The Thieves of India
The Times Group is India's largest media conglomerate with a turnover of over USD $700 million. It has eleven publishing centers, fifteen printing centers, fifty five sales offices and over seven thousand employees. It owns five dailies, thirty one magazines, thirty two radio stations and reaches you, your children and your dog in two thousand four hundred and sixty eight cities and towns. Through its subsidiary companies it has interests in major radio, television, film and online businesses.
It is fair to say that the trap of this media composite is inescapable if you are in anyway connected to India. With ownership of such mass media, The Times Group exemplifies how modern corporatism has turned the meaning of language upside down. Mass Media is no longer mass if it is held by a couple of entities. The 'mass' in mass media was meant to be us, the masses. Mass media means people's media, not corporate media injected into people's veins. It means the media is of the people not a media which steals from the people.
This post is in solidarity with Sudipta Chatterjee's call to highlight the consistently shameless theft by the world's largest English language daily, The Times of India, the jewel in the crown of the Times Group.
This elixir of journalistic integrity is stuffed with examples galore of petty theft being reported by more and more blogger photographers who are vigilant and through chance encounters find their work within the pages of this otherwise porn tabloid passing off as news. These reports are only from a few bloggers who've been able to spot it in India but the scale of this theft and audacity is revealed in the highlighted conversation below between the Twilight Fairy and an editor of one of TOI's supplements:
I immediately called up the editor of this supplement - a lady called Poonam Singh - who said she will look into the issue. I wrote about 3 mails in all, asking for (a very meager) compensation for the damages done as well as credit. For one, I never got a response in written - but of course that would mean acknowledging the theft. When I called up, I was told that it is common practice to “use” free images from the net! Flabbergasted at the audacity of this all, I clearly asked whether TOI staff was blind or illiterate to not be able to make out the clearly written statement on my Flickr stream and my copyright license, both of which stated that my images can NOT be used without my explicit permission - ALL rights reserved. This is plagiarism in its full glory. Not only this, on asking for compensation, Ms. Poonam Singh clearly told me that as a next step I could even go to lawyers and that this case will then be forwarded to the legal department of TOI. Huh? Was this a threat? Or a challenge? They actually go ahead, use an image with “all rights reserved” clearly mentioned on my page, have the audacity to state that this happens all the time - the “graphics designer may not know” and that I could go take the legal route.
The photographer's fury is justified but you may ask: Why is this issue important for all of us?
Many of you may be familiar with this iterative early morning routine. A bicycle bell tinkles followed by a soft thud at your doorstep. This sound announces the arrival of your newspaper. You pick it up, open it and as your eyeball travels at lightning speed your newspaper reveals to you the headline of the day. Some of you may have wondered what goes on behind this daily assemblage of scattered information surgically crafted into a newspaper. Some of you may even be cynical that its fabricated and shrug it off as part of corrupt post-modern life. But cynical or not, this newspaper affects your world view. It is part of your daily indoctrination and has been for almost two centuries. History will source this newspaper as today's truth.
Despite your cynicism that everything is up for sacrifice to the high temples of money making Gods, you have a vague ideal of what your media will not compromise beyond. This attribution of integrity is the foundation on which we claim to be living in a democracy with a free media.
When the largest "free media" conglomerate, The Times Group, with its multiple newspapers and media outlets has a rate card for the news and is crafted by vile theft and blatant bullying it is a threat to our already dying democracy.
While amoral advertising gurus exploit your brain and reduce it to mush demanding four rupees fifty paisa per head, that payment throws away any hope of a free society with a honest media.
A few months ago I heard Bill Moyers' keynote address at the National Conference for Media Reform held in Minneapolis. At one moment in his speech, he rhetorically asked: Why a media anyway?
He followed that with a Cherokee story of a tribal elder who was telling his grandson about the battle he was waging within himself. He said, "It is between two wolves, my son. One is an evil wolf: anger, envy, sorrow, greed, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is the good wolf: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.” The boy took this in for a few minutes and then said to his grandfather, “Which wolf won?” The old Cherokee replied simply, “The one I feed.”
Democracy is that way. The wolf that wins is the one we feed. And media provides the fodder.
Here's Bill Moyers' keynote address from that conference. It is as applicable to Indian mainstream media as it is to American mainstream media.
[From Democracy Now's June 9, 2008 Radio show.] His address begins at about 11 minutes into the show.
I'll end with a moment of black comedy: Some of you may remember the hollow reality show called Lead India which was basically a TOI feel-good PR exercise. Their website has nine guidelines and the last one says:
Plagiarism of any kind will result in immediate disqualification.
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Thank you for featuring this issue so effectively. May the voices be heard across the blogosphere and let us wish that it induces some conscience or sense of accountability into them.
Excellent. \nThe last bit - 'Plagiarism of any kind will result in immediate disqualification.' comes as a surprise, I thought they were all for plagiarism:)\nThe least they can do is acknowledge the source.
[...] by the media, a lot of bloggers have expressed their solidarity with the victims. First up, Kalabaaz wrote a scathing piece about the Thieves of India: This elixir of journalistic integrity is stuffed [...]
well, thanking you for mentiniong my fate here.\n\nyou can see probably the most updated theft data base in india in the malayalikkoottam (http://koottam.org) group page at\n\nhttp://flickr.com/groups/koottam/discuss/72157602581994775/\n\nlets hope that we will end this stealing soon !