Media for Sale

Times of India in its 20th September edition printed a full page interview of Rahul Dravid. The interviewed covered many aspects of his personality. On how aggression for him is not what he thinks of other sportsperson's mother, wife and sister. How he has dealt with certain difficulties in life. But the last 5 questions in that interview (out of 23) were all about Rahul's loyalties with Reebok in an era of shifting loyalties..etc..etc.

Undoubtedly this interview was a paid interview by Reebok who in few days time will be launching their new brand of shoes RD 10 celebrating their 10 years of association with Dravid.

The question that now arises is how much Journalism is up for sale?

TOI few weeks back printed a full page interview of Pantaloon Fashion's CMD, Kishor Biyani. They termed him as The retail king of India. Rediff soon joined the bandwagon and printed " Meet the Retail king of India" as one of its headlines.

Yes Kishore Biyani may be one of the first few entrepreneurs who saw potential in the retail secor but two full page articles in two of the biggest media organisations clearly indicates how hard Mr Biyani is trying to woo investors to invest in his new company, The Future's Group. And with the lure of easy money how easily the two Media giants of India termed him as The Retail King.

Even NDTV has also signed a 5 year contract with The UB Group and even named their lifestyle channel after UB group's tagline.

CNN IBN is also not far behind as they kept screening "Hutch is now Vodafone" as one of its headlines on 21st September. Strangely Vodafone is using the same tagline in all its advertisments.

As a media student I once heard Rajdeep Sardesai giving a long lecture on how the marketing man has entered in the editorial meets and how we should kick them out.
Going by the way Mr Sardesai, Mr Roy, Times group are letting the marketing man interfere with the content I guess Media is up for sale and the highest bidder will get to eat the pie.