Electoral bonds, pre-poll coverage from ground zero: Why is Big Media missing big stories?

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on March 21, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/03/21/electoral-bonds-pre-poll-coverage-from-ground-zero-why-is-big-media-missingbigstories

For the Indian media, the unravelling of the electoral bond scheme is the biggest story. Yet, you would not think so if you read or watched mainstream media.

On February 15, the Supreme Court ruled that the entire scheme was “unconstitutional”. In the interest of transparency, it asked the State Bank of India to put all the information about the bonds in the public domain – who bought them and which political parties encashed them. 

Since then, the fallout of the judgement has been a rollercoaster ride, with the SBI dragging its feet, incrementally releasing the data asked for by the Supreme Court, and the media slowly waking up to the import of the revelations. 

Thanks to live-streaming of the proceedings of the Supreme Court, those interested have been able to watch the persistence of the judges and the resistance of those required to provide the information. It has been educational, to say the least. Those interested can watch the archival footage on the Supreme Court’s website.

But the ruling has been important not just for striking down what was clearly a non-transparent mechanism for political funding, dressed up as essential to curb the role of black money in electoral finance, but also for exposing where the media stands in the face of these developments.

For instance, you would have thought that an issue that involves business, finance, banking, and election funding would be of primary interest to the media, both print and broadcast, that focuses on business. There are so many questions that arise: who bought the bonds, which political parties encashed them, was there a quid pro quo, were some of them bought by shell companies, and so on. 

Yet, if you looked at the business newspapers on the morning of March 15, a day after the SBI began its slow, incremental release of data on the sale of electoral bonds, and only after constant prodding from the Supreme Court, you would not think this was such a big deal. There was minimal coverage in most business papers – a few column inches on the front page and a follow-up inside.

The story got much bigger play in the non-business newspapers, although here too there was considerable variance on the first day. In the subsequent days, some newspapers did go beyond just reporting to making connections between the donors, and the timing of the donations or investigating some of the bigger donors, such as the so-called “lottery king”, Santiago Martin.

Some newspapers did put out helpful charts that would give readers a sense of who bought bonds and how much political parties got. But the final clinching link between donors and recipients can only be established now, as the SBI has finally released all the relevant data. 

These last two weeks establish beyond doubt that the entire electoral bond controversy would never have been unearthed if not for the diligence and persistence of independent digital platforms.

For the record, it was the early stories, such as this one by Reporters’ Collective, that first raised questions about electoral bonds as far back as 2019. Their coverage contributed to the petition that the Association for Democratic Reforms filed in the Supreme Court in 2019, challenging the validity of the scheme.

It took the Supreme Court almost five years before it finally addressed the matter, which is now part of history. But even as the court gave its ruling, Reporters’ Collective and Project Electoral Bond, a joint effort by The News Minute, Newslaundry and Scroll, began the process of unspooling the data being released in a series of stories.  

Some of these stories were followed up by mainstream newspapers. However, what they carried did not add substantially to the information that had already been reported by these independent platforms.

One of the more worrying reports was this one by Tabassum B in Scroll on pharma companies that bought electoral bonds. The story revealed that of the 35 pharma firms that purchased the bonds, at least seven had been hauled up for substandard drugs. 

Many of the stories carried on these independent platforms also suggest a clear nexus. For instance, 41 of the donors are businesses that have faced questioning by either the Income Tax department, the Enforcement Directorate, or both. There is also evidence that after the electoral bonds were purchased, some companies got lucrative contracts. Even if the evidence so far is circumstantial, it is enough to raise serious questions. And that is what the media ought to be doing.

A story such as this, with so many dimensions, also makes it incumbent on the media to find ways to explain it to the ordinary reader. Some of this was done by way of charts that appeared in The Hindu and Hindustan Times. But these would not have been adequate in themselves. Explanatory stories were needed but were largely missing.

You did find such stories elsewhere. For instance, Ravish Kumar, on his YouTube channel, ran more than a dozen programmes in which he explained the entire story in a way that would be comprehensible to a layperson. Similarly, Tippani on Newslaundry by Atul Chaurasia laid out in simple language the significance of the revelations about the electoral bond scheme.

For more than five years, voters have been in the dark about this scheme for election funding. Before we head into another election, it is incumbent on voters to understand who is funding which party. There is nothing complex about that. And surely, with the resources available to mainstream media, this kind of story ought to be a cakewalk.

Yet, an under-resourced independent media has had to step in and dig out the various aspects of this developing story.

It tells us where mainstream media stands today – something we have known – and that for democracy to survive in this country, the survival of independent media is imperative. Without these platforms, we might as well resign ourselves to living in an autocracy pretending to be a democracy.

Apart from the electoral bonds story, we will have to wait and see whether the mainstream media steps up to assessing the performance of the Modi government as it sets out to seek another term. There is little evidence of this being done so far, but I could be proved wrong.

An example of the kind of reporting that is needed is this deep-dive by independent journalist Srishti Jaswal for The Wire on Narendra Modi’s constituency, Varanasi. 

Modi, like other MPs, had adopted several villages and promised them benefits under various central government schemes. Jaswal found there was a considerable gap between promise and delivery. She reports: “While Lal Dhar in Jayapur has a toilet with a broken door, he has no house. Similarly, Mohit Chauhan from Domri village does not have a house but he has a tap and a toilet. Karma Devi from Nagepur has no house, no toilet but she has a tap where water comes three times a day.” 

We need more such stories that inform us about the reality on the ground, rather than just speculative political gossip in the run-up to the elections.

Coverage of Ambani ‘pre-wedding’ tells you everything that’s wrong with the media today

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on March 6, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/03/06/coverage-of-ambani-pre-wedding-tells-you-everything-thats-wrong-with-the-media-today

Last week, I spoke to some students at a Mumbai college. They were in their second-year of a three-year degree course in media studies. I asked them how many of them wanted to be journalists. In a class of around 35, only one young woman raised her hand. 

Some others explained that in the first year, more of them had considered journalism as a career. But over time, they had concluded that there was no future in it.

If 19-year-olds in a Mumbai college think there is no future in journalism, what is the future of journalism in this country? 

The question came even more sharply into focus last week when a journalist with more than 20 years of experience, working with a national newspaper in Mumbai, literally died on the job. He was not in a conflict zone. He was in his office in central Mumbai.

His unexpected death led to considerable churning amongst journalists in Mumbai and elsewhere. It raised several questions that concern not just journalists but the media. It illustrated the insecurity and stress that journalists live with even when performing routine functions.

The death of this journalist also brought focus again on the state of the Indian media. 

Take, for instance, coverage of events leading up to the “pre-wedding” (not sure what that means) of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant in Jamnagar, and the event itself.  

In the days before this “pre-wedding”, print media and television news carried glowing reports about Vantara, an elephant sanctuary set up by the Ambani scion. If you read the print reports, you will wonder whether they are reprints of a press release sent out by the Ambani communications team. There’s little variation. They are factual, yes, but there isn’t one critical question. From these reports, it is evident that the journalists went on a paid junket. 

Yet, of all the English newspapers I looked at, only one –  Indian Express – carried this disclaimer: “The correspondent was in Jamnagar at the invitation of Reliance Foundation.” And one newspaper, The Hindu, chose not to send a reporter even though it also received an invitation. 

Print coverage, however, was restrained compared to the cringe-worthy report by prominent India Today anchor Rahul Kanwal. Watch his report, especially from 20.45 minutes onwards where you see him exulting over the taste of the food prepared for the elephants! It’s entertaining, but it is not journalism.

All this animal talk was only a precursor to the actual event, that stretched over three days with the broadcast media giving a blow-by-blow account of the parade of national and international celebrities that hot-footed it to Jamnagar, a city in Gujarat with an Indian Air Force base that accommodates a limited number of domestic flights.

Most newspapers and channels failed to ask the obvious question: How will all these guests make their way to Jamnagar if there is no international airport? Jagriti Chandra of The Hindu filed this story. She found that, in no time, small Jamnagar airport was converted to an international airport for 10 days. All permissions were cleared. After all, what could be more important than the “pre-wedding” of the son of one of India’s richest men?Unfortunately, The Hindu buried the story on an inside page although it deserved to be on the front page.

Why bother to comment on the media’s predictable coverage of this over-the-top “pre-wedding”, you might ask? Because it forces us to acknowledge, yet again, that mainstream media in India has moved a very long way from what was once considered “journalism”.

I have placed the word within inverted commas for a reason. Because given the nature of politics in this country, the open nexus between politics and business, and the concentration of ownership of the media in the hands of big business, we must ask how long journalism of the kind that existed even a decade back will survive.

The media has been transformed over time to a product that must be sold. Once that is accepted, there is little room to discuss why this product is any different from any other: a bar of soap or a packet of chips. All need sales pitches. The more they sell, the more the business prospers.The more people read, listen or watch your “product”, the more advertising will come your way. 

But what about the producers of this product, the journalists? Where do they stand in all this? Where is the idea of what journalism was all about? Is it even relevant today in this new scenario?

There was a time, not too long ago, when journalists found secure employment. Under the Working Journalists’ Act, journalists’ salaries were fixed based on the circulation of newspapers and the designation of the journalist. They also got the kind of benefits people working in other formal sector companies received such as a provident fund, gratuity, bonus, medical allowance, etc. 

Most importantly, they could not be sacked arbitrarily. There was a process to be followed. And there were unions that could stand by journalists. Although salaries were low, journalists had what we would jokingly call STD (security till death). Now, this has literally become ISD (insecurity till death). 

Today, most journalists are on contract. They can be laid off without notice or explanation. During the Covid pandemic, many media houses laid off journalists and other staff. Some publications closed altogether. The unemployed then joined the growing number of independent or freelance journalists desperately looking for assignments for which they were paid a pittance, not enough if you had a family, or the inevitable debts that piled up. 

Many journalists stepped out of journalism altogether and joined public relations companies or non-profits. Even if their hearts were in journalism and they loved what they did, they simply had no choice. Those who hung on and continued to go from one insecure job to another became victims of stress-related diseases.

Adding to these other stress factors are the conditions at work. Everyone is under pressure. Newspapers must show sales to attract advertising. And it is only advertising that covers the costs of not just paper and printing, but also salaries of journalists. 

Increasingly advertising of the kind newspapers attracted, even the smaller ones, a decade ago, has shifted to broadcast, and now to digital. This means print media is scrambling, with only the largest in each language being able to sweep up most of the decreasing basket of advertising. And government advertising, from central and state governments, has grown exponentially, and with it another kind of pressure on print media.

The pressure to produce exclusives, to beat the competition, has increased manifold on journalists. In the past, print journalists did a story, sent it to the desk, and occasionally phoned in an update until closing time. Today, journalism is a 24-hour job. With digital, there is no closing time. Every page is open for news and updates. 

Additionally, to keep up with the competition, even legacy print media now has podcasts and videos. The same set of journalists who write often have to take on these additional tasks. Yet, even as the nature of their work has changed, their jobs are not secure. 

Those with some kind of financial backing have the choice of quitting and trying to find another job. But most journalists cannot give up a job in hand just because they have a demanding, or even abusive, boss. And the work is stressful –  they just have to buckle down and do it. 

Ultimately, all this affects the quality of journalism. Why would anyone break their heads to come up with an exclusive if they are not sure their paper will use it? And even if it is published, they might not be rewarded for it. You can get by doing the routine stuff, and that itself is a lot when the overall staff strength has been pruned. So, the majority would just tread water, continue with the minimum, stay under the radar, and collect their salaries at the end of the month. 

Despite this, a handful of journalists in mainstream media still manage to write compelling, well-researched stories. Their work stands out and must be recognised. But we also need to shine a torch into the conditions under which they work. The death of the Mumbai journalist has triggered a much-needed conversation on the newsroom.