Wednesday, March 24, 2010

A bitter battle among cousins for control of chindu

Battle for control breaks out in The Hindu very divided family
A bitter battle has broken out among family members for control of one of the country’s oldest and most respected media companies, Kasturi & Sons Ltd, the publisher of the 132-year-old English newspaper The Hindu and business daily The Hindu Business Line.

At the heart of this battle is the proposed retirement of publisher and the group Editor-in-Chief N Ram and his decision to dig his heels in.

The first casualty in the battle is N Murali, Ram’s younger brother and the company’s managing director. He was divested of his powers this week and replaced with K Balaji, a member of the extended family and also a board member. According to people close to the developments, the board is split, one group supporting Ram and the other seeking his retirement.
Thanks to Arun for the link.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mr. Ram is certainly not happy.
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http://beta.thehindu.com/news/article304115.ece?homepage=true


"N. Ram to sue Indian Express and Financial Express writer, Editor-in-Chief, and Publisher for defamation"

N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu and Group publications and Director of Kasturi & Sons Limited, has decided to launch defamatory proceedings, civil and criminal, against Archna Shukla, Senior Editor, The Indian Express, the Editor-in-Chief, Editors, and Publisher of The Indian Express and The Financial Express and others responsible for the publication of "highly defamatory material." This relates to news stories published in The Indian Express and The Financial Express of March 25, 2010 purporting to be reports on Mr. Ram's role and actions in relation to developments within the newspaper group and the company.

"These reports are riddled with demonstrable falsehoods and defamatory assertions, some of them attributed to unnamed sources, made with reckless and malicious disregard for the facts and the truth," Mr. Ram said in a statement issued in Chennai today. "And this despite the professional courtesy I extended to the journalist and the newspapers by responding precisely and factually to five specific questions emailed to me on March 24by Ms Shukla."

Anonymous said...

Well, the battle seems to be not only attracting the attention of the other members of the secular media, but also significant support:

"The Hindu editor to sue Indian Express"


The Express report stated that the bone of contention was the retirement age of the group's highly respected Editor-in-Chief and current Publisher Narasimhan Ram.

Not one to take things lying down, Ram, an award-winning editor best remembered for his investigative reportage on the Bofors scandal in the late 1980s, on Thursday launched defamatory proceedings, civil and criminal, against The Indian Express and the Financial Express for publishing 'highly defamatory material.'

http://news.rediff.com/report/2010/mar/25/the-hindus-editor-to-sue-indian-express.htm?invitekey=f4db3aff6ca054d08f56be881c18aff7

who stole my pie said...

How does Ram's action of filing a defamation case becomes newsworthy enough for it to be published in his own paper?

Every other day, he is writing some trash in the name of Editorial, almost all of which are defamatory in nature.

Thyagarajan

Anonymous said...

when can we sing 'ding dong the witch is gone'?

people still say 'most respected newspaper', 'national newspaper' etc. crap.

Anonymous said...

thinking about defamation, a politician called the LiC 'communist' and said his views are biased due to that in a tv deabte( i am quoting from memory, something like that). lic did not sue then.

will lic sue Cbcnn?

Anonymous said...

The Express report at the worst can be called gossip. What is defamation? Chindu regularly writes about (supposed) internal dissensions, wranglings, personality fights etc. in BJP. BJP never sued Chief Ram for defamation. Narendra Modi is being routinely demonised by Chindu and fellow English media. One journalist by name Vir Sanghvi even takes pride in calling Modi, a "mass murderer".

Venkat Ramanan said...

N(axal) Ram who supports Communist despots in China, Cuba etc... but now behaves like a Communist dictator himself!!