Monthly Archives: December 2008

Goa, Patrakar-Goa

Goa’s oldest Konkani newspaper completes platinum

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Vavraddeancho Ixtt, the only Konkani weekly THAT HAS BEEN IN CONTINUOUS PUBLICATION since 1933, CONCLUDES its platinum jubilee
celebrations with a special closing ceremony function ON COMING MONDAY.

In 1933 Vauraddeancho Ixtt, a Konknni weekly was started by Fr. Arsencio   Fernandes and Fr.Graciano Moraes. It is still run by the Pilar Society till date.  Today Vauraddeancho Ixtt is the only weekly of its kind published in this script and language.

AT A FUNCTION TO BE HELD on December 22, 2008 at Pilar Seminary Annexe at 4 pm, GOA’S REVENUE Minister Jose Philip D’Souza will be the chief guest for the function while editor of Renovocao and Diocesan Centre for Social Communications Media, Fr Francisco Caldeira will be the guest of honour. The Superior General of the Society of Pilar, Fr Tony Lopes will preside.

On the occasion, V Ixtt awards will be distributed to several Konkani writers and those who have contributed towards the Konkani language and Goan culture. Besides, young Konkani writers and social activists, who have been closely associated with the Konkani weekly and Goa, will also be felicitated.

Prizes will be distributed to the winners of various competitions conducted during the V Ixtt platinum jubilee celebrations.

The highlights of the programme will include the release of the special issue, almanac and the launch of the new ‘V Ixtt‘ supplement. The cultural programme will comprise of platinum jubilee song, violin instrumental with piano accompaniment, raag, comedy skit, dance and a mando.

The programme is open for the general public.

Started in 1933 as the Church attempted to retain its links with the workers in a world fast turning secularised and politicised, the weekly was to reach out the working class and people at the grassroots to educate, inform and educate them on issues like “Communism vis-a-vis religion”.

However, over the years, and as it gained wider popularity, the scope extended to the coverage of social, political, cultural and religious themes. V Ixtt can boast of a glorious past as one weekly that provided news and views that satisfied the reading appetite of a large readership in Goa   and Mumbai.

Having run by priests and the Society of Pilar, its credibility  and respect always remained consistent. In recent years, its editors have been young priests of the Society of Pilar, like Fr Peter Raposo and Fr Feroz Fernandes, who managed the publication while in their 20s and 30s.

Ixtt‘s contribution to the freedom movement of Goa is worth the mention.

Ixtt under the aegis of the Society of Pilar followed a line of thought  closer to the aspiration of the freedom movement of our Motherland India and Goa. It was on the Vespers of the independence of India that V Ixtt began to publish from the precincts of the old Monastery of Pilar, where its editorial office and press was housed.

The weekly enjoyed quite good freedom to express itself without rigorous Portuguese censorship upto the early 50’s. However, the picture started  changing after the Liberation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and the freedom struggle movement to liberate Goa from the clutches of the Portuguese.

“During this period, the Press buckled under the pressures of rigorous  Portuguese censorship. Nothing could be published in Goa without getting it censored by the Portuguese Police with the rubber-stamp of approval that read ‘Visado pela censura’ (Seen by the Censor),” says former editor Fr Peter Raposo, in an essay tracing the history of Romi Konkani journalism in Goa.

Ixtt, under the editorship first of Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues (1944-54) and later of Fr. Jeronimo Pereira (1954-69), had to face insurmountable pressures to toe the Portuguese line. In order to survive most of the times, Ixtt maintained silence towards the policies of Salazar the Portuguese dictator without however openly
criticizing the Portuguese Government, which would be suicidal.

But this silence itself was construed as opposition to the Portuguese Sovereignty in Goa.

On August 12, 1961, three months before the liberation of Goa, the Governor Vassalo da Silva, by his decree, suspended the publication of Ixtt for 90   days as a punishment for not being patriotic towards Portugal and showing  pro-India tendencies. Thus Ixtt was the only paper of Goa which remained   firm and suffered for its nationalistic aspirations.

Today Ixtt still continues to be popular.  At present Ixtt has almost 7000 regular subscribers and in fact this number is increasing. Ixtt was online since 1999 sharing a link on Goacom.com, today it has its own website (http://www.v-ixtt.com).

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Goa

Journos debate… the impact of a pair of shoes

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Via the South Asian Journalists Association network

FROM : Salil Tripathi

Dear Raja,

Thanks. This reporter did not speak truth to power; he acted as an activist, a combatant, using physical force against an individual. He brought shame to the profession of journalism, even though he may have acted all right from an activist/protester standpoint.

Reporting on a war means reporting on a war. You report what you see, hear and can verify; if you are restricted from seeing, or hearing, disclose that to your readers/viewers. You don’t interpret data unless you are a commentator; you get others to corroborate the story you think is getting advanced. Reporting on a war does not mean taking up weapons and fighting for a side. You are welcome to do that, but then don’t disguise yourself as a reporter.

Embedded journalism is bad, but no journalism is worse. If readers/viewers are told that what they’re seeing is controlled, then the reporter has done his/her duty. Iraq’s
pre-occupation government was frequently interviewed by the media. That press officer who was later known as Comical Ali as a regular part of the broadcasts. What you call Iraq’s resistance movement is seen by many Iraqis as a bunch of fundamentalist militants, many of them not Iraqis, whose target is hardly the “occupation force” but ordinary Iraqi civilians.

Journalists are not supposed to throw shoes at anybody. They are supposed to ask tough questions. The one who hurls a projectile in a press conference has usually lost the verbal argument.

I agree that the reporter’s protest will go down history as an act of protest – but please, don’t besmirch the memory of non-violent actions like the Boston Tea Party and the Salt Satyagraha, by equating this violent action with what Gandhi and the New Englanders did. Yes, it may be in line with the way Shiv Sainiks among Hindus and intifadaists among Palestinians might act. But this act was by no way Gandhian. Please. — Salil/London

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 4:25 AM, raja swamy wrote:

Does loyalty to the profession absolve a journalist of the responsibility to speak truth to power? The comments on this forum seem to suggest exactly that. However, I would like to know what exactly “profession” means when it comes to reporting on war and occupation (and I reject the fantastic views of the professional soldier (and happy pro-occupation denier of occupation, that all is hunky dory in occupied Iraq)). Is embedded journalism “professional?” Is reporting word for word the pronouncements of the aggressor country’s administration WITHOUT once getting the views of the Iraqi government (pre-occupation), the resistance movement (post-occupation), the critiques from
around the planet about this disastrous and genocidal war of neocolonial occupation, professional?

What I am confounded by is the cavalier attitude of some like Bhaskar Dasgupta towards the life of Muntadar al Zaidi. Is this how a journalism list engages with the question of imminent physical harm to a journalist who did no more than throw shoes at an aggressor who launched missiles, bombs and what not murdering more than a million people and maiming scores? Shouldn’t SAJA be leading the
call to defend the Al Zaidi’s life? Instead we get the blinkered view that the occupation has made such acts possible and as such there is nothing to worry about except perhaps the damage done to something these geniuses determine to be the “profession.”

It this sycophantic practice of siding with the powerful and making excuses for genocide that is being propounded as the “profession” by some SAJA’ers. As a South Asian, I am ashamed by these comments and would like to reiterate that Al Zaidi’s action represents a genuine response by a
genuine journalist – who hasn’t forgotten that the most fundamental obligation of a journalist is to stand up to the powerful, and that he did. This incident will go down in history books as one of the greatest acts of protest, alongside the Boston tea party, the Salt satyagraha, and the Palestinian Intifada.

Bravo Muntadar al Zaidi! Wish there are millions of journalists like you!

raja..

From: Tejinder Singh

Very appropriate Chinki. The reporter did not go in there as a freeman but as a accreditated journalist which most commenting here are forgetting. An accreditated journalist gets rights to ask
but also has duties. Those of us who sit on Councils to negotiate with govt institutions to decide terms and conditions of such procedures, know what harm those Shoes have done to the profession. Some of us are so close to leaders, we can punch or slap them so is that what our duty is?

Tejinder Singh
Brussels, Belgium
Sent via BlackBerry offered by Proximus
Tejinder Singh +32 473 677 985 Editor-in-Chief, New Europe, the European Weekly, Brussels
http://www.neurope.eu
—-
EU Correspondent, APM News (Formerly part of Reuters), Paris http://www.apmhealtheurope.com
—–
Member, Council, Association de la Presse Internationale/ International Press Association, Brussels
http://www.api-ipa.eu/
—-
Life Member, South Asian Journalists Association,NYC http://www.saja.org

From: “Chinki Sinha”

of course it mars the trip because it is not about “liberators” as John uses it here but about the deep
anguish and hurt and disappointment of iraq’s people who first suffered under saddam and now suffer the loss of dignity under the current occupation. it is not about the freedom of expression because the reporter, who hurled the shoes at Bush during the press conference, was arrested on
unspecified charges. You also have to look at the specifics of the conference which was celebrating the US occupation of Iraq as one of the most successful in the history of United States military efforts. Freedom is not about hurling shoes at others. It is about peace and human rights and not fearing about getting killed ever moment …Chinki Sinha, Principal Correspondent, Indian Express, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi,
9717654063, chinkis@gmail.com http://chinkisinha.blogspot.com/

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 7:49 PM, John Laxmi :

In a blatant case of bias, the Associated Press says the incident in Baghdad “mars” Bush’s farewell tour, instead of celebrating it! Could a reporter (or anyone else for that matter) have expressed his dissent in this manner (or any other) during Saddam Hussein’s regime? Shouldn’t we applaud both the reporter for his free expression and the Liberators who made it possible? — Regards, John Laxmi, NJ http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2008/12/15/world/AP-Bush.html?_r=1

Bush’s Iraq-Afghan Farewell Tour Marred by Dissent
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 15, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — President George W. Bush wrapped up a whirlwind trip to two war zones Monday that in many ways was a victory lap without a clear victory. A signature event occurred when an Iraqi reporter hurled two shoes at Bush, an incident the president called ”a bizarre moment.”

Bush visited the Iraqi capital just 37 days before he hands the war off to his successor, Barack Obama, who has pledged to end it. The president wanted to highlight a drop in violence and to celebrate a recent U.S.-Iraq security agreement, which calls for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.

”The war is not over,” Bush said, but ”it is decisively on its way to being won.”

Bush then traveled to Afghanistan where he spoke to U.S. soldiers and Marines at a hangar on the tarmac at Bagram Air Base. The rally for over a thousand military personnel took place in the dark, cold pre-dawn hours. Bush was greeted by loud cheers from the troops.

”Afghanistan is a dramatically different country than it was eight years ago,” he said. ”We are making hopeful gains.”

But the president’s message on progress in the region was having trouble competing with the videotaped image of the angry Iraqi who hurled his shoes at Bush in a near-miss, shouting in Arabic, ”This is your farewell kiss, you dog!” The reporter was later identified as Muntadar
al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, Egypt.

In Iraqi culture, throwing shoes at someone is a sign of contempt. Iraqis whacked a statue of Saddam with their shoes after U.S. Marines toppled it to the ground following the 2003 invasion.

Bush told reporters later that he didn’t think ”you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq. You can try to do that if you want but I don’t think that would be accurate.”

Reaction in Iraq was swift but mixed, with some condemning the act and others applauding it. Television news stations throughout Iraq repeatedly showed footage of the incident, and newspapers carried headline stories.

In Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City, supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for protests against Bush and demanded the release of the reporter. Thousands took to the streets Monday, chanting, ”Bush, Bush, listen well: Two shoes on your head.”

Talking to a small group of reporters after the incident, Bush said, ”I didn’t know what the guy said, but I saw his sole.” He told the reporters that ”you were more concerned than I was. I was watching your faces.”

”I’m pretty good at ducking, as most of you know,” Bush joked, adding quickly that ”I’m talking about ducking your questions.”

On a more serious note, he said, ”I mean, it was just a bizarre moment, but I’ve had other bizarre moments in the presidency. I remember when Hu Jintao was here. Remember? We had the big event? He’s speaking, and all of a sudden I hear this noise — had no earthly idea what was taking
place, but it was the Falun Gong woman screaming at the top of her lungs (near the ceremony on the White House lawn). It was kind of an odd moment.”

The Iraqi government condemned the act and demanded an on-air apology from Al-Baghdadia television, the Iraqi-owned station that employs Muntadar al-Zeidi.

Several people descended on the man immediately after, wrestling him to the ground, and it took a minute or two for security agents to clear the crowd and start hauling him out. As they dragged him off, he was moaning and screaming as if in pain. Later, a large blood trail could be seen on the carpet where he was dragged out of the room.

He was taken into custody and reportedly was being held for questioning by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s guards and is being tested for alcohol and drugs.

Other Arab journalists and commentators, fed up with U.S. policy in the Middle East and Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam, echoed al-Zeidi’s sentiments Monday. Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the influential London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, wrote on the newspaper’s Web site that the incident was ”a proper goodbye for a war criminal.”

After a meeting with Hamid Karzai in the capital of Kabul, Bush said he told the president of Afghanistan: ”You can count on the United States. Just like you’ve been able to count on this administration, you’ll be able to count on the next administration as well.”

The mixed reactions to Bush in both countries emphasized the uncertain situations Bush is leaving behind in the region.

In Iraq, nearly 150,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, protecting the fragile democracy. More than 4,209 members of the U.S. military have died and $576 billion has been spent since the war began five years and nine months ago.

In Afghanistan, there are about 31,000 U.S. troops and commanders have called for up to 20,000 more. The fight is especially difficult in southern Afghanistan, a stronghold of the Taliban where violence has risen sharply this year.

——

Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.

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list, unsubscribe by sending a blank email to leave-saja-disc-20122S@lists.jrn.columbia.edu and then send a note to sree@sree.net asking to be placed on the articles list. Give us feedback on the SAJA Stylebook http://www.saja.org/stylebook

CRIndia

How ludicrous can it get?

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This is an interesting debate… Just goes to show how ludicrous this copyright-performing rights-control on knowledge and information and art debate is going! From the Community Radio – India mailing list.

Sajan Venniyoor wrote:

On 12/16/08, Arti Jaiman wrote:
> Since we work with children, some of them wanted to go on
> air on their CR singing their favourite Hindi movie songs. Where
> do we stand on the copyright front there? Is this acceptable to air?

This is an IPRS issue (as in Indian Performing Rights, not Intellectual Property Rights), and according to the Society, your children have the right to sing their favourite movie songs without payment only if the lyricist has been dead for 60 years, otherwise “you must first obtain permission from him or from whoever owns the copyright in the composition.”

I am pretty sure your kids don’t have any 60 year old favourite songs.

It is widely believed that IPRS rights extend only to music performances in public places (auditoria, restaurants etc), and not to broadcasting. Many broadcasters (including AIR, I’m told) don’t recognize the right of IPRS to extort money — ostensibly on behalf of composers and lyricists — and the India Today group in fact took IPRS to court and obtained a stay.

The ignorance on this subject, especially in government circles, is vast. And it isn’t helped by the fact that music royalties and related copyright issues are administered by the Department of Secondary and Higher Education.

Earlier TRF Radio project manager Arti Jaiman wrote:

I have a question relating to the lyrics and sound rights you have mentioned. Since we work with children, some of them wanted to go on air on their CR singing their favourite Hindi movie songs. Where do we stand on the copyright front there? Is this acceptable to air?

The background is this post about the FM radio, music industry and royalty

FM radio, music industry out of tune on royalty
Ashish Sinha / New Delhi December 16, 2008, 0:00 IST
Matter to come before copyright board on January 28.

The battle between music companies and FM radio channels over royalty payments has come out in the open with last-minute mediation by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) failing to break the deadlock.

Music companies, already fighting rampant piracy, are demanding a doubling of music royalty fees (from the current Rs 660 per hour of music played) that FM radio firms pay.

They have also demanded that radio channels treat sound recording rights and rights in musical lyrical works (tunes are copied by radio) as two separate sets of rights and playing them without a licence would amount to copyright infringement.

India’s 250-plus FM radio stations across 90 towns, represented by the Association of Radio Operators in India (AROI), pay royalty to the Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL), which represents 160 music companies like Saregama India, Sony BMG Music, Universal Music, Tips Industries, Venus Records & Tapes and others.

AROI said the current formula means that FM radio operators end up paying 15 to 50 per cent of their annual revenue as music royalty fees, significantly above global benchmarks of 2 to 3 per cent.

Overall, the industry earns annual revenues of Rs 550 crore of which about Rs 100 crore is paid as music royalty. Sources said AROI may propose possible solutions like the royalty fee payment based on population of a city, genre of music played by the stations and fees based on 2 to 4 per cent of the annual revenue the stations generate.

“The I&B ministry wanted both sides to talk and reach some sort of an understanding on music royalty fees. But that did not happen,” said Apurva Purohit, president, AROI, and CEO, Radio City 91.1 FM.

“Now the matter will be heard by the Copyright Board on January 28 where individual radio companies will present their case,” she added.

The Rs 750-crore music industry is also demanding action against about 100 FM stations, saying they have gone on air without taking licences from the music societies or from the individual copyright owners, violating music copyrights. “The music industry firmly believes that the government should not support such violators of copyrights and must take action to support the music industry survive in these difficult days,” says a senior executive of Indian Music Industry (IMI).

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RSF statement… journo and two assistants arrested over book exposing violence against minorities in Orissa State

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Reporters Without Borders/Reporters sans frontières
17 December 2008

INDIA
Journalist and two assistants arrested over book exposing violence against minorities in Orissa State
Reporters Without Borders today condemned the arrest of Lenin Kumar Roy, author and editor of the quarterly review Nishan, in Bhubaneswar, Orissa State over a book in which he accuses Hindu extremists of waging a campaign of violence against minorities in the Kandhamal district.
Two assistants, Ravi Jena and Dhananjay Lenka, working for Sovan Press, publishers of Dharma naanre Kandhamalre Raktara Nadi (Bloodbath in Kandhamal in the Name of Religion) Sovan Press, were also arrested.
Kumar Roy has been charged with violating Articles 153-A and 295-A of the Indian criminal code punishing “provocative literature likely to disturb peace and communal harmony”. Some sections of the book condemn certain Hindu groups for inciting violence against minorities, making Christians sing Hindu religious songs and forcing young non-Hindu women into prostitution.

“These arrests are arbitrary and violate the right of free expression which is guaranteed in India. Lenin Kumar Roy was arrested simply for condemning inter-communal violence while the local government has failed to protect the rights of minorities in Kandhamal district”, the worldwide press freedom organisation said, calling for his release and that of his two assistants.

At least 700 copies of the book, which police call “Maoist literature” were seized from the publishers. A bail application made by his lawyer on the day after Kumar Roy’s arrest on 8 December 2008 was rejected.
Activist journalists and writers demonstrated on 10 December outside the residence of the governor of Orissa State to protest against the arrests and brandished placards with slogans such as “Stop communalism”, “Release Lenin and the others” and “Thinking and writing are not crimes”.

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