Category: Patrakar types

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Patrakar types

Editors from hell

Could sub-editors please be more careful while editing articles? And giving away e-mail IDs and phone numbers is not cool.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Okay, first off, Mid Day. What were you thinking with this story of a boy arrested because he sent a photo cake to a girl he liked? Your story is eminently readable, but what was your sub-editor and page editor doing when they overlooked one important detail while checking the story: your paper printed the email ID the boy used to send the girl’s picture to the cakewallahs.

What’s worse, NDTV‘s website picked up your story, and printed it as is. No, not really as is, because NDTV changed the story’s headline to the puzzling: ‘In trouble for sending photo of cake to a girl’. A question to the NDTV sub-editor who changed the headline: Why did you change Mid Day‘s headline to read ‘photo of cake’ when you clearly meant ‘photo cake’? (An aside here is that the story would be doubly interesting if the boy had actually sent just a photo of the cake and not the cake itself. If somebody did that to me, I sure as hell would go to the cops.)

A few days ago, a Mumbai daily carried the headline, ‘Man shoots dead builder’. At first glance, it seemed like a case of extreme cruelty – I mean, why shoot a dead man? Another news item last month, about a man making prank calls to a woman at work, gave away the telephone number the calls were made from.

All of this makes the police’s precaution of hiding an accused’s face from public pretty redundant.

And it’s not just newspapers, it’s also television. A few days ago, IBN Lokmat did a charming special on Dev Anand’s birth anniversary, and showed the late actor’s songs and a few interviews of people who had worked with him. Each song was accompanied with the lyrics of that song being flashed across the screen. But when the song ‘Ek but banaoonga…’ from Asli Naqli started, IBN Lokmat’s lyrics read, ‘Ek putar banaoonga…’

A rather funny and insensitive editing error occurred recently with The Times of India placing an ad for Good Day right in the centre of a grim news story of a man killing his own kids (see pic on left). Other regular offences that editors commit are publishing pictures of minors, whether accused of a crime or the victims of one, without blurring their faces or changing their names, and often choosing to blur the faces of women and not men.

And it’s not just obvious elements like headlines and what goes in the main story that comprises editing goof-ups. Several times, reporters write an article with an obvious slant – for instance, political and crime stories, in which the writer’s biases clearly reflect in the article he/she has written – but editors checking those copies let the slant remain. The result is stories such as the Bidushi Dash Barde case, in which most reports blamed the dead woman’s husband without actually saying so, with phrases like, ‘He called her only once in the morning despite knowing that she was ill’, and ‘He was calm and answered all questions without breaking down.’

When I still worked with newspapers full time, I had an almost daily run-in with the paper’s editors. Once I waged a war against a particular sub-editor, who had not only mangled my story, but changed the headline I had given to the story with the sensitivity of a speeding truck. Imagine my chagrin when I read the papers the next morning and saw that the sub-editor had altered my headline ‘Youth win award for propagating gender equality’ to ‘Youth win award for fighting molestation’.

I used to think sub-editors and editors above them are people with eyes like hawks, and the brain capacity of an encyclopedia. At least, that’s how they used to be. Earlier ‘deskies’ were people who used to be reporters, and journalists who read constantly on a variety of subjects. This sharpened their intellect – an editor had to know more on a subject than a reporter – and gave their language an edge. And you couldn’t become a deskie just by applying for an editor’s job; you had to slog your way through the reporting ranks before being elevated to a desk position.

For the last five years or more, however, newspapers and channels are increasingly hiring desk personnel for their knowledge of English alone. Proofing of articles has now been reduced only to grammar and spell checks, which even the reporter himself can do on MS Word. And then there are new concepts such as Rewrite Desks that are operational in major newspapers – this Desk’s job is to go batshit crazy on articles that have not been written well. In other places, we are told, there are three levels of editing to pass through before the article is considered final.

And despite all these precautions, we still end up with gems like ‘Photo of cake’.

May be we should have a Corrective Measures Desk above the sub-editing desk…?

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.

 (Feature image courtesy ipjtraining.com. Picture used for representational purpose only)

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Patrakar types

Palghar for President!

We’re glad Palghar is on the map, and for putting us all in our places through an innocent Facebook post.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

I am a little baffled. Since when did political parties log on to Facebook? And if they have been logging on, are their FBs different from ours? I ask because if I see a post I dislike or disagree with, I ignore it or say what I didn’t like about it. Just last week somebody posted a picture of Lady Gaga that I did not need to see. But my FB did not whisper to me to go the police against my friend for hurting my sentiments (and my eyes). May be that’s why I don’t understand politics – my FB wall is very lame.

What baffles me even more, and this is very patronising of me, is that it took Palghar, Thane district, Maharashtra, to put the issue of Internet checks and balances on the map. Little old smug city girl me has always believed that the country’s biggest movements would always originate from Mumbai or the other metros. Not that I’m complaining, of course – Palghar’s young ones haven’t exactly been treated well by the police and the political parties, what with two of them already arrested for posting content against the Shiv Sena, and a third in trouble for dissing Raj Thackeray on Facebook.

If I was a Palghar kid with access to Facebook, I would open several accounts and slang out every political party I know, just to see what happens. No, I am not about to do it, because I am not a Palghar kid (see what I did there?) I think I know what would happen – if you think intolerance towards criticism of their party or its chiefs is strictly a Shiv Sena or MNS thing, you’ve got another think coming.

I am very proud of Palghar. Palghar and its youngsters have shown us the way. In this day and age, it is not a mean achievement to have a Twitter hashtag created after your name, or to have people outrage over your arrest as they sip their coffee in their air-conditioned offices. The day the two girls were arrested, somebody created a fake Shaheen Dhada account as well.

Sure, some ignorant ones are still asking, “Hey, where IS Palghar?”, but they’re also ‘liking’ others’ call for support, aren’t they? And whether we remain unsure of Palghar’s geographical location or not, aren’t we all secretly thrilled that we can now write and post things with some impunity about the Party That Must Not Be Named, because we can cite those two girls every time somebody threatens us with arrest? Of course, we can’t keep shouting, “Shaheen Dhada! Rinu Srinivasan!” while a mob ransacks our office or clinic, but at least we now have something to shout out in our defence.

My vote of thanks goes to Palghar. For giving us a worthy event to include in this year’s list of exciting events. For shaking us out of our slumber, induced by some weird idea that nobody outside Mumbai has access to social media. For proving that the Shiv Sena, wherever it may be, is a delightfully predictable political party. And for its two young girls, for innocently saying the things that we were thinking but did not have the courage to think out loud for so long.

P.S.: Where is Palghar?

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.

(Picture courtesy jaimaharashtranews.com)

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Don’t wanna miss a thing

Why do papers and channels think people are interested in knowing who broke a news story ahead of the competition?
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

When I was employed with newspapers full time, the biggest issue I faced was not that I hadn’t properly expressed myself in a story I wrote for the day’s edition, or that I hadn’t packed in enough detail. No, the one big issue, and it was the first thing that struck me when I woke up in the morning, was:

“Have I missed a story?”

Most reporters wake up and check their phones for messages and missed calls – with thoroughly guilty consciences – from potentially irate editors. The best feeling in the world is to know that the office did not call or text while you slept, and that the worst that happened to you was that you won the Coca Cola Lottery again this week.

The feeling of contentment lasts but a few seconds. Reporters then leap at the newspapers – of which, each serious journalist’s house will have at least seven, sometimes in more than two languages – and study the news sections as if preparing for a pop quiz. And while they’re sitting in a sea of newspapers, they’ll also check the TV news. I know reporters who read newspapers, hold the TV remote in one hand and their BBs in the other, and simultaneously check the news feeds on all three.

This enthusiasm serves three functions – one, you know what the competition has published and you haven’t; two, you know if your story really was ‘exclusive’ or not; and three, you can mentally prepare your arguments for and against a certain item in a rival publication or channel (“But sir, what do you mean ‘Why don’t we have that story? YOU told me not to write it!”)

In the event that a reporter has missed a story, a new drama unfolds. He has to first pick up the phone and confirm if the rival’s news is true or a random tweet. If true, he has to get to work and track a good follow up to the story. Meanwhile, he has to count to 100 while his boss tells him, in 10 different ways, that he is an incompetent ass. After that, he has to promise himself never to miss a story again.

I used to be part of these shenanigans myself, and when I would tell my mum about it (my mum is this erudite, painfully analytical woman who has often given me stories) about how I missed a story and what a big loss it was to my paper, she would shoot me a look that said: So?

Over the years, you learn to calm down about missing a story, because in the larger scheme of things, you find that people don’t really care if you missed reporting about a factory opening in Ulhasnagar, or if an aged actor was admitted to hospital for an ingrown toenail. But try telling that to your editor. The merest suggestion of, “But how is this important to our readers…?” has made many an editor foam at the mouth and throw furniture at the staff.

Similarly, readers do not care if you were the only one in the country to report something that the others didn’t. So claims of ‘We were the first to report that…’ or ‘Remember, you read it here first,’ only open you up to ridicule. Again, reminding an editor of this is akin to stealing birthday cake from the birthday boy’s plate.

People only want to be told the news truthfully and completely, in a way that doesn’t insult their intelligence. Readers can see right through a plug, they are not impressed with claims of ‘The Home Ministry took this action after our report’ and if you want to see a reader’s blood pressure shoot, put a chaddi-bra ad on the paper’s front page. While papers and channels are playing Hits And Misses all day, their readers are reading the line ‘We told you first!’ and thinking, So?

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.

(Picture courtesy www.thehindu.com)

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The Internet as therapist

Why are we increasingly seeking validation for our actions from strangers online? Whatever happened to dealing with personal crises, personally?
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Early this week, Twitter users in Mumbai were outraged and astounded by the story of a Mumbai-based writer who blogged about physical abuse at the hands of her boyfriend. The post went viral in minutes, and several Twitter users rallied around the girl and heaped suitable abuse and condemnation on the perpetrator of the beatings, punchings and head-on-wall slammings that the girl said she had been subjected to. For five days, the story played out on Twitter over and over again, with almost all the junta saluting the girl’s courage for speaking out against abuse, and several more promising support and help.

She did not go to the police for personal reasons.  Meanwhile, the boyfriend suspended his Facebook account and went silent on Twitter. There were a few who felt that the matter should not have been aired on a public platform like Twitter at all – that it was a matter to be solved between two adults, privately. Those who expressed this opinion were quickly attacked by the outraged majority, with such analogies as, ‘That is like saying murder should be solved between the murderer and the victim’.

A friend of mine was telling me about a woman she barely knows, who uploads a new picture of herself every day on Facebook, and who recently took an opinion poll on whether her FB ‘friends’ would like to see pictures of her actually giving birth to her son. My friend and I took respective mini Twitter and Facebook sanyaas with these goings-on, moving on to solving our little crises on our own, without a lot of strangers looking in and offering support and encouragement.

It’s not like I don’t want support, it’s just that I don’t need it from a bunch of people I don’t know.

I’m not trivialising anybody’s crises, least of all domestic abuse – it is a sad evil that must be spoken against and more importantly, acted upon – and I’m not getting into the whole ‘Haw! How can he beat?’ debate either. I actually couldn’t care less because I don’t know either the beater or the beatee. Yes, the issue bothers me, just like paedophilia and marital rape bother me. But I am surprised that we are increasingly turning to our computer screens for solutions to our problems.

We are buoyed by retweets from perfect strangers. We are excited by glowing reviews of a new pic we just uploaded on FB. It thrills us to know that complete strangers are recommending our blog posts, tweets and status messages to the world. If we break up with our partners, we tell the virtual world about it and wait for commiserations. We even live tweet the births of our babies (and open Twitter accounts for them). And when people we don’t even know write back to us saying, “I know just how you feel…” we are quietly proud of how someone out there ‘gets’ us.

It seems that we are increasingly looking for validation from an unknown mass of people, and what’s more, looking to be liked. Criticism from unknown quarters stings us. The virtual unknown is important to us, sometimes to the exclusion of family and friends. We’re having dinner with our families, but not participating in the discussion happening over our heads because we’re tweeting about what a good time we’re having at our family dinner. We’re out drinking with friends, but we want to offer immediate proof of what a good time we’re having, so we put up pictures of us pulling monkey faces while we show our drink glasses to the camera. Then the next morning, we explain how those pics were not supposed to be uploaded, that we didn’t know what we were doing because we were so drunk, lolz.

It seems to me that while we’re reaching a lot of people today than we used to, we’re actually unloading on the virtual world a bit more than we used to as well. We’re so connected, the lines between personal and private are not lines any more, but mere specks. Everything is up for evaluation – our personal crises, our major and minor tragedies, our trivialities and successes. And though our world view is much wider in scope as well, we’re expecting strangers to agree with us, to hold our hands through our decisions, to tell us what to do.

I don’t know about you, but if I need help, praise or support, I’ll get it from people I know. The Internet is too creepy a therapist.

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.

 

 

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Who’re you calling fat?

Rolls of fat all along the abdomen and jiggly arms – is this your definition of a curvy Indian woman? So really thin is healthy, I suppose?
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

I am seriously annoyed when women at the gym call me thin. This is not false modesty. I am genuinely irritated when I get called thin. Because that observation is generally followed by this statement I am still not able to understand – “Why do you need to exercise? You are so thin!”

And this pronouncement is followed by a quick, sad little look at their bulging abs and/or thunder thighs.

I am not thin. I am underweight. I am 33 years old and I weigh lower than I used to when I was in college. But people think that because I have a thin waist and because my jeans sit loosely on me, I don’t need to exercise. So why do I need to exercise? Because there’s a history of diabetes in the family. At the wrong side of 30, I don’t want to develop cardiac disease, or have painful joints, or something worse. But there is still the problem of being underweight.

Then there is the other extreme comment, generally from women who are overweight but who possess some insane confidence that makes them think that they are not fat, but curvy. They talk of Vidya Balan and Beyonce. Sometimes, in some dim moment of despair, they think they should lose a little weight. But mostly, they seek consolation from pictures of pudgy celebrities, who openly declare that they celebrate their curves, and that they would never go under the knife because they love their bodies, blah blah blah.

Hey, please love your body, wobbly bits and all. Also love it if you’re eating as much as you should, but you’re still rail thin. But do something about that extra fat you’re carting around, and don’t pretend to love it. There’s nothing to love about something that gives you cardiac problems, that puts you on the path to diabetes, that makes you heavier on your knees than you should be. And there is nothing sexy about carrying fat around, just like there is nothing remotely beautiful about being bones in a skirt.

After a recent interview that a now-rotund Vidya Balan gave to an entertainment paper, about how ‘Fat is sexy’ (she can get away with saying that, she has a National Award backing her sentiment) and which Kareena Kapoor rebutted two days later with the bitchy comment, “There’s nothing sexy about being fat. Anybody who says so is just lying,” I saw pictures of Vidya in the same paper yesterday. Lying or not, Vidya Balan is the poster girl for the wrong kind of pudginess – why are we celebrating a woman who is simply bursting out of her backless sari blouses? Is it just me, or does anyone else think that she is deliberately not changing out of her saris – is there another dress option for her left? I’m not saying she would look ugly in a dress or a pair of trousers – I am just saying that that is probably what she herself thinks.

I don’t think fat is ugly. I think skinny is ugly. But there’s a need to choose the right role model for your body type. And what’s more, whether you choose Vidya or Kate Moss, you still need to exercise and eat right. That’s what I’m doing. Because underweight is just as dangerous as overweight.

Vrushali Lad is a freelance reporter who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.  

(Picture courtesy www.healthmeup.com)

 

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An open letter to Dr Satyapal Singh

We all agree that nobody should attack a public servant, whatever the provocation. But is anyone disciplining the police force?
by Vrushali Lad

I don’t advocate violence. I hate fights on the streets. It makes me sick when people beat each other up over trivial matters in the train. I feel frightened by how easily people are raising their fists, or even guns, on those who have irritated them in some way.

But all of that is nothing to the irritation I feel when I see the Men in Khaki make complete dirtbags of themselves, especially when they are supposed to assist the public. The Mumbai police commissioner has issued a circular that outlines the harshest punishments to those who attack cops in the city. Those who assault a cop may lose their jobs, the freedom to go out of the country, their driving licenses, their passports, and most importantly, their reputation. (Read about the circular here)

In the case of such incidents as the Azad Maidan violence, when rioters beat up policemen and molested policewomen, and even in such cases where cops get beaten up by gangs of thieves who the cops attempted to capture, I feel for the police force. They are overworked, underpaid, and generally not protected by the administration when they face such issues on the field.

But, Dr Satyapal Singh, please answer this: However underpaid, understaffed and unprotected your police force is, does it take your men too much effort to cultivate some basic manners? I cite a few incidents that I have personally witnessed, and which will help you see what I mean:

–  My house was burgled two years ago. It was a case of forced entry, and the thieves took advantage of the fact that my cupboard keys were lying in plain view. The constable’s (who came for the panchnama) first comment to me was: “You are educated people. How can you leave your cupboard keys lying around when nowadays there are so many burglaries taking place?”

– The fingerprint ‘expert’, while doing nothing useful, kept extolling the virtues of the thieves, who he said had not left a single fingerprint behind. “Very clever this thief is,” he chuckled to my face.

– At the police station, while getting my FIR written, a woman from a neighbouring slum came in crying and said that her husband had taken her child away from her and locked her out of the house, furious that she had gone to Tirupati without his permission. Do you know what your duty officer did, Dr Singh? He didn’t write a complaint. He didn’t call the husband to the police station. No, sir. He said to the woman, “Has he been fighting with you for long?” When she said ‘yes’, he said, “You had gone to Tirupati. Why didn’t you ask God to grant your husband some sense?” The woman left the police station shortly after this.

– When a call centre employee was rude to my father over a disputed phone company bill, the duty officer at the police station deigned to call the call centre, but hung up after a brief conversation, because the girl who was rude to my dad refused to give her last name. The duty officer exclaimed, “I cannot talk to people who do not give out their father’s names.”

– My best friend went to court with his aunt to claim a gold chain that had been snatched from her a few months ago. Your officers refused to return the chain without a bribe of Rs 500. And the chain they gave her wasn’t even hers, it was somebody else’s.

– Two years later, my burglary case has still not being solved. Why? Because your men tell me that “jewellery and laptop thefts are difficult to crack.” Oh, but they insist that I go to court and classify the case.

Dr Singh, you are within your rights to protect your men. And I do agree that your men require protection. But can you really blame a person for assaulting your men, when harried by the theft of his car, or his mobile phone, or a domestic dispute, and instead of receiving help and commiseration, only gets unasked-for advice on how he was wrong and how he deserved what happened to him? It took me all of my self-control to not pick up a heavy object and hurl it in your constable’s face, when he kept saying that it was my fault that my house had been burgled. Only the fear of consequences stops more people from assaulting your men.

We’re human, too, Dr Singh. We get really furious when your men tell us how we got what we deserved. Does anybody deserve to be thrown out of their houses? Or to lose everything to thieves, everything they’ve worked for all their lives, because they left their home for a few hours to visit relatives? Or to have their mobile phones flicked from their pockets? What gives your men the right, then, to tell us that we were in the wrong when something like this happens to us? Or to demand a bribe to do their jobs?

Yes, you are within your rights to make my life a living hell if I assault a member of your force. In the meantime, Dr Singh, why don’t you also ensure that your men mend their boorish, often uncooperative ways? If you feel that taking away my driving licence, my job, my passport and everything that is a close part of who I am, will ‘discipline’ me, are you also issuing a circular to your men, stating how you will discipline them if they refuse to do their jobs, and not add to a complainant’s grief and fury by being wiseguys?

Respectfully yours,

Vrushali Lad,

A Mumbai citizen.

(Picture courtesy mid-day.com)

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