While the pervasive Page 3 approach(a less newsy Page 6 for those New York Post fans among the Romantic Realist’s readers) focusing on “who attended wearing what on their sleeve and on their body” rather than “what was show there” is how most Indian metro newspapers cover art these days, just how deeply entrenched this has become was brought home earlier today when I got this email invitation for the opening of an art show on 17 December in New Delhi.

What struck me was how the invitation, about four artists and their video installations, doesn’t even make a pretense that the opening is about their work. The invitation, from an Indian affiliate of Fleishman-Hillard International Communications, the large global public relations firm, is all about the Page 3 value of this event. The email invite’s subject matter is: Invite : An art evening with Socialites, Designers & Artists (Today).

Beyond listing the names of the four artists (small mercies), it lists 20 “confirmed guests”, dropping names like Bal, Gandhi, Jaipuria, Jindal and Munjal,like sugar in front of flies, as well as 7 other “artists/photographers” who are also showing up. And from the list, it appears just one of the four artists whose work is being shown is actually coming to the opening!

Wonderwall

Invites you to

A Cocktail evening

To showcase Video Installations

by

Ravi Agarwal

Priyanka Dasgupta

Sukanya Ghosh

Adrian Fisk

At:

Clarion Collection

(Formally known as The Qutub Hotel)

Shaheed Jeet Singh Marg

New Delhi – 110016

Today, Dec 17, 2008

At

7 PM

The Confirmed Guest List includes

Mr. & Mrs. Vineet Agarwal

Mr. Ashish Anand

Mr. & Mrs. Jas Arora

Mr. Varun Bahl

Mr. Rohit Bal

Mr. Rohit Gandhi

Mr. Rahul Khanna

Mr. & Mrs. Shaleen Jain

Ms. Ashna Singh Jaipuria

Ms. Preeti Singh Jaipuria

Mr. & Mrs. Naveen Jindal

Mr. & Mrs. Sanjay Kapoor

Ms. Shefali Munjal

Mr. & Mrs. Parmeet Sawhney

Mr. & Mrs. Hameet Sawhney

Mr. & Mrs. Vikramjit Singh

Mr. & Mrs. A.D. Singh

Deepika Jindal

Mike Knowles (Royal Society for Arts UK)

Swapan Seth

Artists/Photographers

Anjum Singh

Manisha Gera

Shivani Agarwal

Pradeep Dasgupta

Dinesh Khanna

Sandeep Biswas

Ravi Agarwal

Iram Sultan

About Video Art:

Over the past few years, artists have been creating video artworks. They are being encouraged by select galleries in India and abroad, as well as by a very small but growing number of Indian collectors who are fascinated by the medium and are not afraid to try something new. The first works of video art were created in the West in the 1960s, and Indian artists began experimenting with the medium in the late 1990s. It is shot like a film, using any camera, but the similarity ends there.

About Wonderwall:

wonderwall.co.in is an e-commerce website that’s the brainchild of Ajay Rajgarhia, and is India’s first ecommerce website specializing in fine art photography and other new and upcoming forms of art.A platform to showcase established names and also introduce upcoming artists, the website is dedicated to making photography an accessible form of art to the public at large. Says Ajay Rajgarhia, “With Wonderwall I hope to be instrumental in getting people to understand and develop people’s interest in fine art photography and other new and upcoming forms of art, irrespective of medium”.

To unveil the site to the public, Wonderwall had it’s first exhibition at the Alliance Francaise, New Delhi in May 2007. The exhibition was curated by Ajay Rajgarhia. Wonderwall aim is to organize regular exhibitions in the capital as well in other cities and countries. The aim is to target people who would like a “touch & feel” before they buy fine art photography”. Ajay Rajgarhia/Wonderwall has been associated with more than ten exhibitions since inception, in cities like Delhi, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai etc. Tokeep current with market trends, and with its objective of being one of the first few entrants in a new medium of art, Wonderwall is now getting into Video Art, and the current show celebrates the launch.

RSVP

Nikhil Kumar

Account Manager LexiconPublic Relations & Corporate Consultants

(A Fleishman-Hillard International Communications Affiliate)

—————————————————————————————————————————————

Can we blame artists and gallery owners and their publicists for behaving this way if media houses would rather focus on comings and goings rather than the art?

Ps: In the interests of full disclosure, I had bought a photograph from Ajay Rajgarhia and his Wonderwall gallery, but I don’t know him otherwise.

Being a believer in newspapers having a clearly articulated and transparent corrections and clarifications policy, this Romantic Realist was delighted to see Hindustan Times promote a very prominent Clarifications/Corrections column that asks readers to alert htreporters@hindustantimes.com for any “bloomer” in the paper and promising that the paper is “happy to correct ourselves.” ((Regular readers of Mint, where the Romantic Realist has a day job, are probably familiar with its permanent Page 2 Corrections & Clarifications box stemming from a clearly stated Code of Conduct that lets readers know how to flag errors and how the paper corrects its errors.))

The Hindustan Times decision to prominently display such a column was somewhat tempered, however, by a recent example of what is known as “correction-as-weapon” tactic where a “correction has been used both as a means to acknowledge an error and land one more jab at a source’s expense,” a tactic well chronicled by Craig Silverman in his 2007 book, Regret The Error. (Checkout Silverman’s website here)

Here is how it all played out.

On 2 December, Hindustan Times published a provocative story (read the full story online here) after the Mumbai terrorist attacks headlined “Buried in the rubble, ten questions.” Among the questions was this one at No. 5:

5. A day after the terrorist attack and casualties at the CST Railway Station, why did Sumana Raghavan fly down to New Delhi and party at Taj Palace hotel with Railway Board colleagues?

That question prompted AK Saxena, additional director general (PR) of the Central Railway to write a 139-word letter to Hindustan Times saying, among other things: “Question 5 is not based on facts and is unjust, unfair and misleading. When the terrorist attack took place at CST station on November 26, Sowmya Raghavan, then General Manager of Central Railway, was present in Mumbai and was continuously monitoring the situation…Immediately after the attack, she visited CST and guided rescue and relief operations. She visited the injured in hospitals and met family members of the dead…In the article, even her name was wrongly spelt as ‘Sumana Raghavan’. The statement that she attended a party at Taj hotel in Delhi is totally incorrect and baseless.”

Ideally, one would imagine that the honorable thing for a newspaper to do at this stage would be to simply acknowledge and correct any errors.

So what did Hindustan Times do? In a 210-word response, the reporter on the story began by saying:

“We regret that the name of Ms. Soumya Raghavan was misspelt in the story. We have also not disputed that she was in Mumbai on the night the attacks began. As the story mentioned, the party in her honour was held the next day in New Delhi, at the Mumtaz Mahal hall of the Taj Palace hotel. However, we regret reporting incorrectly that she was also present that night.”

So far so good. End of the mea culpa? Apparently, not really. Here is what the reporter got to then add, among other things:

“The point of the story is not to make a personal attack on one official…”

Ok, fair enough. End of story? Apparently not really, really. Here is what the reporter got to add again to the now lengthy rejoinder, now 178 words longer than the original Questions No 5:

“Even in the aftermath of the terrorist attack at the railway station, she left behind a headless set-up…”

I don’t know about you but sounds like a “personal attack” to me that had nothing to do with the original story or the errors to be corrected.

Here to your right is how the entire saga looked on the page.

As Silverman writes in his book: “The phenomenon of the correction-as-weapon is both amusing and troubling. A correction should by all means read as though a human wrote it, but journalists should resist the urge to turn corrections into parlor tricks or platforms for airing personal gripes.”

Amen.

Ps: HT Media, which publishes Hindustan Times, also publishes Mint

Hot off the press is news from the World Association of Newspapers/World Editors Forum of this prestigious award. The Romantic Realist, who is on the board of the World Editors Forum, is delighted that a South Asian journalist has been recognized for standing up to authoritarian regimes. Here is the citation from WAN/WEF, though I think it should be Najam not Najaam:

“Najaam Sethi, Editor-in-Chief of Friday Times and Daily Times in Pakistan, has been awarded the 2009 Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual press freedom prize of the World Association of Newspapers.

Mr Sethi, whose newspapers advocate liberal and secular ideas in a country too-often torn by religious extremism, was honoured for his outstanding defence and promotion of press freedom under difficult circumstances and constant personal danger.

“Extremists have always used coercion to silence their critics and that is exactly what is happening now,” Mr Sethi says. “This is a battle that the media and the country cannot afford to lose.” (Read his blogs here)

Due to the editorial policies of the newspapers, which condemn autocracy and religious fundamentalism, Mr Sethi has been at odds with both Pakistani authorities and religious groups for many years. He has been threatened with death by the Taliban and other radical Muslim groups, and has been jailed and beaten for offending the government.

“All journalists are aware of the dangers of inciting extremists who violently oppose reporting that is contrary to their view of the world,” said the Board of the Paris-based WAN, meeting in Beirut, Lebanon, in making the award. “Mr Sethi has chosen, in a region fraught with such dangers, to brave them. His commitment to providing truthful and independent coverage in this region, despite great personal danger and sacrifice, is in the best traditions of journalism. We think the award will inspire others to resist such pressure.”

The award will be presented at the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum, the global summit meetings of the world’s press, to be held in Hyderabad, India, from 22 to 25 March 2009.

Mr Sethi¹s home and office are under constant guard. The Taliban threatened to kill him if he did not change his editorial policy. He has also received death threats from radical Muslim groups after he published a cartoon that depicted Umme Hassaan, principal of a radical women’s school, “educating” female students to wage jihad and embrace martyrdom.

Mr Sethi was imprisoned on 8 May 1999 for “anti-national activities” after he participated in a BBC documentary in which he spoke negatively of then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and corruption in the Pakistani government. He was released after six weeks and charges were dropped after an international outcry pressured Sharif¹s government to release him. Mr Sethi has long reported on corruption at the highest levels of Pakistan’s government.

WAN, the global association of the newspaper industry, has awarded the Golden Pen annually since 1961. Past winners include Argentina’s Jacobo Timerman (1980), South Africa’s Anthony Heard (1986), China’s Dai Qing (1992), Vietnam’s Doan Viet Hoat (1998), Zimbabwe’s Geoffrey Nyarota (2002), and Iran’s Akbar Ganji (2006). The 2007 and 2008 awards both went to Chinese journalists, Shi Tao and Li Changqing. A full list of laureates can found here.

WAN defends and promotes press freedom and the professional and business interests of newspapers world-wide. Representing 18,000 newspapers, its membership includes 77 national newspaper associations, newspaper companies and individual newspaper executives in 102 countries, 12 news agencies and 11 regional and world-wide press groups.

Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw shoes at US President George W. Bush during a press conference, in what is typically an act that ranks among the worst possible insults in the Arab world, was at least making a direct–and risky–public political statement about Iraqi deaths following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Indeed, the television journalist whose twin shoe attack, while apparently shouting “this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog.This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq,” forced Mr Bush to duck during a press conference, is now in detention, accused by the Iraqi government of a “barbaric act” and faces serious charges for attacking a visiting President. (see video of the incident)

The Iraqi reporter who threw shoes at George Bush

(Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki tries to block a shoe as US President George Bush takes evasive action)

But back in India, here is what a rather opportunistic Sitaram Yechury, the Politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), had to say as he desperately tried to hog some headlines and find ways to grab political capital from the incident:

Because of PM, shoes hurled at the Indian people too: Yechury

“Because of the Prime Minister, the shoes were hurled at the people of India too, a top CPI(M) leader said today while reacting to the lobbing of shoes at US President George Bush in Baghdad. “The Prime Minister had told Bush that all the people in India love him. It is because of this statement, the shoes have been hurled at the people of India too,” Politburo member Sitaram Yechury told reporters who sought his comments on the incident.” PTI

I don’t know about you but the Romantic Realist thinks perhaps it is time India’s voters gave the Left the boot it deserves, come national elections. If nothing else for this kind of opportunistic nonsense from its leaders, long bereft of any real policy positions.

Readers of Romantic Realist might remember he is partial to Jet Airways despite all the over-the-top allure of relative upstart Kingfisher Airlines. But here is a vivid example of how being No. 2 to Naresh Goyal’s Jet, Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher does try harder and is much more acutely aware of the need to go the extra mile:

Exhibit 1

4.07 am: An email with a cute digital image of colorful balloons rising against a blue sky landed in my inbox from birthdaygreetings@updates.jetairways.com, saying:

Sub: Happy Birthday from JetPrivilege

Dear Mr Narisetti,