Did NDTV lobby for Infosys founder?
By Manoj Kumar

Narayana Murthy co-founded Infosys and has led it to great success and universal admiration. Most Indians like Mr. Murthy for his humility, integrity and impeccable moral values. There was a time when he was even being touted as a Presidential candidate. Most would agree that, like Abdul Kalam, Narayana Murthy would be an inspiring role model as the President.

But as everyone knows the best man may not necessarily get the job in politics.  The ruling Congress refused to give President Kalam a second term.  The Communists found flaws with every candidate till Sonia Gandhi had the brain wave to nominate a woman. 

The Indian media landscape can be as complicated as our political process.

There is one independent voice in Indian media, hoot.org, which only reports on the newspapers, TV Stations and other news media.  The hoot.org is truly independent with no equation with any media house or business.

If you read the hoot, you will better understand the political machinations and wheeling dealing in our media. 

The hoot has published an article which details how respected Indian TV Station NDTV lobbied for Narayana Murthy who happens to be an Independent Director on its Board.  NDTV was launched in 1988 and is preferred viewing for tens of millions of Indians. 

The Hoot article published on Aug 10 about NDTV lobbying for Mr. Murthy reads in part

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Transparency and the media

The same channel also was orchestrating the candidature of one of their Directors for the post of President of India some time back. The person may be iconic and of impeccable credentials, but the channel still needs to let the public know of his particular relationship with it. Incidentally, no other channel was plugging for him so hard.  One wonders how many viewers were aware of this when they were asked to vote on the campaign. While one is deeply appreciative of the commonsense of the person on the street in not falling for such campaigns, nevertheless the over all ethical issue remains. Think what would be said of Doordarshan if it ran an orchestrated campaign to promote one of the eminent directors on its board of governors! Such influence peddling would be unethical journalism by any standards.
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While Mr. Murthy is too nice to ask anyone to lobby for him, this article is an interesting perspective on media and tech equations.

Did you know that NDTV has a business relationship with India’s No. 1 BPO Genpact as well? NDTV launched NGEN Media Services (outsourcing of media post-production services) as 50:50 joint venture with Genpact and Emerging Markets BV that has helped launch channels in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Middle East