Archive for 'Media'
Homai Vyarawalla, India’s First Female Photojournalist, Showcased in Mumbai
Posted on March 14, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under India, International, Media, women.
An exhibition featuring the work of India’s first female photojournalist is showing at the National Gallery of Modern Art through April 11. The collection of about 150 photographs by Homai Vyarawalla includes images of the last days of the British Empire, the Indian Independence movement and the birth and subsequent struggles of a new nation.
Ms. Vyarawalla, who is now 97, spent most of her career working for the British Information Services, which later became the British High Commission. Many of her photographs depict important political leaders and events in India’s modern history. These include the first flag-hoisting ceremony at Red Fort and the funeral of Mahatma Gandhi.
The exhibition (Sir Cowasji Jehangir Public Hall, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Fort; 91-22-2288-1971) also includes photographs of Indians enjoying leisure time at cultural events, social gatherings, school functions and private institutions, said Sabeena Gadihoke, a curator and the author of a biographical book on the photographer, “Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla.”
Continue reading at NYTimes.com.
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Ross Dunkley, Former Head of The Myanmar Times, Arrested in Burma
Posted on February 17, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Burma, International, Media.
MUMBAI, India — There was a time when Ross Dunkley, my former boss at the Myanmar Times, was a powerful man. Today, he sits in a prison cell.
I remember Ross storming into the newsroom in Rangoon after having stayed up all night drinking. Ross, a tall Australian with broad shoulders, wore a power suit. His head was bald and shiny.
“Come on, Hanna,” he commanded, waving his arm in the air. “We’re going to lunch.”
We arrived at Trader’s Hotel. “Sake, sake!” Ross shouted at a young Burmese woman standing near the entrance. She looked confused and walked off.
“Sake, sake!” Ross yelled. Another woman brought over a kettle, which Ross took out of her hands. He poured me a cup.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I have articles left to edit.”
Ross pushed the cup closer to my face. “When your boss tells you to drink, you drink!”
The Burmese junta detained Ross, the publisher and co-founder of the Myanmar Times, on Feb. 10, and today he is being held at the infamous Insein prison in Rangoon. Officially he’s been arrested for immigration violations, but there is speculation he will also be charged with possession of drugs and prostitution.
Ross, who founded the paper in 2000 with a once-powerful Burmese businessman, has a controversial reputation. But most Burma watchers assume his arrest has nothing to do with sudden allegations of age-old behavior.
Instead, it’s being seen as evidence of a government doing everything it can to cling to power. Ross’ arrest comes during a time of transition in Burma, and the government has responded to this period of possible instability by tightening control, said Toe Zaw Latt, the Thailand bureau chief of Democratic Voice of Burma, a leading news outlet on Burma run by exiles.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
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India: ‘Wife-beating diplomat’ shames nation
Posted on January 26, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Crime, India, International, Media, women.
MUMBAI, India — “Envoy shames India.” “India-UK diplomatic row.” “Diplomatic cover for domestic violence?” “Wife beating hardly diplomatic.” These are some recent headlines peppering Indian news outlets.
Put plainly, the case of a senior Indian diplomat allegedly beating up his wife at their London home has caused quite a stir. Indians are debating everything from the role of diplomatic immunity to what extent one allegedly violent husband can shame an entire nation.
But perhaps most strikingly, the case reflects India’s complicated relationship with and often tolerance for domestic violence. In India, many communities still condone marital abuse.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
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The Gender Factor: Is the Media Sensitive?
Posted on December 9, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media, women.
Veteran journalist and former editor Kalpana Sharma, along with Hanna Ingber Win, who covers Mumbai for GlobalPost and blogs for the Huffington Post, conducted a two hour interaction with aspiring journalists from three Mumbai colleges on the need for understanding media biases towards gender-related issues.
Continue reading at the US Consulate General, Mumbai, India, site.
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Social Media Has Come to Kashmir
Posted on September 16, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under India, International, Media.
MUMBAI, India — A Facebook user posted a video of separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani giving a speech, and within 24 hours there were 300 comments.
People debated Geelani’s call for non-violence and argued how best to bring peace to a region that has seen an explosion of protests in which 50 people have been killed since June. More than 30 died in the last week or so.
Over the past few years technology has played an increasingly important role in protest movements around the world, from Myanmar (Burma) to Tibet to Iran and now to Kashmir, the largely Muslim state at the heart of the dispute between India and Pakistan.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
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India Abroad Profile
Posted on July 15, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under India, International, Media.
India Abroad profiled me and other foreign correspondents based in Mumbai in their July 9, 2010 edition. Here it is.
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Twitter in India: Are You Following the God of Cricket?
Posted on May 12, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Culture, India, International, Media.
MUMBAI, India — A cricket star took India by storm last week when he joined Twitter and began racking up followers at the rate of almost 4,500 an hour. Within the first 24 hours, Sachin Tendulkar’s following reached almost 80,000, sparking a media frenzy and countless tweets about the so-called god of cricket joining the social networking site.
Local Indian publications pounced on the story, and the following day, the Mumbai Mirror splashed across its front page: “Sachin Breaks Record With Tweet Nothings.”
Everything from which personal photographs he uploaded to how his follower statistics compared to other Indian celebrities (he outdid Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s day one) became fodder for an article.
The reaction stems from India’s obsession with cricket, Tendulkar and, increasingly, social media. “India’s love for cricket verges on the pathological,” Jason Overdorf wrote in GlobalPost in March.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
Follow Hanna on Twitter.
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India: Community Journalism in the Slums
Posted on April 27, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under India, International, Media, women.
MUMBAI, India — Zulekha Sayyed sits with the men. They talk about the garbage dump directly behind their community and how the children have been playing in it and getting sick. As the wife of one of the men serves the group tea, the men say the dump’s stench gets worse when night falls.
The wife returns to the kitchen. The mother-in-law sits on the floor and serves her grandchildren breakfast. She tears off a piece of roti, kneads it in a metal bowl of milk and sugar and then places the bite in the toddler’s mouth.
Zulekha, 21, keeps talking. She looks directly into the eyes of the men, three construction supervisors who all live in a poor area of Ghatkopar, a suburb of Mumbai. She asks them questions. She laughs with them. She tells them what she thinks they should do to force the local government to respond to their complaints.
In a world where women usually observe quietly, Zulekha — a community journalist who reports on the very slum she lives in — stands out for her bold willingness to work for change.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
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Twitter Suicide
Posted on April 6, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media.
MUMBAI, India — My mother took it the hardest. “There must be a number you can call,” she said, practically pleading with me over the phone. “They are a company – they must have customer service.”
“I tried, Mom,” I said. “They won’t fix it. We have to move on.”
Hours earlier, while my mother was sleeping, content in thinking her daughter had hundreds of followers, I hit one seemingly innocuous but very bad button. In a second, I went from having a community of friends, readers, supporters, sources and confidants – to having no one.
I had accidentally deleted my Twitter account.
Continue reading at True/Slant or at the Huffington Post.
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Facebook in India: Who Doesn’t Want to Know Everyone’s Business?
Posted on March 18, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Culture, India, International, Media.
It takes a little getting used to living in a place where everyone thinks they have a right to know all of your business. About a month after I arrived in Mumbai, I was at a dinner party, and my friend mentioned to the crowd that I had gained weight since I got to India. Everyone directed their eyes at me, looked me up and down and then decided this was a grand conversation topic, worthy of further exploration. They took turns asking me about my diet, my exercise regimen, and of course, how much I weighed. In pounds and kilos. Before-India (BI) and After-India (AI). By the end, the host was directing his housekeeper to fetch the scale, so we could all see exactly how much the newly arrived American had gained after a month of eating Indian curries.
Tunku Varadarajan has a great piece in the Daily Beast arguing that Facebook is becoming so popular in India because Indians are so damn nosy. Facebook, which just announced it will open its first Asia office in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, has seen its users in India grow from 1.6 million in early 2008 to over 8 million. Varadarajan quotes Columbia University digital media professor Sree Sreenivasan who says social media was made for Indians.
Continue reading my blog on True/Slant.
