Tiger Pataudi’s parting shot for the media

Saturday, September 24, 2011

A day after the passing of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, The Telegraph has reprinted a 1995 interview with the former cricket captain, who also did a stint as editor of Sporstsworld, the now-defunct magazine from the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group that owns The Telegraph.

The interviewer is Salma Khurshid, the current Union law minister, whose wife Louise Fernandes used to be a correspondent for Sunday magazine, also of the ABP group.

Salman: Tell me about other things in life… something about the media world.

Tiger: Really, they deserve the biggest kick up their arse. They do the most damage.

Salman: And they are absolutely irresponsible. Don't you see something in this, apart from the fact that there is a big problem of accountability in the media and every time we've tried, or anyone has tried, to make a system by which the media can be made accountable, they've cried, they've cried themselves hoarse, and we haven't succeeded. People can defame anyone they like, people can write anything they like. But non-accountability is a part of modern Indian culture.

Tiger: But they're also well patronised. They wouldn't be doing this unless they were patronised by the politicians.

Salman: Yes that is true. But the media is going to change. There is a new kind of media. I often tell the small-time newspaper people that you keep publishing your 5,000 copies defaming people, but there's an electronic media coming that sees facts a little more clearly because it shows them on the screen. You object as much as you like, but the day of the electronic media has come.

Read the full interview: ‘Can’t be taken seriously till [...]



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