A panel discussion organised here on Friday by The Editors Guild of India, the Press Association, the Press Club of India and the Indian Women Press Corps on “radia tapes and journalistic ethics” turned into a slanging match between journalists and Editor-in Chief of CNN-IBN Rajdeep Sardesai after he pitched in strongly for Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi, saying they had been judged guilty without corroborative evidence. On the panel...

There was a time when editors were not seen or heard, only read. One of the best illustrations of the original 'ivory tower' approach was NJ Nanporia, a venerable editor at 'The Times of India' in the 1960s. Apparently, Nanporia was shopping in a local market when he found a certain gentleman smiling at him continuously. His curiosity getting the better of him, Nanporia asked the man who he was....

The radia tapes reveal the networks and routers, the source codes and malware that bind the corporate and political establishments in India. As squeamish schoolchildren know only too well, dissection is a messy business. Some instinctively turn away, others become nauseous or scared. Not everyone can stomach first hand the inner workings of an organic system. Ten days ago, a scalpel — in the form of a set of 104 intercepted...

The ethics of journalists involving themselves with corporate lobbyists, questions relating to the authenticity of the radia tapes, the motives behind the release of the phone recordings, the initial silence of the mainstream media, concerns of privacy, and the role of social and online media were among the issues that came to the fore during a colloquium, ‘radia Media,' organised by the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) here on Wednesday. While...

Media-corporate links are structural. But journalists, certainly entrenched ones, can choose whether they wish to be stenographers or not. It was gratifying to have the head of India's most reputed business house confirm the existence of crony capitalism in the country. True, others have believed this for 20 years but it carries more weight when Ratan Tata says so. As he put it in a television interview with admirable candour: “Yes,...