A pushy old dowager of the fourth estate and an ambitious, once angry, young knight, are at daggers drawn over the merits or the dangers of allowing the bete noire of the global media world, Rupert Murdoch, to take over the Indian skies.No, this is not a plot for director-producer Ramesh Sharma's next provocative feature film but the fallout of a two-part documentary he recently made for Doordarshan, titled Murdoch's Footprints Across India.However, the talk in the media circuit is not so much about the documentary itself but the vituperative war of words in print and private between the septuagenarian grande dame of the Indian media scene Amita Malik and Sharma. Angered by Malik's rather patronising and disparaging review of his documentary in The Pioneer, Sharma has taken on Malik and Sevanti Ninan, a freelance media critic who writes for The Hindu. The two media critics, says Sharma, are fighting Murdoch's battles on his behalf in India.In an open letter to Malik, Sharma says, "You have compromised your credibility in the recent past since you chose to use personal prejudices and bias as the yardstick to judge o damn programmes This became more pronounced and evident when you were co-opted by Rupert Murdoch's men in India " Incidentally, in the last six years, Malik's column was twice discontinued by The Indian Express after its editors felt that she was using the column to pursue her personal agenda.The bitter wrangling between Malik and Sharma has become the talk of the town.In his lengthy letter, Sharma goes on to accuse Malik of shielding Murdoch's operations in India because she was beholden to Star T V. "You had yourself told me that when you went to Mumbai for the Priya Tendulkar Show, Rathikant Basu's Mercedes had met you at the airport and how you had stayed in Basu's penthouse apartment. How Priya did not adequately compensate you for your appearing in the show and how the enhanced fees was paid to you by Basu's office... The fact that you accepted hospitality and these privileged rates from them and, in spite of this, continued to review their programmes in your columns without disclosing this relationship to your readers, is, in my opinion, highly unethical."Sharma's ire is understandable. In her review of his documentary, she had written: "to my acute dismay and embarrassment, come his two documentaries on Murdoch, lining up ex-employees, at least one of whom is reputed to have played about with Murdoch's funds, disgruntled people whose proposals for programmes had been turned down (this can be documented) and an alleged failed deal with Murdoch to build studios in Noida. This otherwise sorry cut and paste job is not really worthy of the director of New Delhi Times ..."Sharma views this attack on him as a result of an alleged nexus between the two critics and the Murdoch empire. Sharma points to the fact that both critics had made similar charges against him in their respective columns after his Murdoch documentaries were aired. "Both of you have privileged links with Murdoch's Indian operations and these stories have been planted on you. Even a cub reporter knows that before printing an allegation ... it is only proper to get a comment from the person you are accusing. Both of you denied me this basic courtesy."To further buttress his charges of a nexus, Sharma says that: "In the summer of 1997, a lobbyist, Monroe E. Price, was flown in by Star TV from New York to influence the deliberations on the Broadcast Bill. Curiously, this gentleman offered Ninan a handsome sum to co-author a book on broadcast laws, which she agreed to do. Despite this commercial link with a known Murdoch lobbyist, Ninan continues to review programmes produced by Murdoch or are about him without disclosing her special relationship."When contacted, Malik said she did not wish to be drawn into a debate over the letter. She did, however, clarify that she was only put up in Star TV's guest flat in Mumbai "which is frequently used for professional guests" and that "the fees paid to me was the routine fee that I get from most networks." Ninan, too, has issued a rejoinder. "Monroe Price is an expert on broadcasting law. associated with the Oxford University. He was a consultant for a document prepared by the foreign broadcasters' lobby but not specifically a consultant to Star T V. I did not co-author a book with him as Sharma suggests, but only contributed a chapter, on Monroe Price's request, to a book to be published by Oxford University Press on the subject of broadcasting in India for which I was paid a far from handsome fee." The war of words, it seems, is far from over..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}Published By: AtMigration Published On: Jun 8, 1998--- ENDS ---
