THE PAID NEWS EMAIL TRAIL IN GOA

Hi.
Much has been said about paid news in Goa. Now's the time to read some more. All journalists here have known it exists, some of my stories in the past have even exposed the same over and over again. You can find links to most of those stories on these links.
http://paidnewsingoa.blogspot.in/2011/10/goas-paid-piper-paid-political.html
http://penpricks.blogspot.com/
But the scanned images below, give you an insight of how the phenomenon of paid news has taken a vice-like grip in at least one of the news organisations. The letters also indicates how one former journalist Julio D'Silva, who now works in the chief minister's office and is on the editorial board of a government periodical 'Nave Parva', was one of main conduits for paid news as far as the Herald was concerned.
The emails were leaked to a few selective journalists by unknown persons some days back. They were handed to me by a source who happened to get these emails.
I tried to verify the emails for authenticity. I have also in a letter to chief minister Manohar Parrikar requested him to examine the same, using official cyber analysts and investigate the issue of paid news made out in the email transcripts.

rgds
Mayabhushan Nagvenkar


Dear Mr. Parrikar
Greetings!

Please find attached copies of emails between former Herald editor Sujay Gupta and general manager Michael Pereira, which have been selectively leaked to some journalists by unknown persons some days back.
I came by the bunch of emails through a source, whose name I am not at liberty to disclose. The emails need to be checked for their authenticity, but in the way they are clearly make out a case for paid news in the Herald.
The emails are self explanatory, in the sense they not only expose which politicians have indulged in paid news but also exposes the modus operandi used by the named newspaper while indulging in paid news.
The emails list out a string of instances of how Herald indulged in paid news, through the protestations of its editor. It also mentions specific articles which were paid for and which were carried under protest by the editorial section of the newspaper.
Incidentally, the letter also quotes Herald editor Sujay Gupta as saying that Julio (D’Silva), who is presently working out of the chief minister’s office, has been a facilitator for paid articles during the 2012 assembly election campaign. The question of what Mr. D’Silva is doing in your employ, at a time when you have publicly expressed your concern about the phenomenon of paid news both loaded and piquant.
Over the last few years, I have authored several news stories on paid news in the contemporary media set up. You will find one such critical story on media corruption in the 2012 polls parked at this link.
http://paidnewsingoa.blogspot.in/2011/10/goas-paid-piper-paid-political.html

These emails actually go a long way corroborating my expose in 2012. In fact then Herald editor Sujay Gupta, in the first page of the email bunch confirms that paid news was in fact common practice at the Herald.
My prayer to you is to use these emails (after officially verifying them for authenticity), selectively leaked to me and a few other journalists, to start an investigation into paid news, which is a scourge as you yourself have mentioned. These emails make a clear case for paid news in the Herald, but I am sure that a proper investigation will bring other newspapers in the loop too.
I am sure you will find a lot more dirt when you dig the paid news scam in Goa if there is a desire and will to do so.
I am sure journalists, who have been speaking against the paid news malaise would be happy if you could get to the bottom of Goa media’s paid news scandal.
I may be contacted on mayabhushan@gmail.com or 7350131007 for further clarifications.
Best regards
Mayabhushan Nagvenkar

P.S. Scanned copies of the email are attached below

NOTE: The complaint to Mr. Parrikar was sent on March 1 at 7:23 pm. Coincidentally, Herald has run editorial today on paid news and how it needs to be stamped out. Near lyrical irony this. You can read the editorial here.
http://www.epaperoheraldo.in/Details.aspx?id=14337&boxid=1539437&uid&dat=3%2F3%2F2014
I have contacted Mr. Pereira, Mr. Gupta, Mr. D'Silva for comments last night, but no responses have come through so far. Will upload them the moment they do come in.

Goa paid news story makes Press Gazette UK

Goa's paid news story has made it to the Press Gazette (UK), a trade mag dedicated to journalism... Pls find story below

Indian paid-journalism sting prompts defamation trial




12 January 2012
By Jennifer Norton

A Goa-based journalist is facing trial for libel in India today after publishing details of a sting in which he claims a newspaper offered him media coverage for cash.

Writing on his blog Paid News in Goa, Mayabhushan Nagvenkar says he contacted a leading regional daily pretending to be fictional local election candidate Bernard Costa in October 2010 and asked for coverage in return for money.

That paper is now suing him for defamation, with the first hearing due to take place today.

He claims to have exposed the practice of ‘paid news’, where politicians are granted favourable media coverage for financial payment, which he believes is widespread in the Indian press.

A series of emails and telephone transcripts on the blog appear to show the newspaper granting “Bernard Costa” a campaign interview with pre-agreed questions in return for $1700 and a television appearance on the organisation’s cable channel for $1000.

Writing on Nagvenkar’s blog, the editor of the paper concerned said that allegations of corruption against his title were false: "As editor, my stated position both within and outside the organisation has been that paid content cannot be disguised as news.”

Nagvenkar’s story has attracted widespread attention in India and was featured on the front page of leading national newspaper The Hindu.

He is being backed in his legal fight by the Goa Union of Journalists, who have said they will pay his legal fees.

Nagvenkar said: “The paid news phenomenon is not new in India. And in Goa, which is a state in the western part of India, the media is swamped with news articles, which are so obviously paid for.

“My story was aimed at pricking this trend,” he said, “which virtually renders the very spirit of journalism useless.

“It has gotten people here talking about an evil in the media, which had always been lurking silently in the backdrop. Hopefully similar efforts will result in some kind public pressure on the media and make it think twice before indulging in such corrupt malpractices.”

A report published by the Press Council of India in August 2010 said the practice of “paid news” in the country was “pervasive, structured and highly organised” and that it was “undermining democracy in India”. Nagvenkar has submitted evidence of his investigation to the Council.


http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48541&c=1

Goa Media Union reiterates support in Herald Paid News case and CEC Quraishi on paid news in Goa

Chief Election Commissioner Dr S Y Quraishi on Friday said that the Herald 'paid news' complaint had been forwarded to the Press Council of India (PCI) for action.
Quraishi was responding to a query from media persons during an interaction at the Goa International Centre, where Quraishi along with other members of the Commission were conducting pre poll preparations.
Both the author of this blog and the Goa Union of Journalists had submitted a complaint to the ECI vis a vis the 'paid news' expose in Goa.
The CEC also said that political parties in Goa had complained about “paid news” and told the Commission that many politicians were releasing birthday advertisements expecting quid pro quo for favours during elections. Incidenally, the latter fact was reported by none of the local English dailies available here, barring The Hindu. 
Earlier last week the Goa Union of Journalists (GUJ) representing more than 200 working journalists in Goa issued a media statement, it received a communication from the PCI to submit all evidence available with them.
Please find the relevant portions of the press note printed below.

PRESS   NOTE

PANJIM: The Goa Union of Journalists (GUJ) has decided to furnish all the required information sought regarding Paid News complaint by Mayabhushan Nagvenkar pertaining to Herald, to the Press Council of
India (PCI), New Delhi, for appropriate action.
The meeting of GUJ executive committee chaired by its president Pandurang Gaonkar on Wednesday, deliberated upon the letter made by the PCI seeking all information regarding Paid News complaint.
The GUJ decided to pursue the complaint and to extend all possible support to the complainant till the matter is taken to its logical conclusion.
The GUJ has also decided to raise the issue of Paid News before the Election Commission of India during its visit to Goa on Friday, December 16... 

The Goa paid news story also finds mention in media critic Sevanti Ninan's column 'Media Matters' in the Hindu Sunday (Dec 18).

Criminal defamation case against whistleblower in Goa "paid news" story

Hi,

Finally an update on the Goa paid news story. An interesting one. A criminal defamation complaint under section 500 of the Indian Penal Code has been filed against me at a trial court in Goa following the paid news expose in October.

A source was kind enough to give me a copy of the complaint filed against me. Interestingly the defamation case has been filed by Tulsidas Desai, Herald's marketing manager, who struck the paid news deal with me on phone and email, while I was posing as fictitious budding politician 'Bernard Costa'.


Please find the nine pages of the defamation case below, which was incidentally filed on 11/11/11. :) A legal source gave me a copy of the complaint a couple of days back.

The complaint accuses me of doing the paid news story "out of sheer frustration" by using "the facilities of the internet to start publishing his own fanciful ideas, which were basically 'anti' in nature. His famous (or rather notorious) blog for some time was titled 'penpricks' where he freely indulged in mud slinging against one and all".

This blog www.paidnewsingoa.blogspot.com has also been described a a 'nefarious activity' by the complainant.

Tulsidas also claimed in his complaint that the conversation about the paid news deal never happened.

For more untruths, you could run through the scanned images attached.

The criminal defamation complaint amounts to clear intimidation of a whistle blower, exposing an unethical practice, in this case the phenomenon of paid news.

I will contest this bullshit.

Thank you for all your support and look forward to more of it. Watch this space for more updates as they happen

Mayabhushan

The 'Paid News' story and the Goa Editors 'Guilt'

Hi update of the Goa Paid News Story

The Goa Editors Guild (GEG) issued a statement on November 1 (reproduced below).

It’s a nice thing that editors to have finally taken note of the Herald paid news story a ‘full’ six days after the story broke on this blog and a complaint was filed before the Press Council of India on October 25.

But there’s something shocking inadequate about the points raised by the GEG.

While all the points laid out in it are valid and true in a very academic manner, the absence to any reference to the express incident – the Herald paid news story -- robs the statement of every shred of sincerity. The refusal of the small editorial community in Goa to even acknowledge the ‘paid news’ story in the statement is also a telling thing.

Their silence speaks volumes of the editorial judgement of the captains of the media here. It also betrays a cynical talent, which makes you look away, while the very roots of journalism being hacked a short distance their thresholds. Or probably they have been deafened by the echoes of the advertorial axe.

Here’s a fact.

While some newspapers have reported the pressnote issued by the Goa Union of Journalists and the GEG, not a single newspaper ran the ‘paid news’ scandal as a news story, even as several independent Goa news websites and national dailies have run the story on their pages.

While I am in complete concurrence with the GEG statement that there is ‘growing concern’ over the phenomenon of paid news and that it must be encouraged, the GEG has made no mention of the procedures they have in place to tackle ‘paid news’, nor have they condemned Herald for indulging in paid news, nor have they even sought a probe into the revelations made in the story.

What they have done instead, is called on a person bleeding to death, expressed concern about his condition and then left him to die.

P.S. The Mail Today, a Delhi based tabloid ran the paid story yesterday. Here’s the link. Check out the last line. That clinches it.

Goa Editor's Guild statement

The concern growing over the phenomenon of  ‘paid news’ in the media is legitimate.

The media’s primary accountability is with the reader and viewer. With publication of articles and features or television broadcast of materials that are in reality advertisement and publicity for some individual as news without any clear mention of them being advertisements, the reader/viewer can be misled into believing that the publication/broadcast is truthful. It amounts to deception of readers and viewers.

The media owes its credibility to independence and objectivity in the gathering and ordering of the materials or TV footage to inform, educate and enlighten the reader/viewer. The editorial space is entirely reader/viewer’s space. There is a clear-cut allocation of space for advertisements in newspapers and TV channels. With the publication or broadcast of ‘paid news’ the dividing lines between news and advertisement are blurred, deceiving the reader/viewer.

The practice of ‘paid news’ must be discouraged by the media and mediapersons in the long-term interest of the credibility of the media. The lines drawn between the editorial and advertising space must remain clear. If the media allows these lines to blur it will lose credibility, endangering democracy.

Goa "Paid News" story makes front page -- all editions -- in The Hindu

Hi,
For the first time since the Goa 'paid news' story broke in october, a mainstream newspaper has taken cognizance. Credit to the dogged perseverance of the paper's rural editor P Sainath and its local correspondent Prakash Kamat who have been co-ordinating and patching together inputs for over a week.

Please find below the published content.The story was published on the second deck in The Hindu's Delhi edition and it was a pleasure being published in a slot below a story on Wikileaks' Julian Assange. 

Goa daily stung by paidnews bug

Caught offering to publish scripted political interview as ‘news' for Rs. 86,400

“First we'll do one interview on TV on HCN [Herald Cable Network] and after that episode next week, we can carry the same kind of write-up [in the Herald] … how it appeared today, no ... for the HCN thing you have to make a payment of 50,000 [rupees] … and this particular size for Herald, it will be 86,400 rupees … Only you will have to prepare from your side which kind of questions you will like to answer comfortably …”

Paid news is no stranger to Goa, only this time it's drawing unfriendly attention. Those are excerpts from recorded conversations between Tulshidas Desai, marketing manager of OHeraldO (the Herald) and Goa-based journalist Mayabhushan Nagvenkar.

The journalist was pulling off a sting posing as Bernard Costa, a would-be candidate in the State's Assembly polls to be held early next year.

Sales pitch

The Herald's marketing manager is making a sales pitch when the journalist calls up and asks how much it would cost to have an interview of himself dressed up as news. The Herald claims to be Goa's largest-circulated English daily.

“Ya, but can you send me a quotation?” the journalist posing as a candidate asks Mr. Desai. “A rough quotation [of what it costs]?” Mr. Desai knows an ethical line is being crossed and is wary of leaving a trail. “This is like an editorial kind of thing, no,” he says. “I can't mention on the paper, you know … .”

Money for interview

In the conversations, the marketing manager appears to confirm that Raymond D'Sa [an aspiring candidate from Cortalim in south Goa] paid Rs. 2 lakh to get his ‘interview' carried in the Herald of October 20, the morning of the conversation.

Mr. Nagvenkar: “So Raymond's interview was [for] two lakh [rupees].” Desai: “Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya …” But “you are not going to say advertorial, [above the interview], no? asks the journalist. No, Mr. Desai [who first mentioned ‘advertorial'] reassures him. It would be just like Raymond D'Sa's interview. “Today how nothing is mentioned no? Like that only … .” However, Mr. D'Sa, when contacted by The Hindu, flatly denied having made any payment for the interview.

Since these audio recordings went public, all hell has broken loose. Except in Goa's media, which remains stoically silent on a scandal which broke just after the Election Commission of India handed out the first-ever verdict in Indian electoral history disqualifying a sitting legislator for improper accounts and indulging in “paid news.” 

                                                     ---------------------------------

Herald denies ‘paid news’ charge but ball in Press Council court now

Armed with recordings, transcripts, emails and cuttings, Mayabhushan Nagvenkar has taken the matter of what he calls “an open and shut case” of ‘paid news' against OHeraldO of Goa to the Press Council of India.

The Press Council defines ‘paid news' as “any news or analysis appearing in any media [print or electronic] for a price in cash or kind as consideration.” Mr. Nagvenkar backs his complaint with audios and transcripts of four telephonic conversations with the Herald's marketing manager, Tulshidas Desai, recorded between October 20 and 22. The conversations, he charges, indicate that the newspaper regularly indulges in such paid political news. He also alleges that Mr. Desai could not have pushed a deal like this without the consent, “tacit or otherwise,” of the editorial leadership.

Asked for his response, Mr. Desai flatly rejected the charges and asserted he had only been talking of an “advertorial concept.” He denied ever interfering in “the editorial area.” In a statement responding to the complaint to the PCI, Herald editor Sujay Gupta emphatically denied that “any editorial content which has appeared in the Herald, without the “advertorial” tag line has been paid for.” And even said that such suggestions were “hugely defamatory.” He warns that the “Herald will respond to these allegations urgently and appropriately in a proper forum.”

Meanwhile, the Goa Union of Journalists has come out with a strong statement against ‘paid news,' noting it was “rampant in the 2007 Assembly elections.” The GUJ also “accepted Mr. Nagvenkar's contention that the sting was undertaken in the public interest and in the interest of the professional ethics.”

One point of convergence — so far, anyway: Nobody has denied the conversations or questioned the authenticity of the telephone recordings. Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Gupta described Mr. Desai's statements as “absolutely incorrect” and stated that “he has overreached himself.” He described the manager's words as “highly irresponsible” and made in a sales and marketing conversation and said the entire management and editor disassociated themselves from these. “Even if he has said it, they may claim anything, it has to ultimately pass through the editor. I will never allow any such thing to happen. It is eventually the editorial decision, where I put my foot down,” he said.

Mr. Nagvenkar, though, is combative. “Desai told me, [as Bernard Costa], that I could get a political campaign interview [15 inches by eight news columns, to be exact] in the newspaper for Rs. 86,400, and for an additional Rs. 50,000, I could be interviewed on the Herald Cable Network [HCN], the local cable news channel operated by the same media group. And assured me that none of the paid content will carry an ‘advertorial' tag.” He also points to Mr. Desai's acknowledging that Raymond D'Sa of Cortalim had paid Rs. 2 lakh for his ‘interview.'

Mr. Gupta denied any financial transaction occurred, saying: “I would rather resign than permit something like this.” He told The Hindu, however, that the decision to carry interviews of first- time candidates “where it looks like you are promoting a person” was an editorial error of judgment which The Herald would rectify immediately. But insisted that this was done in absolute honesty.

In his public statement, he also asserts that: “As Editor, my stated position both within and outside the organisation has been that paid content cannot be disguised as news.” Politicians' messages, claims of achievements and any other such information through a paid route, “we have prominently stated that they are advertorials,” said Mr. Gupta and went on to reiterate that “Editorial was not in the know of any such negotiations or discussions…”

“If the Herald has a system to channel paid content as ‘advertorials' then why does the marketing manager agree to shed the ‘advertorial' tag?” counters Mr. Nagvenkar.

In the recording, Mr. Nagvenkar can be heard telling Mr. Desai he needs some kind of written estimate or quotation to clinch the deal.

“Something yaar...so that I also have to show that somewhere no?

“Ok I'll do that,” says Mr. Desai.

An email from Mr. Desai follows. He confirms the sums of Rs. 86,400 and Rs. 50,000 for an interview in the Herald and the HCN channel respectively. Mr. Nagvenkar, posing as Bernard Costa, writes back asking for confirmation that the interview will be published in such a way that readers believe it is a news item and not an advertisement. “Once we meet in our office, we will discuss on this,” the Herald marketing manager replies, evidently wary of leaving a paper trail. Costa's answer: “Ok, ok, I will come with the cash Monday or Tuesday.”

Something to remember: SC 'endorses' sting journalism (FYI)

By Manoj Mitta, TNN Oct 18, 2011, 04.14AM IST
NEW DELHI: Five years after it had upheld the expulsion of 11 MPs in the cash-for-questions scam, the Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the Delhi police's bid to prosecute the two journalists who had conducted the sting operation.
As a corollary, a 2010 Delhi high court ruling that corruption can be exposed by undercover journalists without informing authorities has attained finality.
A bench headed by Justice Aftab Alam dismissed the special leave petition filed by the police against the high court verdict quashing the charge sheet in relation to Aniruddha Bahal and Suhasini Raj of cobrapost.com.
The SC agreed with the HC view that if the journalists had taken the police into confidence about their operation to expose MPs accepting bribes to ask questions in Parliament, "the respective MPs would have been given information by the police beforehand and would have been cautioned about the entire operation."
This has scuttled the police's attempt to prosecute the journalists along with the MPs and middlemen on account of their alleged failure to act as complainants before the story titled "Operation Duryodhan" was aired in December 2005. The police had tried to implicate the journalists on the ground that every person aware of the commission of an offence was obliged to inform the nearest police officer.
The implication of the SC's decision is that undercover journalists can well claim immunity under Section 24 of the Prevention of Corruption Act which stipulates that a statement made somebody who offered a bribe to a public servant "shall not subject such person to a prosecution" on the charge of abetting the offence. This is the first time the SC was to decide if they should be tried.
(TOI STORY)
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-10-18/india/30296637_1_suhasini-raj-sting-operation-sting-journalism