ARVIND SWAMINATHAN writes from Chennai: Depending on what you expect of your newspaper, either The Times of India played just the right role in the N. Srinivasan matter: proactively taking up an issue that concerns a “nation of a billion-plus”, right up to the very end, even if it did not secure the end it would have liked. Or, it plainly overdid it, to the exclusion of all else, eventually falling flat on its face. Over a 13-day period beginning May 22, ToI ran 87 pieces (outside of general BCCI/IPL pieces) with the BCCI president exclusively in focus and almost all of them either demanding, provoking or predicting the end for Srinivasan following his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan‘s arrest in the alleged IPL betting scandal involving Vindoo Dara Singh. Among these 87 pieces were seven editorials, mini-editorials and opinion pieces, five interviews, and four cartoons. It even launched a public service advertising campaign (below) midway through the campaign. In making the murky BCCI saga its bread, butter, jam and marmalade day after day for 13 days, The Times of India relegated more important but less reader-friendly stories, like the massacre of Congress leaders in Chhattisgarh at the hands of Maoists to the inside pages. The role of Times Now in drumming up the anti-Srinivasan mood is outside of this quantitative analysis, but with Srinivasan only “stepping aside” for a month at the end of all the sound and fury signifying nothing, the newsworthiness of the Times campaign is open to question For the TOI, it is always “jo bikega, woh likhega.”
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 06:29:18 +0000
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