Tidbits of the region's media   January 2011

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Almost a month after Open magazine’s explosive exposé, the Radia-media battle is far from over. While the first set of tapes implicated known journalists, including Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi, Outlook posted 800 new tapes, sending jitters down the spines of the high and mighty of the Indian media.Right after the first set of tapes was released, the entire big media region in India zipped their lips, with nary a peep even from commentators who are all fire and brimstone every time a government official or a nonmedia person for that matter is implicated even remotely in some vague wrongdoing. Great show of ‘solidarity’,people! We must stick together, and nothing must come in the way of our revenue, NDTV, meanwhile, had set up a debate (read: desperate face-saving measure) in its studios. To say that Dutt bungled it up big-time would be an understatement. Her protestations about leading Niira Radia on might have been believable, had she not behaved like the goddess of ‘political journalism’ and shot her mouth off constantly. Sanghvi, on the other hand, has reportedly been demoted, but he claims that the change in position had nothing to do with ‘Radiagate’. He is currently regaling readers with inane food-related tweets from exotic locations.
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Not to be outdone, media houses in Pakistan also went cuckoo in their own special way (but of course!). A few days after the first Wikileaks cables were released and the Real Powers-that-be-in-the-General Headquartersin-Rawalpindi had gone into damage control overdrive, suspicious-sounding reports were given pride of place in the extreme-rightwing Nawa-e-Waqt and The Nation; and just about everybody else jumped onto the bandwagon.Urdu daily Jang, English daily The News and TV channel Geo News reported that US diplomats had referred to India’s army chief as an ‘inept geek’; had said that India had a major role in terrorism in Waziristan and the nationalist unrest in Balochistan; India’s army high-command had ‘close ties’ to the affron brigade; Pakistan’s chief of army staff ’s tenure extension was welcome; and, finally, that,the ISI chief smelled like roses. Okay, so CP made the last one up, but what difference does it make?It took a media blog, Café Pyala, to first call them out, followed by The Guardian’s Declan Walsh. The next day, ‘profuse’ apologies, plagiarised editorials and retractions’ followed. It turns out that the ‘Daily Mail Pakistan’ was the first one to ‘plant’ the fake Wikileaks story which Online picked up. The Daily Mail ‘editor-in-chief ’ later patted himself on the back for a job well done (faking leaked cables is a lot of effort!) with claims such as how India’s establishment is not as ‘milkwashed’ as the liberal, beghaerat bloggers of Pakistan would have us believe. Oh, sir, CP’s heart gardengarden ho gaya at your display of patriotism, and if facts have to be fudged in the process, well, what goes of anyone’s father? CP cannot help but feel sorry for Raj Thackeray. Assaulting non-Maharashtrians is just something the bechara has to do to earn a living (likely under pressure to keep the family business going). Raj is at heart an artsy type: photographer,painter, cartoonist and, like so many others in Bombay –ooops, slip of the tongue, CP means Mumbai, of course – a film fanatic. Only natural then that Raj, combining business and pleasure, would want a private, pre-release screening of 332 Mumbai to India, based on a real incident where a Bihari man hijacked a bus to highlight the MNS’s roughing up of … gulp, let’s try that again … to highlight the MNS’s defence of Maharashtrian honour. But these filmwallahs,with typical filmy arrogance, are refusing, hiding weakly behind the Censor Board’s green light. So Raj took action,sending his goons to blacken and vandalise the film’s posters,clearly an effective lesson in good manners. But the real-life drama soon developed more twists and turns than a solid masala flick with Raj swearing off any interest in the film and director Mahesh Pandey saying he’d already screened it for MNS vice-president Vageesh Saraswat as well as apologised for the North Indian protagonists calling the city ‘Bambai’. CP hopes Uncle Bal throws together a snappy cartoon about yet another Maharashtrian victory.
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Really, though, what Raj bhau needs to do is send his boys over to shake down the censor board for insulting a national treasure – Katrina Kaif ’s navel. Katrina’s navel, along with other sundry body parts, are the central characters of the item number ‘Sheela ki jawani’ – ‘The most awaited sizzling sexiest seductive item song of the year’ claim the promos – in director Farah Khan’s latest flick, Tees Maar Khan. While most of Southasia has been hopelessly smitten by Sheela’s gyratory jawani, the killjoys at the censor board have taken issue with the name ‘Sheela’, particularly with what they deem the gratuitous flaunting of her bellybutton (is this about the longstanding ‘innie’ vs ‘outtie’ debate, CP wonders?) and 18 other aspects of the film. But if any Khan deserves the title of ‘Tees Maar Khan’ it’s Farah, who marched the film to the revising committee, which allowed Navel No 1 (sorry, Kareena) to continue its mesmerising reign. CP is having visions of Farah prancing around singing: ‘I know you want it but you never gonna get it, tere haath kabhi na aani’. What got lost in the give and take was the word ‘tawaif’(courtesan), which will now be bleeped out in the film. CP is sure this is an employment-boosting measure: think about how many people the censor board will need to hire to bleep out every use of the word ‘tawaif ’ in Indian cinema!
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The relief of having pulled off the election seems to have freed up the big boys in Burma to rekindle their love for football. While the rumours are that eight private magazines were suspended for a week after giving space to Aung San Suu Kyi’s release,CP thinks that’s blatant propaganda. Come on,one of the publications was a sports magazine. And editors say they ran a headline saying ‘ S u n d e r l a n d Freeze Chelsea United Stunned By Villa & Arsenal Advance To Grab Their Hope.’ (Let’s just ignore the rabble-rousers saying the shading on the headline meant it could have been read as ‘Su Free. Unite & Advance To Grab The Hope.’) CP’s advice: Give up that unhealthy competitive rage, take to watching NBA cheerleaders, au Dear Leader King Jong Il.

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The mainstream media in Bangladesh, on the other hand, has taken to blacking out all reports of unrest amongst garment industry workers. One wonders what the mediawallahs will do when the violence escalates (further) – a couple of people are dead already (protestors who were shot at by police), but who cares about the poor, right? As long as the gods of ad revenue are protected, ahl iz well!