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The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Rose-colored eyeshade

5 comments on Rose-colored eyeshade

Rose-colored eyeshade

: I guess they get tired of train-wreck stories in India.

Editors Weblog quotes the head of the Times of India — which, I didn’t know, is the largest English-language paper in the world with 2.4 million circ — on making the news sunny even under clouds:

Pradaeep Guha, publisher of The Times of India, the world’s best-selling English newspaper, said that his paper’s editorial policy is to emphasize good news – even in the midst of tragedy. For example, “Let’s say that there has been a train accident. 100 people died; but five were rescued. We will publish this news with the following headline, ‘Big Train Accident, 5 Rescued’. We include all the details, but emphasize the positive,” Guha explained, adding that both readers and advertisers had responded positively to the upbeat tone.

I should start reading their coverage of Iraq.

: Neil McIntosh of Guardian Online adds that the same company is reportedly selling editorial coverage in “edvertorials.” Mid Day had the full story. Neil quite properly laments:

Is there nothing this newspaper group will stoop to in order to please advertisers? Selling advertising disguised as editorial. Adjusting the news agenda to better suit the surrounding ads. What next?

And he wonders when readers will start deserting their titles. But when one title alone has 2.4 million subscribers, I guess you can afford to lose a few.

5 responses to “Rose-colored eyeshade”

  1. medya Avatar
    medya

    Hi thank you for your link to my blog .
    as you know kurdistan , is in middle east , so it can be in Middle east section !
    (Lol sorry I am not making you to do that)

  2. Franky Avatar
    Franky

    I agree with the upbeat tendency, but it’s an unfortunate example he gave that shows how quickly it moves to the absurd: 100 die and 5 rescued. The news is obviously the number killed, otherwise we’re quickly in the zone of “No Murders Reported Today”.
    Now if we have a massive earthquake that should devastate New Dehli, and only 1 person is killed, then the appropriate headline would be to accentuate the low number of dead or the high level of survivors.

  3. Rafat Avatar
    Rafat

    Well, TOI is a broadsheet rag in the best sense of the word..I read the newspaper for the first 15 years of my newspaper reading life, when I was in India. It was a great newspaper in its days, but has completely sold out. Self respecting newspapers readers wouldn’t be caught dead reading it, but it is the biggest selling English language newspaper in India.
    The report about it selling editorial space is true…a friend of mine used to work for the paper, and she was a pawn doing this coverage, until she became completely disillusioned and quit.
    TOI is the newspaper which bought into the whole “India Shining” rhetoric of the previous ruling party BJP, and was the flag bearer of that jingoism…of course, the Indian mass had more realitic ideas and threw the BJP out…

  4. Andrea Harris Avatar
    Andrea Harris

    Actually, Franky, both the living and the dead are “the news.” As in, if this newspaper reported only the deaths, and said nothing about the five rescued people, they’d be lying just as much as if they didn’t mention the dead at all. Personally, I don’t need the news media to be “upbeat” and present only Happy Smiling News; I need them to tell all of the news, and not play the stupid let’s-manipulate-the-audience-for-dollars-and-a-power-jones game that so many play. I know that “if it bleeds it leads” is a great way to grab eyeballs, but it’s also a shorter route to irrelevance and ridiculousness.

  5. Mike Smith Avatar
    Mike Smith

    I was in the audience in Istanbul for the presentation by the president of the Times of India. Unless he specified numbers in a private interview, he never mentioned death tolls and survivors in his presentation. The example he used was a train crash (no numbers) in which he would emphasize the lives of survivors. This was part of his response to a question from the audience and was not part of his main speech. In fairness to him, he said that he wants the front page to reflect the pallatative reality of Indian life.
    In terms of circulations, it is apples and oranges. The Wall Street Journal does not recognize USA Today’s larger circulation because USAT relies on “bulk sales.” It seems as if our Indian friends are adopting the same approach because Pradeep Gulah’s presentation failed to mention that USA Today is the largest circulation newspaper in the English speaking world.