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The Hindu
29-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Remembering Shubha Singh: Foreign Affairs Journalist and Unlikely Admirer of Prince Charles
Published : May 29, 2025 15:43 IST - 5 MINS READ In the mid-1990s, the only person in the world who thought highly of Prince Charles (now King Charles III) was Shubha Singh, my colleague at The Pioneer. Charles's then-wife, Princess Diana, was globally beloved, and this was even before her fatal car crash in Paris in 1997. Prince Charles was much reviled: on seeing Camilla on TV, various acquaintances would seethe about the 'horsey-faced woman'. Shubha, however, had a different view, and part of the reason was that she was our Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) correspondent. Besides dealing with India's mandarins in South Block and networking with the embassies in New Delhi, she was invited to state banquets for visiting dignitaries, including princes. A perk of the MEA beat was that it was almost daily that one embassy or another held a reception. Our art writer Juliet Reynolds, an English expatriate with a caustic style, once whispered that a senior editor from the paper (and wife) did not miss a single embassy cocktail party, 'gobbling up all the food'. Also Read | Daniel Ellsberg (1931-2023): 'Pentagon Papers' whistle-blower leaves a legacy of courage Shubha, however, was not a glutton for hors d'oeuvres. She was tall and thin, among the seniormost of our political bureau. The bureau was headed by the late Padmanand Jha (Paddy), and we had been hired by the legendary Vinod Mehta when he launched a New Delhi edition of The Pioneer in 1991, the old Lucknow paper started by the English in the 19th century, famously counting Rudyard Kipling among its sub-editors. It had fallen on hard times, however, and now looked drab and small-town. Industrialist Lalit Mohan Thapar bought it, and Vinod produced a beautifully designed newspaper with interesting stories that was the rage in Delhi for the three years he led it. Shubha was full of grace. She never talked of her pedigree to her rag-tag bunch of colleagues. Her brother Ajay did a stint as Minister of State for Railways in V. P. Singh's short-lived (but momentous) government. I was unaware of this connection until our deputy bureau chief and resident quipster, KV Ramesh, referred to Ajay as the 'jeans-clad Jat'. Even Shubha laughed, though she never wore jeans; her daily wear was a nondescript salwar kameez and Rajasthani Bundi waistcoat. Woman of vast knowledge Shubha spoke often about the Pacific Island nation of Fiji, and her depth of knowledge about it puzzled me until she revealed that she had lived and taught at a school there. Her father, Captain Bhagwan Singh, was posted as High Commissioner (1971-1976) soon after Fiji's independence. He had served in the King's army during the Second World War and was India's first Jat IAS officer. He was also the grandson of an indentured worker, Ram Chander, taken from their ancestral village in Agra to Fiji in 1917. (Ajay represented Agra in the Lok Sabha, 1989-1991, and followed his father's footsteps as high commissioner to Fiji in 2005.) Shubha was 38 when she joined The Pioneer from the Telegraph (I was 27). She was thin-faced, wore glasses that hid her shrewd eyes, and had thinning hair that she kept short. Her smile revealed full upper teeth, but when she was tickled her upper gums showed. In a newspaper newsroom, activity is concentrated in the evening. The Pioneer bureau was a zany place, though we were steps from Vinod's door (and he had a habit of quietly strolling up from behind). Two of our colleagues in their mid-30s, Prakash Patra and the late GK Singh, would finish their copy first (our department had three computers) and then spend the evening with Patra ragging GK. Shubha would laugh the loudest. She never spoke in anger. In KV's words, she had a 'sardonic sense of humour' and not 'a bad bone in her body'. She generously passed news tips to those of us on other beats. She broke the news of India's recognition of Israel (under then Prime Minister PV Narsimha Rao). Like the rest of us, she was politically left-of-centre. She was part of the gang that started the Indian Women's Press Corps in 1994. Shubha was unflappable, even when one of our political correspondents, Faraz Ahmed, habitually made the filthiest of remarks that cannot be reproduced here. However, she did raise an eyebrow at KV's occasional double entendre, and this kept the quipster in check. She and I chatted as I was the Home Ministry correspondent and used to regularly report from Kashmir (for which I am eternally grateful to Paddy and Vinod). Her network of foreign diplomats was, during those turbulent and violent years, always keen to hear the latest from Kashmir; so, she and I routinely exchanged notes. One day, our conversation drifted to Prince Charles, who in the 1990s visited India more than once. I casually. disdained his neglect of the beautiful Diana. 'She's nothing but a melodramatic bimbo,' Shubha hissed, much to my surprise because she rarely used such strong words. Also Read | Veteran journalist M.S. Prabhakara passes away 'What!' I exclaimed. 'Charles is no better.' Shubha countered by revealing that Charles was a deep and sensitive man. 'How do you know this?' I asked, incredulously. She had sat next to him during a Rashtrapati Bhawan banquet that she was invited to as the MEA correspondent, and she had conversed with him throughout. So what, I said. She looked me in the eye. 'When you sit and talk to someone for a length of time, you get to know the person,' she said, with a mix of seriousness and passion. I could offer no reply. Shubha passed away on May 25, weeks after turning 72. She had spent two years in agony, due to doctors' negligence at a corporate hospital. In 2023, after a routine gum cancer procedure, a tracheostomy mishap sent fire from her mouth down her airway. She was in and out of hospital since. Hopefully death was a merciful release. Though many of my former colleagues have passed away over the years, this one hit me hard, even though we hadn't spoken in decades. Possibly that's because of recent bereavements. I wish I had kept in touch. Aditya Sinha is a writer living on the outskirts of Delhi.
Boston Globe
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Today in History: May 11, Deep Blue defeats Kasparov
In 1946, the first CARE packages, sent by a consortium of American charities to provide relief to the hungry of postwar Europe, arrived at Le Havre, France. In 1953, one of the deadliest tornadoes in Texas history devastated the city of Waco, killing 114 people and injuring nearly 600. In 1960, Israeli agents captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Advertisement In 1973, the espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo in the 'Pentagon Papers' case came to an end as Judge William M. Byrne dismissed all charges, citing government misconduct. In 1981, reggae artist Bob Marley died in a Miami hospital at age 36 of acral lentiginous melanoma. In 1984, Claus Barbie, the Nazi Gestapo chief known as the 'Butcher of Lyon,' went on trial in Lyon for crimes against humanity after being extradited from Bolivia, where he lived for over 30 years after World War II. (Barbie would be found guilty and would die in prison four years later.) Advertisement In 1996, an Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 caught fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board. In 1997, the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the final game of a six-game match in New York, winning 3 ½-2 ½ and marking the first time a computer won a match against a reigning world champion.
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Is Jeffrey Goldberg legally allowed to release the Signal messages he received?
Editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, released excerpts of the conversation among national security officials on the messaging app Signal after he was accidentally added to the group chat — exercising a right to publish that has sparked controversy among Trump administration officials. In a shocking article published Monday, Goldberg revealed that National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has inadvertently added him to the group chat on Signal, an encrypted but commercially available app, along with top national security officials, to discuss a U.S. military operation against Houthi militants in Yemen. While Goldberg withheld some details, including the name of a current CIA operative and the names of the U.S. military's targets, he did include the names of those involved in the group chat and their process to prepare for the attack. His piece also included screenshots of specific exchanges. He did not release the information until after the attack on the Houthis earlier this month. While many blame the Trump administration officials for accidentally including a journalist in the group chat, some have pointed fingers at Goldberg for publishing information, believing it violates national security protocol. The issue is murky because Donald Trump himself and other officials have insisted that no classified information was discussed in the group chat. Nevertheless, Mercedes Schlapp, a conservative communication specialist who worked in the first Trump administration, called Goldberg 'incredibly irresponsible and anti-American' for publishing 'the texts of the national security team.' The 'right thing to do would have been to notify the NSA adviser that a text was sent in error. The reporter put our national security at risk,' she wrote. Republican Representative Darrell Issa told Fox News correspondent Chad Pergram: 'What The Atlantic did by making public something that they believed could have been national security sensitive is the kind of irresponsible activity of the press.' While there is no hard-and-fast rule for newsrooms when handling classified information, they are awarded some legal protections when choosing to do so. Journalists are generally protected if they legally obtain documents that contain accurate information and are considered newsworthy. They are also protected from civil lawsuits if they are given documents that were illegally obtained by a third party. Additionally, under the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court in New York Times v. United States (1971), known as the 'Pentagon Papers' case, the government cannot censor a newspaper unless it proves the publication would cause 'grave and irreparable' danger. The details about the U.S. military operation in The Atlantic article are vague, and were published more than a week after the attacks occurred. Goldberg said he excluded information that he believed could be used to harm the U.S. military or intelligence personnel.
The Independent
25-03-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Is Jeffrey Goldberg legally allowed to release the Signal messages he received?
Editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, released excerpts of the conversation among national security officials on the messaging app Signal after he was accidentally added to the group chat — exercising a right to publish that has sparked controversy among Trump administration officials. In a shocking article published Monday, Goldberg revealed that National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has inadvertently added him to the group chat on Signal, an encrypted but commercially available app, along with top national security officials, to discuss a U.S. military operation against Houthi militants in Yemen. While Goldberg withheld some details, including the name of a current CIA operative and the names of the U.S. military's targets, he did include the names of those involved in the group chat and their process to prepare for the attack. His piece also included screenshots of specific exchanges. He did not release the information until after the attack on the Houthis earlier this month. While many blame the Trump administration officials for accidentally including a journalist in the group chat, some have pointed fingers at Goldberg for publishing information, believing it violates national security protocol. The issue is murky because Donald Trump himself and other officials have insisted that no classified information was discussed in the group chat. Nevertheless, Mercedes Schlapp, a conservative communication specialist who worked in the first Trump administration, called Goldberg 'incredibly irresponsible and anti-American' for publishing 'the texts of the national security team.' The 'right thing to do would have been to notify the NSA adviser that a text was sent in error. The reporter put our national security at risk,' she wrote. Republican Representative Darrell Issa told Fox News correspondent Chad Pergram: 'What The Atlantic did by making public something that they believed could have been national security sensitive is the kind of irresponsible activity of the press.' While there is no hard-and-fast rule for newsrooms when handling classified information, they are awarded some legal protections when choosing to do so. Journalists are generally protected if they legally obtain documents that contain accurate information and are considered newsworthy. They are also protected from civil lawsuits if they are given documents that were illegally obtained by a third party. Additionally, under the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court in New York Times v. United States (1971), known as the 'Pentagon Papers' case, the government cannot censor a newspaper unless it proves the publication would cause 'grave and irreparable' danger. The details about the U.S. military operation in The Atlantic article are vague, and were published more than a week after the attacks occurred.
The Guardian
14-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump called the press ‘the enemy of the people'. Now it's time to defend ourselves
In 1971, the Nixon administration asked for a court order to stop the New York Times from publishing further stories about the so-called Pentagon Papers – documents that showed the US government had escalated its Vietnam war efforts even as it was acknowledging privately that it could not win the war. A temporary restraining order – the first time the US press had been restrained prior to publication – was granted. Knowing she could be sued, jailed and could even have faced financial ruin if her own paper followed suit, the Washington Post's publisher, Katharine Graham, decided that the Post, which had copies of some of the Pentagon Papers, would publish anyway. As immortalised in the 2017 film The Post, Graham – who had previously described herself as shy and insecure – took a deep breath and told her editors: 'Let's go. Let's publish!' Defying the court order was a seriously risky move for Graham. The Washington Post Company had gone public just three days earlier. A criminal charge put its multimillion-dollar stock offering in jeopardy. Not to mention that Graham herself could have been jailed or that a criminal conviction could have given the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) justification for stripping the Post of television broadcast licences. That decision looks especially brave in today's climate, when the new administration led by Donald Trump – who in his first term repeatedly called the press 'enemies of the people' – seems even more determined than the Nixon administration to stifle reporting. Today, Graham's defence of the right of the press under the first amendment to publish news of public interest should be a clarion call for her modern-day counterparts. The US media is, as the judge Murray Gurfein – who issued the Pentagon Papers' restraining order – noted, 'cantankerous' and 'obstinate'. But it has also, unlike the media in many parts of the world, traditionally been united against threats to its independence – even when those threats are being made to organizations from across the political aisle. But that defiance and solidarity now appears under strain as outlets cave to politically motivated threats from the new administration. In December, ABC News settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump for $15m, a case that many media law experts said they should have fought given the high threshold traditionally required for a public figure such as Trump to prove defamation. Now CBS looks like it might settle a lawsuit over edits it made to a 60 Minutes interview with the presidential candidate Kamala Harris, which Trump's team allege had been deceptively edited to cast Harris in a more favorable light ahead of the election. (Editing interviews is standard practice in news reporting to avoid repetition.) Initially, CBS refused to hand over the transcripts but following pressure from the FCC, it sent the raw footage and all transcripts to the agency, now led by the Trump appointee Brendan Carr. Carr has made no secret of his desire to use the FCC's powers to go after organizations he believes are not fulfilling their public interest mandate; he explicitly linked the CBS case to a deal in which CBS's parent, Paramount, is seeking approval to sell 28 of its local broadcast TV stations. The capitulations – on top of last-minute interventions by the owners of both the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times to halt editorial endorsements of either candidate ahead of last year's presidential elections – are worrying, not least because they send a signal that such spurious lawsuits work to silence the 'cantankerous' press. And while the likes of ABC and CBS may have deep pockets to be able to weather such attacks, the vast majority of US news outlets do not. The online non-profit newsroom Wasau Pilot & Review, which has a staff of just four, faced bankruptcy after a state senator sued it for defamation over its report that he was overheard using an anti-gay slur during a county board meeting. In a story headlined 'Even if we win, we lose,' the Pilot & Review acknowledged the challenge that faces so many small news outlets – the cost of defending such suits is prohibitive, even if the case is ultimately thrown out. Such legal harassment, increasingly common across the world, can also taint the public's view ('there's no smoke without fire') of the press, further eroding already febrile trust in the media. Non-profit newsrooms are particularly worried. A call hosted by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) last November, in the weeks following the election, was attended by representatives from more than 100 non-profit news outlets throughout the United States, eager to understand what vectors might be used to challenge their reporting. Their caution is warranted; local press is already severely weakened. A 2024 report from researchers at Northwestern University found that more than 55 million Americans had limited or no access to local news – the kind of information that shows how local tax dollars are being spent, what decisions local school boards are making, or even how your local sports team is doing. Repeated academic studies have shown a strong link between the amount of local political coverage and voter turnout. Local media proved vital in covering recent extreme weather such as the Los Angeles wildfires. When Gurfein denied the Nixon administration's request for a preliminary injunction, he stated: 'A ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.' If vital media institutions are to survive this administration, it will be because essential media, on all sides, stand up clearly and unequivocally for the right to report the news. After all, challenging the bullies is part of the job. Jodie Ginsberg is CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists
