The truth - sort of - comes out... <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://www.chennaionline.com/colnews/newsi...TEGORYNAME=NATL
<b>Indian media not aggressive: Editors </b>
New Delhi, Nov 17: <b>Indian media lack intelligence and mostly use their power against soft targets, some of the country's top journalists said today in a critical assessment of their job. </b>
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In a frank admission, they said the media rarely used their "aggression" against corporates because of the fear of losing advertisement revenue.
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"For politicians, media are too aggressive. But when it comes to corporates, there is great reluctance to put them under scanner," Outlook Chief Editor Vinod Mehta said during a media seminar held by media school ISOMES.
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But Indian corporates needed to have "some slice" of the media's aggression, Mehta remarked, citing an Outlook story on chocolate worms.
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IBN Editor-in-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai said <b>Indian media were loaded with furious energy but lacked intelligence. </b>Â <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo-->
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<b>"The problem is we want to be ultra aggressive. But we simply don't have substance," he said.</b>Â <!--emo&:cool--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/specool.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='specool.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â
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Sardesai, however, <b>praised</b>Â <!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â the media's role as an anti-corruption watchdog. Newspapers rarely exposed corruption in public offices before 1975, he remarked.
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In his critique, Tehelka CEO Tarun Tejpal found <b>Indian media "more noisy than aggressive." </b>
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<b>"We are very good at hitting at soft targets, and that's a disaster," </b>he said as he warned the media against becoming part of the nexus between money and power.
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<b>Star News CEO Uday Shankar also spoke about what he called a selective approach in news coverage</b> as he agreed with the view that media seldom hit corporates. (Agencies)
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Published: Thursday, November 17, 2005Â <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Pinko, wannabe intellectual, truth twister alert!! <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Indian American scribe awarded Johns Hopkins fellowship
Publish Date : 11/29/2005 2:01:00 PMÂ Â
Source : American Local News Onlypunjab.com
<b>Indian American Sumathi Reddy of The Baltimore Sun</b> is among the eight US journalists selected for a fellowship awarded by the <b>Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.</b>
Reddy will soon travel to India to complete her fellowship. Reddy's reports include stories on the <b>Indian diaspora, citywide issues, and the tsunami in Asia</b>. <b>She also received an award from the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA).</b>
The other journalists will travel to various other countries.
The International Reporting Project (IRP) Fellowships at The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) for the Spring 2006 period involve a 13-week fellowship aimed at encouraging coverage of international issues by the US news media.
The US journalists will focus on stories in <b>Brazil, India, Kenya, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, Russia and Uganda</b>. The IRP programme combines eight weeks of study in Washington and five weeks of individual overseas reporting.
This is the first time IRP Fellows have been selected to report in Brazil, Mongolia and Nepal. Since 1998, fellows have reported from more than 75 different countries.
The IRP Fellows for spring 2006, their affiliations and the countries on which they will focus are:
Phuong Ly, The Washington Post - Nigeria
Kelly McEvers, freelance radio, New York - Russia
Anna Panoka, WUWM-FM, Milwaukee - Mongolia
Sumathi Reddy, The Baltimore Sun - India
Elizabeth Shelburne, freelance print, Boston - Uganda
Barry Simmons, WTVF-TV, Nashville - Kenya
Bianca Vazquez Toness, freelance radio, St. Paul - Brazil
Doualy Xaykaothao, freelance radio, Bangkok - Nepal
Each year, two separate groups of eight US journalists are selected as IRP Fellows. Since the program began in 1998, 130 journalists have been selected for the program and have reported from overseas for scores of news organizations.
The spring 2006 fellows were selected by a committee of journalists that included: Matthew Algeo, formerly with "Marketplace" and an IRP alumnus; Don Belt, senior editor, National Geographic; Daphne Eviatar, freelance journalist and an IRP alumna; Alexandra Felsing, national editor, Charlotte Observer; Lonnie Isabel, former deputy managing editor, Newsday and Kathy Lally of The Washington Post.
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Mile by Mile, India Paves a Smoother Road to Its Future By AMY WALDMAN
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction, thinks otherwise. She is angry, say the colorfully garbed women massing in the holy tree's dappled shade. As evidence, they point to one woman's newly pockmarked face and other mysterious ailments recently visited on their nearby village, Jagdishrai. They have tried to convince Kali that the tree and temple devoted to her must go, but they have failed. Now they have no choice but to oppose the removal, too, even if they must block the road to do it.
Goddess versus man, superstition versus progress, the people versus the state - mile by mile, India is struggling to modernize its national highway system, and in the process, itself.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Aryan migration, Mogul conquest, British colonialism - all shaped India's civilization over centuries. Now, in a span of less than 15 years, capitalism and globalization have convulsed India at an unprecedented rate of change<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Truckers slow at night for roadside sex workers, each of them potential carriers of H.I.V. Farmers' sons make a beeline for swelling cities that are challenging the village as the center of Indian life. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Outside Jaipur, young men virtually bonded into labor hack with primitive tools at old tires. They work in an archaic assembly line beside the highway, chopping the tires into pieces and loading them onto trucks so they can be burned as toxic fuel at a brick kiln. The tent camp they call home splays out in dirty disarray behind them. A brutish overseer verbally whips them to work faster<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The tribunal reported that the case examined the role of the RTLM radio station and Kangura newspaper in the genocide in Rwanda. "It also reviewed the role of the CDR, a party found by the Chamber to have spearheaded the Hutu Power movement, which created a political framework for the genocide," the tribunal reported. In their ruling, the judges observed that in a radio interview broadcast at the height of the genocide on 25 April 1994, Nahimana, talked of the "war of media, words, newspapers and radio stations", which he described as a complement to bullets. "You were fully aware of the power of words, and you used the radio, the medium of communication with the widest public reach to disseminate hatred and violence," Pillay told Nahimana when she read the court's ruling. She added, "Without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians." Barayagwiza, who was tried in absentia after he boycotted the trial, was convicted for his role in RTLM, as well as for individual acts of genocide and extermination and his leadership role in the CDR. Ngeze, also a founding member of CDR, was convicted for his activities in "ordering, instigating and aiding and abetting acts of genocide", as well as for his writings in Kangura. The tribunal reported that the judges found that Tutsi women, in particular, were targeted for persecution through the portrayal of the Tutsi woman as a "femme fatale", and the message that Tutsi women were "seductive agents of the enemy". "The power of the media to create and destroy fundamental human values comes with great responsibility," Pillay said. "Those who control such media are accountable for its consequences". The trial opened on 23 October 2000 and ended on 22 August 2003 after 230 trial days. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->December 11 - 18, 2005
Media Analysis
<b>Towards Foxification of Indian TV news </b>
By Prasun Sonwalkar
The outcome of the recent assembly elections in Bihar was noteworthy not only for the defeat of Lalu Prasadâs party and his alliance but also for the way the results were announced and analysed on Indian television. If the quality of the editorial content of the many 24-hour ânewsâ channels has caused much hand wringing in recent years, the âanalysisâ of the Bihar results provoked a sense of despair, particularly to viewers outside India. Former Union Ministers
Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, Shri Sharad Yadav, Shri Nitish Kumar and Shri Arun Jaitley in a jubilant mood after the Bihar election results.
As elsewhere, more does not necessarily mean better in the media businessâhaving several news channels in a nationâs media-scape does not guarantee better journalism.
Since 1996, when STAR News was launched as Indiaâs first 24-hour news channel, Indiaâs public sphere has taken an increasingly visual turn. India and Indians have never seen themselves in such visual dimensions earlier. But as the initial novelty wore off, the new channels competed with one another fiercely to drive ratings and corner the increasing advertising pie âbut in the process the very idea of what counts as news was redefined.
Terms such as Murdochisation, the Fox effect, the Fox formula or the Foxification of news are synonyms of the same world-view that drives the kind of news coverage now available on the many Indian news channels.
The frenzy to corner new eyeballs in new markets ensured that events, issues and regions that were earlier not considered newsworthy found space on television news. For some time, it appeared that the proliferation of the Indian news media would further democratise Indian politics and give voice to people and perspectives that were hitherto ignored or marginalised.
But the recent coverage of the Bihar election results showed, the downward spiral towards infotainmentâor the dumbing down of newsâhas well and truly been entrenched in the newsrooms of Indian television. What was clearly a significant event in Indian politics was turned into a garish rigmarole of cheap entertainment.
All pretence of journalistic fairness was jettisoned as the news anchor on STAR News led the celebration of Lalu Prasadâs defeat. The anchor gleefully turned to stand-up comic Shekhar Suman for his expert comments (antics?) on the election results and went on to ask the icon of infotainment inane questions about what should be the priorities of the new government.
Also in the studio was the well-known film director Prakash Jha, who also got to pontificate on issues that even he would otherwise not claim expertise on. Jha has been a candidate in a recent election and his association with Bihar is well known, but asking a leading film personality to comment on a serious political issue fits into a news culture in which drama, entertainment and sensation are privileged.
The news coverage on STAR News has been symptomatic of the editorial content in most Indian 24-hour ânewsâ channels. The channelâs editorial frames have undergone a sea change since it was launched in 1996 in collaboration with Prannoy Royâs NDTV, a respected Indian television production company. The arrangement between STAR News and NDTV ended in April 2003, and since then the revamped STAR News has increasingly taken on the ethos and colours of other Rupert Murdoch-owned television channels such as Fox News (US) and Sky News (Europe).
Indeed, the news culture of Fox Newsâand its phenomenal commercial successâhas spawned new terms in media discourse: the Fox effect, the Fox formula and the Foxification of news. Fox represents a new approach to television journalism, one that sidesteps traditional notions of objectivity and impartiality, has contempt for dissenting voices and has nothing to do with the scepticism of the government of the dayâsomething that has always been at the core of the mainstream media. Its blatantly pro-American, pro-state coverage of the Iraq conflict in 2003 made it the most watched channel in the US.
Shri L.K. Advani greeting new Bihar CM Nitish Kumar
In the market-driven broadcasting environment in India, Murdochisationâa term that refers to a corporate approach to news and has infotainment as its key elementâhas been entrenched for over a decade now. In the early 1990s, the English-language ânationalâ press in India adopted Murdochâs strategy to privilege the marketing side over the editorial and soon generated windfalls in annual revenues. The strategy percolated to the language press and now is in full display on television. Indeed, due to the sheer diversity of cultures and multiplicity of languages in India, Murdochisation on Indian television may well acquire newer dimensions than it has in the West.
Granville Williams, a senior British journalist and academic, was the first to introduce the term Murdochisation and called it an âugly sounding word to describe an ugly phenomenonâ. The word emerged in the 1990s to describe the use and abuse of media power by Murdochâs company, News Corp. Williams coined the word following a number of high-profile cases which demonstrated the dangers of excessive media power in the hands of one person. The two key elements of this phenomenon, he says, are:
* The use of predatory pricing to weaken and eliminate other newspaper titles.
* The subordination of freedom of expression to the higher priority of commercial expansion.
Terms such as Murdochisation, the Fox effect, the Fox formula or the Foxification of news are synonyms of the same world-view that drives the kind of news coverage now available on the many Indian news channels. The use of popular Hindi film songs in news items about issues affecting millions of people is just one of the many devices adopted in the Murdoch-driven news culture of STAR News, which ironically claims to accord top priority to the viewer in its slogan, aapko rakkhe aage (You remain in front)â.
The news coverage on STAR News has been symptomatic of the editorial content in most Indian 24-hour ânewsâ channels.
Recently, Shekhar Suman carried on with his ribaldry and street-smart jokes with a lathi and a lantern (the symbol of Lalu Yadavâs party) by his side, as the results were being announced, it was more than clear that rational, informed debate on issues of the day is unlikely to take place on Indian television in the near future.
Perhaps, like the government, people get the media they deserve.
As American media scholar Neil Postman presciently observed some time ago: âWhen a population becomes distracted by trivia, when a cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainment, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people becomes an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.â
(The writer is a UK-based journalist and can be contacted on sprasun@hotmail.com<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The string operations eerily sounds like Congress operation at a time when Volcker issue is raging. They included token Congressi MP to make it sound like independent media operation but it is not. If you look at the roster of MPs mostly are from direct opposition of Congress -- BJP, SP etc.
Whatever, corruption at this level is sickening and people should be punished whether they belong to BJP or Congress. No excuse.
Those in power are openly taking money from foreign government and still holding Super PM position or Chairman of UPA.
Now current PM's son-in-laws are enjoying every benfit of being "Damad" of PM. Prosperity all the way.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->www.rediff.com/news/2006/...rajeev.htm
<b>Ignore this genocide, we're secular </b>
--Rajeev Srinivasan
The selective amnesia of the English media in India is simply breathtaking.
There appears to be a cardinal rule: Never publish anything that would be in the least bit negative about Muslims in general and Pakistanis in particular; or about Christians; or about Marxists in general and the Chinese in particular.
For instance, the Chinese genocide in occupied Tibet is glossed over, and an Indian English magazine's famous editor goes on a China-sponsored tour there and writes a glowing account of how life is beautiful.
After all, it's just details that a million Tibetans have been wiped out and a lot of their women forcibly sterilised in an explicit path towards genocide.
Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China, and rose-coloured glasses redux?
When the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found two Catholic nuns guilty of crimes against humanity in June 2001, the Indian English media simply buried the story.
Here is an excerpt from the Economist magazine's report, 'Judging genocide', June 14, 2001.
On June 8th⦠two Roman Catholic nuns were found guilty in a different court, thousands of miles away, of complicity in the Rwandan genocide. Their trial had lasted a mere two months. Sister Maria and Sister Gertrude had handed over to their killers up to 7,000 Tutsis who were sheltering in their convent; later, they provided petrol so that militiamen could set fire to a barn in which about 500 Tutsis had taken refuge. They were sentenced to prison terms of 12 and 15 years by a jury sitting not in Africa, but in Belgium.
The atrocities committed by Islamic terrorists, including ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Kashmir, and attacks all over India killing Hindus -- note the latest attacks just before Diwali and now on the Indian Institute of Science -- are trivialised by the chatterati with the usual cant about how the terrorists are misguided youths frustrated by lack of opportunities.
It appears axiomatic that to the media, the only good Hindu is a dead Hindu.
Rajeev Srinivasan: The value of a Hindu life in.rediff.com/news/2005/dec/16rajeev.htm
This is why the attack on a Hindu temple in Dera Bugti in Balochistan in March last year got absolutely no coverage in the Indian media and did not disturb Indian society in general.
Shabana Azmi and Kuldeep Nayyar and Human Rights Watch and the rest of the human rights cottage industry were very quiet. The US Council on International Religious Freedom was thunderously silent, too, which shows yet again that their definition of 'religious freedom' is rather unique: It means the freedom of American cults to propagate their bizarre ideas.
It is not as though the information was not available. A cursory Google search brought up an Associated Press report carried by the Taipei Times ('Scores killed in rocket attack on Hindu temple', March 22, 2005), which says, among other things:
Seventeen minority Hindus were killed when their temple was hit by rockets during fighting between renegade tribesmen and security forces in a restive tribal town in southwestern Pakistan last week, a government official said yesterday.
The Daily Times of Pakistan carried a report, excerpted below:
The Jamhoori Watan Party on Thursday released a list of 61 people killed in a clash between Frontier Corps personnel and the Bugti tribesmen in Dera Bugti on March 17. Senator Amanullah Kinrani, party spokesman and president of the Balochistan High Court Bar Association, gave the list to reporters at a news conference. According to the list, 19 Hindu children between ages 1 and 16, three women, and 11 men were killed in the clash. Nineteen other Hindu men and five women were injured.
The victims are mostly Hindu children, who had presumably sought shelter in the temple at a time of war. Curious that the shelling just happened to hit the temple, isn't it? Since the victims were mere Hindus, the Indian English media felt free to ignore the whole episode.
Usually, when the victims are Muslims, the media does take notice. Yet they are ignoring the open rebellion in Balochistan since December last year, which is being put down violently with helicopter gunships, jet fighters, artillery and 30,000 troops, according to reports.
Why is the ever-vigilant Indian media, ready to fight for the rights of 'minorities', studiously avoiding this situation?
Those who shout loudly about alleged atrocities on Kashmiri Muslims are strangely silent about the atrocities on minority Balochi Muslims (in passing, they are similarly coy about atrocities on minority Uighur Muslims in Chinese-occupied East Turkestan, also known as Sinkiang).
There is only one possible reason -- because it would show Pakistan and Pervez Musharraf in a bad light. And we can't have that, can we?
I do believe this is the rationalisation of the 'secular progressives'.
The Balochistan story is of significant importance to India. In addition to human rights issues, the strategic Chinese-built port of Gwadar is in Balochistan, and so are important mineral deposits on the desolate Makran coast.
The Balochi rebellion may have a domino effect and other oppressed minority groups such as Sindhis and Balawaris (those who live in Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) may also rise up, leading to the unravelling of the failed State of Pakistan.
There was at least one other Balochi insurrection (1973 to 1977), which was brutally put down by the Punjabi-dominated Pakistan Army. This is reminiscent of Saddam Hussein's mustard gas attacks on minority Kurds in Halabja in 1988.
George Bush, please note that your 'valued ally in the war on terror' is similarly brutalising a civilian minority, using the weapons you so generously doled out.
The news coming out of Balochistan is indeed tragic. I urge you to read a report titled 'Pakistani Army atrocities against Baloch community' carried by the Baltimore Indymedia. Warning: the photos are graphic and extremely disturbing, especially those of young children who appear to be mutilated. Some victims appear to have had their eyes gouged out.
The world cannot sit back and allow this to happen. Shame on you, the Indian English media, for ignoring this human tragedy.
Surely, even you must have the vestiges of what must be called journalistic ethics -- for lack of a better term? Baltimore Independent - Pakistani Army attrocities against Baloch community @ baltimore.indymedia.org/n.../index.php<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Winter windfall</b>
* Winters are generally pleasant in Delhi. The flowers in the gardens of the sarkari bungalows are in full bloom. Therefore it's opportune time for garden lunches. For ages <b>Congress veteran Sajjan Kumar has been hosting mediapersons to his dehati lunch in first week of January. His menu is replete with desi khana and variety of lassi and chahc</b>h. Taking a cue from Kumar some <b>other Congress leaders too have joined the fray. Prominent among them </b>being Speaker Prem Singh and Delhi Congress president Rambabu Sharma. While Kumar has kept his do media exclusive, Speaker Choudhary Prem Singh uses the opportunity for some social interaction inviting people from different fields. Rambabu, however, out-did everybody by turning his lunch in a workers convention. Coming a day after Chief Minister's garden lunch, Rambabu used the opportunity to showcase his mass appeal. In the process forcing many to go hungry.
<b>Gourmet's delight</b>
* Coming to <b>Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit's lunch</b>, it's an occasion for the media persons and the bureaucrats to interact in an informal environ. It's an opportunity to get a glimpse of the lighter side of an otherwise taciturn Chief Secretary S Reghunathan. The Chief Minister herself decides the menu. So is the arrangement on her sprawling lawn at 3 Motilal Nehru Place. She floored everyone last year with her South Indian selections including Hyderabadi biryani and Konkani curry. <b>This year it started with a very exotic kind of soup but for the main course it was the turn of Purani Dilli. Gilauwati kababs, Nahari, Mughlai parantha and murg korma </b>had the pen pushers, both of the media and the bureaucracy, throwing caution to wind. For those with sweet tooth it ranged from<b> staple ice cream and jalebi to rare hot-chocolate cake </b>
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This is happening with media. Why you think they are ignoring all corrupt issues of COngress?
Now these sold out traitors are in line to have free cars and free plot in surrounding Delhi, kids school admission, jewelery for wife or mistress.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>HLL imprint over the media </b>
The well-known soap and detergent maker Hindustan Lever Ltd may be rediscovering Western managers yet again, long after desis had deservedly come to occupy top positions in the FMCG major.
Demand for its former honchos hasn't diminished a wee bit in the indigenous corporate world though.
Why, even Indian media companies seem to be lapping up ex-HLL managers. Here is an off-the-cuff list of former top-shot Lever executives now associated with various media companies.
Former HLL chairman T Thomas heads the company that publishes the multi-edition Business Standard.
His successor at HLL, Ashok Ganguly, chairs the board of West Bengal's largest publishing conglomerate, the Ananda Bazar Patrika group, while Aniruddh Lahiri, another ex-Lever manager, is group CEO.
Ravinder Dhariwal and Richard Saldhana, formerly of HLL, are on the board of Bennett Coleman and Company that publishes, among other titles, The Times of India.
Keki Dadiseth, a former HLL chairman who retired recently as a director of the Unilever board, is set to join the new company formed by Bennett Coleman in association with the Reuters news agency for its long awaited television news channel.
And Sandeep Ghosh, a former HLL man, heads the managerial set-up of the recently launched Mumbai edition of The Hindustan Times.
Gives these managers quite a Leverage over the Indian media, doesn't it?
The human garbage which calls itself secular perss advises rabidly communal, castiest and corrupt ITALIAN B1TCH.
This garbage teaches other garbage on how to screw UP more by more raducally playing caste, communal politics. This A** Hole does not even once advise the ITALIAN B1TCH to stop giving all the money to her ITALIAN friends or come out clean on IRAQ Oil SCAM.
----------------------------------------------
Nirmal Pathak
The Political Puzzle Called UP
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->As a result Congress leaders waste time pleasing the Rajputs and Brahmins. It will help the Congress if they read the history of elections in UP. Brahmins have never been loyal to any party. Highly successful Brahmin sammelans (conventions) organised by the Bahujan Samaj Party are an example of this. The Brahmins have always gone where power is located -- from the Congress to the BJP to the BSP they have switched loyalties.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Oxford journalism institute aims to bridge trust gap
Owen Gibson
Friday January 20, 2006
The Guardian
The creation of a new journalism institute, designed to bridge the gap between the gritty newspaper newsroom and the ivory towers of academia by providing research into topical media issues, was announced yesterday by Oxford University.
The new Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, made possible by £1.75m funding over five years from the news agency's charitable trust, will aim to break down the mutual distrust between journalists and academics who analyse the media.
Article continues
In contrast to the many universities offering media studies courses designed to equip students with practical skills and others conducting long-term research into media trends and influences, the institute will not teach undergraduate courses.
Unveiling the new department at the Oxford Media Convention yesterday, the university's vice chancellor, Dr John Hood, said that instead the institute would have a focus on analysing the practice of journalism worldwide. The director will be an established academic but will be accompanied by a respected journalist as director of journalism.
Tim Gardam, the former Channel 4 director of programmes who is now principal of St Anne's College, chaired the steering committee charged with establishing the institute.
One area of focus is likely to be the breakdown in trust between politicians and the media. A member of the team tasked with creating the institute, Financial Times contributing editor John Lloyd, kickstarted a debate on the topic when his book What the Media are Doing to Our Politics was published in October 2004.
Other members of the committee included Timothy Garton Ash, director of the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College and a Guardian columnist, and Reuters editor-in-chief Geert Linnebank.
What's with this movie 'looking for comedy in the muslim world', it seems to show India a lot. Is this guy just an idiot to not know that India is a Hindu country.
Understandable though from a safety point of view, imagine a White American guy making a movie in a real islamic country.
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