Tag: radia tapes

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Journalists are planting story?

Ambani being shown documents?

Radia calls up Vir Sanghvi on June 20, 2009, the day before his Counterpoint column appears in HT. “Wrote it”, says Sanghvi, “I’ve dressed it up as a piece about how public will not stand for resources being cornered, how we’re creating a new list of oligarchs…” Niira Radia replies: “Very nice, lovely, thank you, Vir.” Sanghvi goes on to say, “It’s dressed up as a plea to Manmohan Singh, so it won’t look like an inter-Ambani battle except to people in the know.”

Related;

The contents of a fresh set of leaked phone conversations involving Niira Radia and her associates paint an alarming picture of the extent to which the influential lobbyist — whose clients include Mukesh Ambani and Ratan Tata — sought to influence, use, manipulate and even browbeat the media in pursuit of her corporate agendas. Apart from highlighting the use of journalists to plant stories and columns or as intermediaries with politicians, the latest tapes released by the news magazine, Outlook, suggest more strong-arm lobbying techniques were also used or considered, including the possibility of blacklisting the national news agency, PTI.

Outlook, which had earlier published 140 conversations originally intercepted by the Income Tax department as part of its ongoing surveillance of Ms. Radia, now says it has 800 more conversations in its possession. Nineteen of those audio tapes, with partial summaries, were published on its website by Sunday evening. Editor Vinod Mehta said that all the tapes were being vetted, and eventually would be put in the public domain, except for those which were purely private conversations.

In one tape, HT Media advisor Vir Sanghvi has a follow-up conversation with Ms. Radia regarding his June 21, 2009 column in the Hindustan Times on the tussle between the Ambani brothers over gas pricing, framed as an article about oligarchs taking over natural resources.

“Wrote it… I’ve dressed it up as a piece about how the public will not stand for resources being cornered, how we’re creating a new list of oligarchs,” Mr. Sanghvi tells Ms. Radia. “Very nice, lovely, thank you, Vir,” she says, while he adds: “It’s dressed up as a plea to Manmohan Singh, so it won’t look like an inter-Ambani battle except to people in the know.”

http://hindu.com/2010/12/13/stories/2010121357060100.htm

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Although many journalists were heard speaking to Ms. Radia on the tapes, public ire has focused on NDTV’s editor for English news, Barkha Dutt, and Hindustan Times columnist Vir Sanghvi, two of the country’s best-known journalists.

On the recording, Ms. Dutt appeared to be agreeing to pass on a message to the ruling Congress party—she later said she was only humoring Ms. Radia and never passed on any messages. Mr. Sanghvi appeared to be tailoring his column according to the lobbyist’s suggestions—an accusation he has denied, saying he was only stringing Ms. Radia along for information.

It’s no longer unusual for Indian public figures to offer clarifications on Twitter and Barkha Dutt offered her first personal reactions on her Twitter page the day the story broke. Her first formal statement only appeared on her channel’s web site on Nov. 27 although NDTV did put out a company statement Nov. 18.

She tweeted on Nov. 19 that “Gathering information against the backdrop of a political story is not unethical. Nor is using that information to get more information.” Later she tweeted that she was “Struck by the bizarre irony of being accused of favouring a man i have never met (raja) and have always attacked in print and on TV.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/12/03/did-vir-sanghvis-twitter-silence-save-him-criticism/