The mainstream media in India have forgotten, at least since the 2014 general election, how to question the highest political functionaries of the country, or they do so only in a chocolate-box style.
To them, the statement from 13 news organisations in the US which stood as one against the move by President Donald Trump to strip CNN’s chief White House reporter Jim Acosta of his press pass, should come as a reminder, if not an admonition. “Our news organizations support the fundamental constitutional right to question this President, or any President” (‘Fox News Among 13 Media Outlets Lending Support to CNN’s Lawsuit Against Trump’, October 15). Acosta has got back his access and that says a lot for the virtue of hanging together.
The point to note is that neither the overweening power of an institution – in this case the White House, in our case the Narendra Modi government – nor the ideological underpinnings of media organisations, should erase the normative framework within which any professional media platform should function.
It is a framework crucially based on the principle that the media should interrogate power, not embed themselves in it. There are three concepts that can facilitate this: Distance. Distance. Distance. The fourth pillar cannot prop up the second pillar – the executive – and still be considered a load bearer of democracy.
Also Read: If CNN Can Stand up to Trump, Why Can’t Indian Media Question the Powers That Be?
The strength of such a pillar is inevitably tested during an election season, such as the one that is upon us at the moment. Foremost among the questions the media should be asking at such a time is: how free is the environment in which elections are being conducted?
A major threat to a free and fair election is the deliberate creation of an ambience of intimidation through devices such as the 5,000-page chargesheet filed by the Pune Police (‘Bhima Koregaon Case: In 5,000-Page Chargesheet, Pune Police Alleges Activists Incited Violence’, November 16). Its unnaturally voluminous nature speaks volumes for its veracity!
The fact that it is in Marathi should not prevent media organisations from exposing its strong caste and political biases, but so far no mainstream media organisation has attempted to do this. On the contrary, some have preferred to go out of their way to invest it with credibility in order to further the false narrative of the “urban Naxal”, a slur that has been deliberately constructed for political ends (‘As Modi Blames ‘Urban Maoists’, CBI Covers Up Police Crimes Against Adivasis in Bastar’, November 9).
13 media organisations came in support of CNN’s Jim Acosta after his press pass was revoked by the Donald Trump administration. Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
There was a time when information through rallies and speeches, even posters and graffiti on walls were the animators of Indian elections. Today, it is misinformation, whether it travels to the prospective voter through a television channel or a WhatsApp message, that has emerged as the prime weapon of electioneering.
What was a striking finding in the recent BBC analysis of fake news in India were two factors accounting for the spike in its circulation: the “rising tide of nationalism”, on the one hand, and the erosion of trust in mainstream media, on the other. So blatant is this creation of false content for political purposes that a Lokniti survey found that one-sixth of users of WhatsApp were part of groups instituted by political parties or leaders (‘What to Believe — And Not Believe — About Fake News in India’, November 14).
The intertwining of data theft and stolen elections was a phenomenon that had emerged with crystal clarity in the wake of Trump’s victory in 2016. Yet, here we are, two years later supremely unconcerned about the dangers that data manipulation could potentially pose for a fair verdict.
The piece, ‘How Did the EC Link 300 Million Voter IDs to Aadhaar In Just a Few Months?’ (November 9), is one of the few investigations I have come across recently on the threats to the election process posed by the Election Commission of India’s unhealthy practice of drawing on Aadhaar and National Population Register data for purposes of verifying its electoral rolls. That this was done largely without the informed consent of its users, makes it nothing less than a scandal. Yet it has caused no ripples in the media pond.
Also Read: Minister Ditches BBC Summit After Research Links Fake News to Nationalism
This disturbing media acquiescence to the government agenda has impacted media election coverage so profoundly that it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish it from T20 cricket commentary. Everything has been reduced to glitz, razzmatazz and simplistic narratives of victory and defeat.
Even the trading of charges has become so predictable. For how long will Congresswallahs throw the “chaiwallah” jibe at the prime minister, and for how long will the prime minister seize it like a lifeline – as he did yet again this week — to burnish himself in glory?
How many times will the word “neech” leach into pollspeak? How many more times will “a magnificent Ram temple at Ayodhya” be wheeled out like a thickly-iced birthday cake for the delectation of the crowd? In each of these instances, it is the media that is both choreographing the inane tableau and promoting it. As the Ram Mandir cake gets sliced, it is the media that distributes it to the audience.
For the ordinary voter, it is not hollow soundbites that matter but how, amidst the welter of numerous survival crises, they can make this once-in-five-years occurrence like an election work for them to some degree.
The best media coverage of elections then is that which uses the polls as a prism to understand the lived realities of real people and tries to bridge the widening gap between urban and rural India. If, in the process, it could also bring you the voices of local people and tell you which way the political wind is blowing, that should be considered a bonus.
Even the trading of charges during elections has become so predictable. Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi. Credit: Reuters
What are the shifts and eddies at the ground level, and what are the causes for them? Sometimes good election reportage does have the power to capture this. The fact that in Madhya Pradesh, majoritarianism has become the universal common sense and that “there is very little political space for people who wish to speak for minorities and become their messiahs” (‘Once the Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh Finds Himself Sidelined in Madhya Pradesh’, November 12), is one such.
The Congress party, in its desperation to try every possible remedy in the political apothecary’s pharmacy, has decided that imitation is the best form of keeping up with its saffron antagonist, which has seeded Hindutva across the country.
The BJP may or may not win in Madhya Pradesh or Rajasthan, but its agenda has already won – and the media has birthed this outcome. A Congress leader notes how the local coverage of the party manifesto only focused on the “religious promises and let the secular and progressive ones be buried under” (‘Congress Manifesto for Poll-Bound MP Looks Beyond the Cow and Lord Rama’, November 12).
There is a Congress functionary’s quote here saturated with sad reconciliation: “We have no option but to play along [with] the media-driven narrative because any deviation will give the BJP an opportunity to dub us either anti- or pseudo-Hindu.”
Also Read: In Poll-Bound MP, Politics of Hindutva Has Overshadowed Key Issues of Development
The excessive emphasis on the Hindutva trope has meant the underplaying of the secular concerns of the subaltern. The promised jobs remain a pie in the sky; healthcare continues to remain the single most important reason for indebtedness, affordable government schooling comes with cracked blackboards and absentee teachers.
Demonetisation continues to buzz in the air like a bee that has not lost its sting – and even traditional BJP voters acknowledge that as India Today’s Rajdeep Sardesai discovered while speaking to the cloth traders of Indore (‘Elections on my plate’, November 16). But rarely is there an attempt to understand how it has coalesced into an inheritance of loss.
Occasionally, an important insight emerges as, for instance, in a piece attempting to understand the distress of garlic farmers in Rajasthan and MP (‘With Prices Hitting Rock Bottom, Garlic Could Sway Polls in Rajasthan, MP’, November 8). You begin to realise just why farmers are being driven to taking their lives as you read about the sheer helplessness they find themselves in for developments that are completely out of their control.
Even traditional BJP voters are acknowledging the failure of demonetisation. Credit: Reuters
As one Rajasthan farmer put it, “Garlic was like a golden crop for farmers in this region. High-quality garlic could even get prices of Rs 13,000 a quintal (Rs 130 a kilogram). A lot of farmers would grow it as insurance because we could recover money that we lost in other crops.” That dream crashed along with the price of garlic after demonetisation, and to this day the golden crop is nothing but dross.
Mizoram, with its polls occurring simultaneously with the Hindi heartland heavies – Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh – gets little or no attention from the media. In fact, if its former chief election officer, S.B. Shashank, had not overplayed his hand and provoked his recall, even the little coverage accorded to this state may not have made the national news space. The Wire’s coverage has also been abysmal, which is a pity given its excellent pieces on Tripura and Assam when they were in poll mode.
Bofors and Rafale
On the coverage of Rafale, The Wire has been able to put out substantial pieces that have challenged the Modi government’s narrative on the deal in a more robust way than most other media platforms. It was the first to point out that France has refused to give India a sovereign guarantee (‘Rafale Twist: Why Did France Refuse to Give India a Sovereign Guarantee?’, November 14).
It has also highlighted the BJP’s hypocritical stances on Hollande (‘With Its Big Little Lies on Rafale, the Modi Govt is Treading a Treacherous Path’, October 31), called out the dodges that lay in Arun Jaitley’s responses on Rafale (‘Jaitley’s 15 Questions Only Reinforce the Murky Nature of Modi’s Rafale Deal’, August 30), and asked an audacious question that is on top of everybody’s mind but is never articulated in the mainstream media space: Can the prime minister be prosecuted for Rafale (‘Can Narendra Modi Be Convicted of Corruption for the Renegotiated Rafale Deal?‘, October 23).
There was some discomfiting maths on offer (‘Modi Govt’s Rafale Deal Was 40% More Expensive Per Aircraft Than Dassault’s Earlier Offer: Report’, November 10), as also some discomforting truths about the Modi gung-ho, go-it-alone style of government that ends up in dodgy deals like Rafale (‘Cabinet ‘Rules of Business’ Suffer Under Modi’s Rule by Fiat’, November 12).
Also Read: Modi Govt ‘Short-Circuited’ Acquisition Process in Rafale Deal, Prashant Bhushan Tells SC
Three decades ago, two newspapers – The Hindu and The Indian Express – actually took ownership of the Bofors story, investing time and human resources in it; systematically unpacking it, week by week, to an astounded and outraged public. The Rafale deal broke at a time when there were no such mainstream media guardians; at a time of widespread media intimidation and co-option; at a time of multi-crore defamation threats. Coverage of it requires far more courage than the earlier defence scam.
If it helps to unseat a government like Bofors did in 1998, perhaps the small media players who had the courage to run with it and take risks, will be given some credit.
The Rafale deal broke at a time when there were no such mainstream media guardians. Credit: REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File photo
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‘Dalit’ cannot be wiped out
A somewhat brazen attempt by the government to control coverage on Dalit issues was the advisory issued by the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. It asked the media to desist from using the word ‘Dalit’ and opt instead for ‘Scheduled Caste’, citing a direction from the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court.
For once, the Press Council of India showed some deliberation and spine. It rejected the suggestion politely, noting that such prohibition is both unadvisable and unfeasible. This was an issue that several pieces on this platform had weighed in on, including a particularly pointed piece by a Dalit journalist (‘So the Term ‘Dalit’ Can’t Be Used But ‘Brahmin’ and 6,000 Other Caste Names Can’, September 14), which noted, “To ban the term that has now come to be identified with the political awareness of an oppressed community is in itself caste oppression.” It went on to observe that the word that really humiliated the Dalit is not ‘Dalit’ but ‘Brahmin’, asking: “Will the courts and the government ban the term ‘Brahmin’ even if a number of petitions are filed?”
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I thought the story of ‘The Story of Dust, Through Space and Time’ (November 9) was a smart editorial move at a time when Delhi was all but choking on it. Have always maintained that science reporting, if it has to strike a chord with the ordinary reader, would need to seize the magical properties of the everyday!
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Pradyumna Reddy writes that while the content, including videos, that The Wire puts out is good, it is disappointing that they have no subtitles: “Providing subtitles could improve the reach of your content in other regional languages. What’s more, making an appeal with a promise to provide content in regional languages could bring in more donations. I also wanted to point out that EPW is doing a wonderful job providing their web exclusively in many regional languages like Telugu and Tamil.”
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I will be taking my annual break. This column will be back on December 22. Please do write to publiceditor@cms.thewire.in