause of the underdogs, he said while addressing the gathering after giving away Pratidin Achievers Awards 2017 here.
“Unfortunately, there is an increasing tendency in the newsrooms of the print and electronic media to sensationalise isolated incidents while relegating real hard news to the background. In the long run, this will not only cause damage to the credibility of media but will harm democracy itself as media will not be able to perform its role of an independent watchdog,” he said, according to an official statement.
While appreciating Pratidin Group for recognising excellence in different fields, he made an appeal that “such media houses to conduct campaigns and competitions on issues such as Swachh Bharat to promote awareness on cleanliness and sanitation”.
“Maybe, its TV channel must encourage the cleanest mohalla or locality by giving wide coverage. Such promotional coverage will not only help in creating awareness but also inspire others to follow suit,” he said.
The Vice President also said that awareness should also be created on fighting various challenges confronting the nation such as growing atrocities on women, dangers of drug and alcohol addiction, casteism, religious fundamentalism, corruption, illiteracy and terrorism.
“Increasing depiction of violence, vulgarity and obscenity in cinema is another area of concern which needs to be highlighted by the media,” he said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, News
Imphal : Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh on Monday inaugurated a two-day India-Myanmar media interaction programme here and said his government is trying to introduce a bus service between the two places to bring the people closer.
Eleven journalists from Myanmar are taking part in the event.
The Chief Minister said such interaction programmes will help bring India and Myanmar closer. “We are doing our best to introduce a bus service for the benefit of Manipur and Myanmar people. One private company is already in touch with the government on the matter. Manipur State Transport buses have been plying between Imphal in Manipur and some cities in Myanmar,” he said.
Biren urged the Myanmarese journalists to do something so that the bus service between the two neighbours becomes operational.
K. Nayar of the Press Council of India and Prakash Dubey of the Editors’ Guild of India were present in the programme.
The programme is sponsored by the Manipur tourism department in collaboration with Information and Public Relations department and the state level committee of the Act East Policy.
The Chief Minister also thanked Minister Counsellor (commercial), Royal Thai Embassy Thangdol Thongruang for bringing players and entrepreneurs to Imphal.
Myanmar had sent one women’s football team to the ongoing Sangai International Festival in Manipur.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, World
Vladimir Putin
Moscow : Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that allows the government to list any foreign media operating in the country as a foreign agent.
The bill, in retaliation for Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT being told to register as a foreign agent in the US, was earlier approved by the Parliament, BBC reported on Saturday.
At least nine US-funded broadcasters, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty could be hit.
RT is accused of being part of Russia’s alleged meddling in the US election. The broadcaster denies the claim.
The new Russian law affects foreign-registered media outlets which receive funding from outside Russia.
They are now subject to additional requirements and failure to meet them could result in the suspension of their activities.
If they are required to register, they will have to say in their broadcasts and on their websites that they are foreign agents.
A similar law already exists targeting charities and other civil society groups.
Russia’s justice ministry can now decide which outlets the steps applied to and under what circumstances.
RT said last week it had registered as a foreign agent in the US following a request by the Department of Justice.
The instruction came under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), adopted in 1938 to counter pro-Nazi agitation on US soil and applied to those engaged in political activity for a foreign government.
The measure would require RT to label anything it produces, making it clear its reports are distributed on behalf of the Russian state. The broadcaster said it would challenge the requirement in court.
Russia has denied it interfered in last year’s US presidential election.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, World
London : About 25 minutes before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, a British newspaper received an anonymous tip about “some big news” in the US, according to the trove of more than 2,800 documents released late on Thursday by the National Archives, a media report said.
The mystery call was made to a senior reporter at the Cambridge News, a paper that serves the East Anglia area of eastern England, on November 22, 1963, at 6:05 p.m. local time. Kennedy was shot shortly afterward, as he rode in a presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 p.m. CST. Dallas is six hours behind Britain, USA Today reported.
“The caller said only that the Cambridge News reporter should call the American Embassy in London for some big news and then hung up,” the memo, from the FBI’s deputy director James Angleton to J. Edgar Hoover, its director, said.
The revelation, one of many that emerged from the planned release of the Kennedy assassination documents — so far, there’s no smoking guns — adds to the raft of conspiracy theories surrounding his death. In fact, the memo was first released in July, but went unreported until the cache of files was released on Thursday.
The memo, dated November 26, 1963, says: “After the word of the President’s death was received the reporter informed the Cambridge police of the anonymous call, and the police informed MI5. The important point is that the call was made, according to MI5 calculations, about 25 minutes before the President was shot. The Cambridge reporter had never received a call of this kind before, and MI5 state that he is known to them as a sound and loyal person with no security record.”
The reporter’s name was not mentioned in the memo, which adds that MI5 had received “similar anonymous phone calls of a strangely coincidental nature”.
The Cambridge News noted in a story on Friday that it too did not know the name of the reporter who took the call, although it said the existence of the memo was first discovered by a lawyer, Michael Eddowes, who devoted much of his life to investigating the mystery surrounding Kennedy’s death.
Eddowes, who died in 1992, told the Cambridge News in 1981 that he believed the anonymous caller was a British-born Soviet agent named Albert Osborne.
Two months before Kennedy’s assassination, Eddowes believed that Osborne, who also apparently used the alias John Howard Bowen, had befriended Lee Harvey Oswald, the man ultimately charged with murdering Kennedy.
Eddowes’ theory was that the call was made “because the Soviet Union was eager that the assassination should be seen as a conspiracy,” according to the paper.
It was not clear why the Cambridge News was specifically chosen, or why the call was made to a local paper as opposed to national one, which may have led to greater exposure, USA Today reported.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, News, Politics
New Delhi : Leading journalist organisations, including the Press Club of India and the Indian Women’s Press Corps, on Tuesday slammed the “draconian” Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill, 2017 tabled by the Rajasthan government, saying it restrains the media from acting as a “watchdog and ombudsman of society”.
In a letter to Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia, they said the Bill, which was earlier in the form of an ordinance and promulgated on September 6, seeks to protect public servants from allegations arising out of possible vested interests and restrains the reporting by the media of any possible allegations made against such officers.
Not only does this clampdown on reporting militate against public interest as the public are impacted by government policies and decisions – good or bad – but the Bill subverts the basic freedom of the press which is enshrined in the spirit of Article 19 (1) (a) of the Indian Constitution, said the organisations that also included the Press Association and the Federation of Press Clubs in India.
In their letter, forwarded to the media, they noted that “it is ironic and unfortunate that at a time when there is a great demand and an even greater need for public accountability and transparency, your government appears to be moving in the opposite direction”.
They urged the Chief Minister to withdraw the Bill as neither is it in the public interest, nor does it serve the aims and objectives of our vibrant democracy.
—IANS
