A plunge between the lines

A plunge between the lines and I wonder how everything, whether good or bad, truth or lies, always fits this newspaper. 

It is all about Words

A few days back on a news programme on NDTV, a moderate separatist representative slammed the anchor along with the whole Indian media for calling the young men on the streets “hooligans” and “trouble-makers” without understanding why they have taken to the streets. This has been the scenario throughout the mainstream Indian media. Local journalists from Kashmir are extremely careful about the vocabulary, completely opposite of the mainstream Indian media uses without pausing to think about the meaning.

It is not “peace” that ordinary people want; they stress they want a “resolution” to the Kashmir question. They want development and jobs, yes, but they also want a political solution.

The language used to describe those who protest in Kashmir is not just a matter of semantics. It is important because it places what is happening within a context. Thus, what is significant is not that people are using stones instead of guns, as some reports suggest, but that young people are daring men with guns, even at risk to their lives, because their anger and frustration cannot be contained any more. We need to comprehend this anger that fuels the “stone-pelter”.

I strongly believe that media is all about words and the use of words. It is about semantics. It is about the employment of phrases and their origins. I read somewhere that it is also about the misuse of history, and about our ignorance of history. Journalists no longer care about this element of linguistics.

The point I want to make is directed towards those journalists and media houses that are airdropped and appear only when it is all screwed up with major incident/s. It is a must for them to keep these things in mind, whether they cover Kashmir or any other conflict in India.

Everything YOU know is WRONG

"There is no war," Remington wrote to his boss. "Request to be recalled." Remington's boss, William Randolph Hearst, sent a cable in reply: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war."

Objectivity, neutrality and unbiased approach is the mark and right spirit of journalism, but Indian media has always tried to be loyal and innocuous enough to bury the ethics of media under the ruins of so called “national interest” in Kashmir. It is this approach which makes them to cover their cameras with their eyes too when Kashmiris are victimized, abused and struggling in pain, inflicted by so called custodians of law. But when it comes to counter the often recurring “campaign supported from across”, their adrenalin runs high and they are on their toes. It also makes them vocal and articulate in their mad and ridiculous sensationalism good enough to bring two nuclear armed entities to the brink of war. Also sandwiching in between, the unheard, unseen Kashmiris.

Indian media does a ‘great’ service to their nation by projecting victim as guilty and guilty as innocent. The cries of gruesome incidents like chain of killings in the past few weeks or horrible incidents like Shopian and Kunanposhpora not strong enough to break the loud-mouthed glasses of their ‘national interests’ and clear their blurred vision. They puff chests in pride while twisting facts in the valley. Indian media today is in whirlpool of duplicity and double standards where everything goes in line with the power corridors of New Delhi and objectiveness and balanced reporting is shown the exit. About politics and their Kashmir policy it is for everyone to see, it is here where justice, human rights, democracy and all universal values are thrown out before crossing over the Jawahar Tunnel.

The establishment has been playing its role to make sure that local journalism is lazed to dust and no truth is reported to the world. This soil has produced great journalists over past few decades. Since three days these remarkable journalists of local and international news agencies are being kept unplugged and out of action not allowing them to report to their duties. Curfew passes issued to the journalists were cancelled, making their movement impossible.

In spite of these restrictions, “special” media house crews were given access to the deserted valley to report according to the guidelines provided by the state. This is an ample proof of promotion of infamous embedded journalism by the establishment. The outcome of the reportage comes up to the expectations of the state.

A typical example of double standards where Gandhian principles are talked about but even peaceful protests by an oppressed population is labelled as “agitational terrorism” deserving nothing but bullets and tear gas canisters that too directly on their chests and heads to make way for ‘complete national integration’. Where young ones are taken as enemy agents and imprecations on national security. Where Kashmiris have exclusive rights on Indian Bullets but all this appears blurr in front of ‘glamour’ of Indian media who have exclusive rights not to report the truth.

Is life Unfair?

I think life is unfair to some people, alright to others, and great to some. There are some great people I know that just cannot get a break in life, and just keep getting hit with one thing after the other, and then there are those people that are basically sociopaths, that just keep getting things handed to them on a silver platter, and don't have to struggle for things.

There are murderers who's family and friends stick by them, even when they are in jail, and have maybe even confessed, and then there are good people who just don't really have anyone.

Is life unfair??

This post is open for discussion...

The art of PR and the Tech World

"If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on public relations." - Bill Gates

Organizations are the subsets of society and cannot remain dumb. They necessarily need to communicate and actively interact with other clusters of the society in order to make their way upwards on the success graph. It is not an easy job as the clusters are heterogeneous and the nature of interaction with the people outside the organization is diverse. So, to manage this tricky task, a professional approach known as Public Relation is employed by the organization.

Public Relation involves supervision and assessment of public attitudes in addition of maintaining mutual relations and understanding between an organization and its public. An organization needs to interact at constant rate. As the channels of communication have multiplied drastically, its main function is to improve those channels and making out new ways of setting up a full duplex, two-way flow of information and understanding.

Public Relations and Technology World
Recent decade has witnessed a massive growth in High Tech Sector. A large number of Tech firms, all around the globe, over the time have adopted and occupied this field. Hundreds are still budding out in developed, developing as well as under-developed parts of world. High tech industry has turned out and evolved into a huge marketplace. An enormous number of reasons count for growth of such organizations. Large scale Automation, expanded businesses, innovations, advancements in science and technology can be a few major drivers.

The Tech industry is dynamic, fast moving and has constant new product or upgrades and above all fierce competition between brands. In addition to that, disruptive technologies are impacting the world in which we live. Today, all kind of technologies rely on public awareness and support. High tech companies are not only required to prove their technologies to customers, but media and analysts as well. If they misunderstand the value of technologies, these business entities will struggle for support. It can have a drastic impact on the existence of an organization. Jobs will be eliminated, budgets cut, and support will be directed elsewhere. Public relation prevents and eliminates the risk of getting entangled in such situation.

A good Public Relation program practice can help out the Tech firms to have clear messages and distinctly articulate their vision. It can help the organization in becoming industry leaders by advancing their technologies. It can help out the organization in making the statistics and numbers more understandable and meaningful so the audience comprehend the message and supports the initiatives.

Technology is all about innovations. But it is complex too. The people who are the ultimate users of these innovations cannot easily understand what an innovation means for them. It is the job of public relations department of that organization to make the end users really understand what benefits are in a particular innovation. And this can be done by them through events, shows, trade fairs and may be through publications like trade journals, etc.

PR can play a very vital role for the Tech Industry in branding. It is known for dominating the art of branding in the technology industry. It is considered the most effective at building brands as it delivers credibility. It can be a “lifeline” to the early-stage high tech companies. Instead of investing in advertisement and other forms of marketing, these companies can put all of their money meant for marketing, in Public Relations. With limited resources, PR delivers the most value for the buck while also delivering the highest level of credibility and understanding.

PR is effective at building and sustaining buzz. A well designed PR program for a High Tech firm gives it a competitive advantage. It can build an image and generate visibility. A good healthy media relation with the relevant key media person, securing story opportunities and responding well to media inquiries as interest in your company builds momentum. It can place the unit under the spotlight, making it stand out in a crowded market. Other PR programs can take the form of industry relations with trade associations, marketing communications, trade shows/special events, analyst relations, and awareness campaigns designed through award recognition and speaking opportunities.

Another interesting thing prevalent in the Tech industry is the concept of “Technology Partnering”. A company produces a specialized component, partners with other system providers which in turn comes out with an integrated offering to the market. One can hardly point out a single Tech company without having technology partners. PR performs the role of regularly coordinating and communicating with these partners. To come out with a single offer to the market, coordination is a vital element for success.

Managing PR for such a sector has been and shall remain a challenge. Since the growth has been limitless horizontally as well as vertically, the publics associated have grown to an extent which is beyond imagination.

Shortcomings
Though PR lends a helping hand to the tech companies and helps them to meet their objectives, they have some inherent flaws that need to be corrected.

Most PR personal are not too tech savvy and get lost while explaining technology to their audience. They are not knowledgeable enough about the tech field hence communicate a message that is misconveyed. They use the same methods to market or communicate a tech product as they market other conventional product which is a big problem.

Another thing that is quiet noticed is that PR takes time and does not necessarily work on the schedule. Planting new ideas or changing minds is a slow process. But when a PR program rolls out over a longer period of time, prospects have time to adjust their attitudes. Brands that take this approach are longer lasting, too.

Past, Present and Future (Trends)
Lessons from the past reveal that the Tech industry has been built on successful Public Relations. There are examples of plenty of mega players in the present High Tech world. Among them renowned companies like Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Google, Microsoft, Intel, BlackBerry are some of those companies that built their initial identities via PR. Other tech giants like SAP, Cisco and Oracle also built positions via public relations before spending big bucks on ad campaigns. There are countless others.

Nowadays, Public relations employs diverse techniques such as opinion polling and focus groups to evaluate public opinion, combined with a variety of high-tech techniques for distributing information on behalf of their clients, including the internet, satellite feeds, broadcast messages, and blogs. With the advent of Internet Technologies and the need to get online on the web a new form of PR known as Interactive Online PR has come into existence. It includes blog monitoring, Web conferences, online press rooms, news and online monitoring, social networking strategies etc. But the Internet is yet to become a mass medium, it is all about niches. Hence it may take some time to evolve but it has a great future there.

Recent trends to organize regular in-house meeting between the board and employees are catching up, so as both the parties can interact and put forth their ideas and complaints, if any, so as to streamline the operation as well as ensure the growth. Coming-up with regular in-house journals also gives the employees a feeling that they are being heard in the organization and that they are taken seriously. This gives them a feeling of relationship with the organization.

The future of public relations is going to be more complex and no organization can really afford to remain in the business without a proper and optimum public relations wing. The department will be doing most of the marketing for the organization and this would force organizations to have a team of professionals from varied backgrounds in their public relations departments. The team would be comprising of not only communications experts but marketing guys, sales engineers and may be organizational behaviorists who can really interact with publics from across nations with different cultures, languages and what not.

In view of PR companies, the Tech industry is considered as a goldmine. It has definitely got something in it for these organizations.

Majid Pandit