Covid crisis: Why isn’t Big Media holding the government accountable?

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on April 15, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/04/15/covid-crisis-why-isnt-big-media-holding-the-government-accountable

 

I am writing this on a day when daily new coronavirus infections in India have touched two lakh. Perhaps after a year of having various numbers thrown at us, Indians are failing to grasp the gravity of the situation. But surely the responsibility for that lies with those whose job it is to convey the seriousness.

Instead, on one hand we are witnessing the daily surreal drama of these increasing numbers, and on the other visuals suggesting there is no pandemic as lakhs gather in Haridwar for the Kumbh Mela and thousands crowd election rallies in Bengal to listen to India's two most powerful men, the prime minister and the home minister.

There are few masks to be seen in Haridwar or Bengal and the only physical distance in the election rallies is between the highly excitable, mostly male crowd, stuck together in true Indian style, and the dignitaries on the raised stage.

This is not imagery that conveys the crisis facing India. Yet, although some in the media, and many more on social media, are asking questions, there are few expressions of anger or frustration in the public or in mainstream media.

In the United States, former president Donald Trump's election rallies last year where he openly showed disdain for wearing masks, were recognised as super-spreader events and the media didn’t hesitate to criticise him. But in India it seems our leaders exist in the stratosphere, untouched by this willful indifference towards a virus that is causing widespread suffering and death.

Readers will forgive me for this rant, but as a journalist one feels helpless and defeated when those who have the power to convey a credible message on the pandemic choose instead to demonstrate by example that they care more about winning a state election than the lives of citizens.

If the politicians do not speak, except to exhort ordinary citizens about how they must behave, it falls on the media to find ways to tell the full story of what’s going on. It is not easy, hampered as many media organisations are today by limited staff, having laid off hundreds of journalists last year. Yet it can and must be done.

This time last year, we were still in a national lockdown. Today, there is a sense of deja vu that so little has changed, that instead of moving forward we are slipping backwards.

In April 2020, the nature of the disease and how it had spread was still to be fully grasped. Today we know more of the science. We also have vaccines that can provide some protection, although not complete. And all this ought to make us not just more knowledgeable, but also better prepared.

And here when I use "us" I mean not just ordinary people, but especially those who make decisions, the people in government.

Unfortunately, the actions of the central government in the last several weeks have blown away all hopes that lessons were learnt in the last year.

From denial to obfuscation to a total callous disregard for the seriousness of the crisis, we have seen it all. And on top of it, we have witnessed petty politics over the allocation of vaccines while the country is literally burning (a sad metaphor when one looks at the crisis facing crematoria in Gujarat in the last week or so).

For the media, the second or third wave of the pandemic poses many more challenges than we faced last year. How do you keep telling the same story over and over again? How do you strike a balance between reporting credible information and being alarmist? How do you hold the government to account when even accurate data is not always available?

Fortunately, despite the pathetic state of our television news channels, there are still journalists who are doing the job they are tasked to do.

Take developments in the last couple of weeks. In Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, the state governments seem to be in denial about the seriousness of the crisis facing their states even as the central government remains focused on Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Punjab, where there has been a steady rise in cases. The politics of this policy of side-stepping the former two states is rather obvious but we need not go there at present.

The relevant question for the media is how we can question and challenge official versions of the crisis such as the deaths due to Covid.

In Gujarat, the media must be commended for doing just this. According to a report by Aarefa Johari in Scroll, local newspapers and television channels have exposed the "staggering mismatch" between official figures and the reality. For instance, on April 12, in Ahmedabad the official figure of those dying from Covid was given as 20. Yet a leading Gujarati newspaper, Sandesh, said it had tracked 63 deaths by posting its journalists outside the morgue of the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital from midnight to 5 am on April 12.

If this was not bad enough, Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani put out patently wrong information about how Covid deaths are counted by claiming that Indian Council of Medical Research guidelines stipulated that only those whose primary cause of death was the virus were counted and not those with comorbidities where this would be the secondary cause. This is in fact the exact opposite of what the ICMR has stipulated. One wonders then how many other chief ministers in this country are misguided like Rupani and are, therefore, fudging Covid death data.

In Madhya Pradesh, the same story is being played out as exposed by NDTV. Journalists from the channel tracked the number of cremations and compared this with the official death data. On April 8, in Bhopal alone, 41 bodies were cremated following Covid protocols whereas the official figure was only 27 deaths for the entire state. A story in India Today reveals a similar picture. It is more than likely that this is the case in more than one state in India.

If this was not worrying enough, according to this article in Time magazine, for every one reported infection of Covid in India, there could be between 26 to 32 that have not been reported. This is based on a serological survey conducted between August and September 2020. And according to Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the US-based Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, who is quoted in the article, not only is there undercounting of those infected by a factor of 30, there is likely an undercounting of deaths as well. "For 80 percent of deaths, we have no medically identified cause of death at any given time,” he says.

Then take the question of mutations. Here again, there is science but also official obfuscation. The science is working at establishing the exact nature of the mutant strain or strains that are spreading. Instead of encouraging information on this to be made public, so that people are aware of the seriousness of the situation, the government has attempted to hide it or downplay it as this article in Scroll points out. One of the reasons attributed for the dramatic surge in Maharashtra is the "double mutant" that was first detected in the state. It has now been detected in 10 other states.

Today in India, we are facing not just a dramatic and troubling surge in infections and deaths due to Covid but a crisis of credibility as far as governments are concerned, both at the Centre and in the states. The principal reason for this is their inability to give out credible, science-based information to a public that’s drained and exhausted after more than a year of the pandemic.

Perhaps this tweet from Brahmar Mukherjee best sums up the current state of affairs:

For us in the media, possibly the most significant lesson from this last year is the importance of public health reporting. Let me emphasise “public”. Reporting on health had deteriorated in the corporate media to stories on lifestyle diseases, on new medical technologies and on high-profile medical personnel.

Public health reporting requires an understanding not just of health infrastructure and what is lacking therein, but also constant tracking of the less glamorous diseases, many of which are perennial such as tuberculosis. It is this kind of reporting that prepares journalists for health emergencies, such as the one we are facing today.

Unfortunately, given the financial cutbacks in the media over this last year, few major news organisations are willing to invest in this kind of journalism. Yet we know now that the Covid pandemic is not the last such crisis we will face.

This is as good a time as any to train a generation of journalists who will understand the science and the politics of health emergencies and provide the public with credible information.

 

 

It’s election season and Indian media has put on blinkers. As usual

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on April 1, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/04/01/its-election-season-and-indian-media-has-put-on-blinkers-as-usual

 

In the polarised times in which we live in India, every election has become, literally, a do or die battle. The “Battle of Nandigram” is only one of the many warlike headlines that accost us each day as the long-drawn out process of elections to four state assemblies and one union territory proceeds. But is that the only story in town?

The pandemic has crept back into the headlines with a spurt of fresh coronavirus infections, and the very real worry that India is now facing a second wave. This ought to be headline news. But the media should also be asking why this has happened, how much of it is a failure of policy and how much of the blame lies with the public.

For one, how is it that the government has permitted large gatherings of Hindu pilgrims and the recent Holi celebrations, yet, when asked, officials blame ordinary people for not observing Covid protocols.

And what about the gatherings during the ongoing elections? Visuals clearly indicate that masks aren’t being used as thousands crowd together at rallies and smaller meetings. Has any political party tried to emphasise to its followers the importance of observing these minimum precautions to prevent the spread of the disease? No official, or politician, is willing to admit that there has been a failure of leadership and absence of clear messaging. Instead, we keep hearing them talk about how ordinary people are undisciplined. And the media, unfortunately, is not asking the tough questions that need to be asked at this time.

Apart from elections and the pandemic, what are the stories that need to be told but are barely reported?

We need to tear our eyes away from TV screens and the endless election coverage to think of what is happening in Myanmar, a country with which India has historical ties. The people's resistance to the military regime that took over the country on February 1 has been one of the top stories in the international press. Yet, in India, although stories from international newspapers are routinely reproduced, the democratic struggle now underway in Myanmar – which has already taken many lives – hasn’t found much space in our media.

Myanmar shares a 1,643-km border with India that touches four Northeastern states – Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh. This reality dawned once there were reports that people from Myanmar had crossed into Mizoram, seeking refuge from the daily confrontations between the protesting citizens and the military.

Mizoram’s chief minister, Zoramthanga, has urged the central government to allow the refugees to enter, emphasising the "humanitarian crisis" as well as the shared ancestry with people on the other side.

While Mizoram has taken a sympathetic stance towards the refugees, the Manipur government issued a circular that stated, “People trying to enter/seek refuge should be politely turned away.” Fortunately, the circular has now been withdrawn. Yet in both states, the future of these refugees remains uncertain given that India does not have a refugee policy.

The lack of reporting on this crisis on our borders is emblematic of the neglect of reporting on the Northeast in mainstream media, or "mainland" media, as people in the Northeast call it. The region has remained in the periphery of consciousness in most of India, only springing into the spotlight when there is a natural disaster, an act of insurgency, or an election. Even the latter is covered spottily unless a mainstream Indian political party is central to it. Thus, Assam gets much more coverage than the hill states of the Northeast.

The news that refugees from neighbouring Myanmar were walking across the porous international border into Mizoram would have surprised most readers who are unaware of the history and the geography of much of the Northeast. They would not have known that the border exists on paper but that, in fact, there has been free movement and interaction between people living on either side who are, often, from the same ethnic group.

On market day in the village of Longwa in Nagaland's Mon district, I observed this fluidity as people I spoke to said they had walked across from the other side to shop. The house of the village headman, the Angh, straddles the line that officially divides the two countries. There is a check post at the top of the hill but no one checks. This is a lived reality in just one of several such villages stretching across from Arunachal Pradesh to Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram.

The story about the welcome that the government of Mizoram and its people want to extend to the refugees from Myanmar gives us an essential insight into that state. The fact that even this story is being barely reported illustrates the continuing indifference of mainstream media and people in India towards this region. It is this absence of reporting that reinforces ignorance and prejudice, the price for which has been paid by the thousands of Northeasterners who study and work across India but are constantly asked to prove that they are Indian.

As always, there are exceptions to the rule: these stories by Krishn Kaushik who reported from Mizoram, for example. Not only do we learn about the trickle of people crossing over but also the reason Mizos believe they ought to be helped.

The other story is the absence of a gender perspective in reporting, something I pointed out in my last column with reference to the coverage of the migrant exodus of last year. Here I must commend the Indian Express as the only mainstream newspaper that not only did a two-part feature looking at the impact of the pandemic on women's jobs (read here and here), but also reiterated the points in these articles in an editorial. Furthermore, both stories were carried on the front page.

In the digital version of print media, the importance of this isn’t apparent. But traditionally, newspaper editors make a conscious choice each day when they choose the stories they want to place on the front page. These are carried "above the fold" as broadsheet newspapers are folded when they are sold and distributed. An important story is placed just below the masthead of the paper. Both these reports were given that position.

Also, when editors want to emphasise certain stories, they write editorials around them. Although not many people read editorials, they are an indicator of the importance a paper gives to an issue. Hence the significance of an editorial on the gender crisis in the Indian Express.

The gender issue remains relevant in the light of the latest global ranking by the World Economic Forum. India has slipped 28 places in the gender gap and now stands at 140 out of 156 countries surveyed, as this story points out. Its neighbours in South Asia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar, and Bhutan are ranked higher.

There is, of course, a gender angle in election coverage too, and not just because India's only woman chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, is at the centre of the story of the Bengal election. She has had to face many crude remarks made by her opponents that essentialise her being a woman.

Misogyny surfaces constantly during election campaigns, and it has this time too. Some of it is called out; much of it goes by without comment. I leave you with this story by Kavitha Muralidharan about the rampant sexist rhetoric in Tamil Nadu before and during this election. A salutary outcome of sexism being called out is the Election Commission’s decision to bar A Raja of the DMK from campaigning for 48 hours.