As media fanned Maldives flames, silence on Lakshadweep’s ecology, Chhattisgarh forests

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on January 11, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/01/11/as-media-fanned-maldives-flames-silence-on-lakshadweeps-ecology-chhattisgarh-forests

Predictable, is it not, that the new year should get off to a flying start with a non-issue becoming a raging controversy, thanks to social and mainstream media. It is a precursor to what we can expect in the rest of this year. 

On January 4, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Lakshadweep, a group of 36 islands in the Arabian Sea which is a Union territory. It is not clear what was the provocation for this visit.  There are no elections on the immediate horizon. Then why? 

In a carefully curated video and photographs that were released to the media and circulated through social media, Modi is seen, alone, on a sparkling white beach. He walks, sits, gazes out at the sea, all this with several changes of clothes. And then, wearing a bodysuit used for deep sea diving, he is seen snorkelling, accompanied by two divers. This is the only image where we see someone else. 

The message in this promo, by none other than the prime minister, is that Indians should choose the beautiful beaches of the island territory for holidays and tourism.

What followed, of course, was more than just a rush of Indians to the Lakshadweep. The resultant ultra-nationalism, with celebrities and influencers making vapid statements about how Lakshadweep was better than the Maldives, another group of islands in the Arabian Sea with beautiful beaches and coral reefs, exposed the real intent behind the promotion.

India has been uneasy ever since Mohammed Muizzu was elected president of the island state in November last year. He has openly reached out to China and already signed 20 agreements as part of a bilateral Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership.  

The economy of the Maldives is heavily dependent on tourism and Indian tourists constitute a substantial percentage. It appears that the “boycott Maldives” trend triggered by the Modi visit was not spontaneous. It has resulted in hyper-nationalism in India and sharp critical statements by ministers in Muizzu’s cabinet in response.

Apart from the strategic dimensions of this silly spat, the incident has underlined a couple of factors that are perhaps an indication of the way all media will be used in the future. One, that those with the skill to use social media can push agendas if mainstream media picks up the cue and follows the lead. The BJP has already shown its mastery in this regard. And second, that leading up to 2024, this is the kind of strategy that will be used increasingly to build up the image of Narendra Modi.

In the social media melee that followed the tourism promo, no one mentioned the environmental challenges that the Maldives already faces because of tourism. Troubled as it is with the prospect of sea level rise due to global warming, the island state has seen beaches disappear and its precious coral reefs being bleached due to the pollution caused by human intervention.

The Lakshadweep is safe for the moment because the tourist trade has not expanded. But after this little exercise, if it does – and there are already indications that the trend has begun – we will see an end to those pristine beaches and the coral reefs that have survived.  

While these environmental aspects of opening Lakshadweep to tourism were barely discussed in the media, another major story that concerns the destruction of pristine natural forests has also got hardly any traction in mainstream media.

The Hasdeo Arand Forest in Chhattisgarh, described as “one of the last unfragmented forest landscapes in Central India”, will be decimated if expansion of the existing coal mines is permitted. Despite reports by two credible organisations, the Wildlife Institute of India and the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education advising against expansion, the union government gave its clearance in 2022. 

The decision has been met with vociferous opposition by the local Adivasi population. They have taken out massive rallies in the state capital Raipur. Yet, barring a passing news item or a small single column photograph, these protests have barely been covered. The mines, incidentally, are owned by Adani group.

According to an investigative story in Scroll.in a year ago, the second phase of the mining project, which envisages an expansion of the existing two mines in the Hasdeo Arand Forest, would result in 2.5 lakh trees being cut in an area of 1,137 hectares. The forest, spread over 1,500 sq km, is one of the few remaining untouched forests in central India. It hosts rare plants and several species of endangered animals. 

But, as I have argued in earlier columns, saving the environment has become a passing concern in mainstream media. And governments, both state and central, are champions at churning out politically correct rhetoric even as their actions are leading to environmental devastation.

To end on a more positive note, the only bit of good news as we enter the new year has been the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilkis Bano case. It has ordered that the 11 men sentenced for life for murder and rape during the Gujarat violence of 2002, who were granted remission of their jail term by the Gujarat government, be sent back to prison. It has concluded that the remission order by the Gujarat government was fraudulent. This ruling has generated some optimism that perhaps justice is still possible.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has also taken note of a petition filed by a journalist about the way caste operates inside prisons and the casteist nature of prison manuals that are still being used in Indian jails in 2024.

This shocking revelation was made in 2020 by an excellent series of five articles in the Wire by Sukanya Shantha and Jahnavi Sen titled “Barred: the prison project”. They studied prison manuals in different states and spoke to prisoners belonging to the marginalised castes, especially Dalits.  

What they found was perhaps not unusual given that caste continues to determine how Indian society is run. But the series revealed that official prison manuals laid down tasks that prisoners are expected to do while serving their sentences on caste lines. Thus, only upper castes are assigned cooking duties while Dalits have no choice but to clean. These manuals from colonial times have never been revised. 

This quote sums it up:

“Caste-based labour, in fact, is sanctioned in the prison manuals of many states. The colonial texts of the late 19th century have barely seen any amendments, and caste-based labour remains an untouched part of these manuals. While every state has its own unique prison manual, they are mostly based on The Prisons Act, 1894. These jail manuals mention every activity in detail – from the measurement of food and space per prisoner to punishments for the ‘disorderly ones’.”

The expose was noted and appreciated when it appeared, and the journalists won awards. But the issue would have remained unaddressed had it not been for the decision of one of them, Sukanya Shantha, to follow up by going to court. 

The hearings in the case have just begun in the Supreme Court. As prisons are under state governments, it has asked 11 states to look at their prison manuals. This could lead to important and long-term change.

The lesson to draw from this is that sometimes journalists cannot rest after they have done a path-breaking investigative story. In a society, and particularly today when both politics and mainstream media seem determined to distract rather than inform, there is little choice before journalists but to follow up on the information unearthed and find ways to make the change happen. This is what Sukanya Shantha from the Wire has done by filing her case.

From protests to Parliament: The fall of mainstream media – and why 2024 doesn’t bode well

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on December 28, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/12/28/from-protests-to-parliament-the-fall-of-mainstream-media-and-why-2024-doesnt-bode-well

2023 IN REVIEW

We end this year by being reminded again that there are no clean endings when the issue of sexual harassment is raised. The face of champion wrestler Sakshi Malik, as she broke down in front of the media, could not be a more heart-rending reminder of this ugly truth.

Malik wept because little has changed. 

Twelve months ago, the struggle began to draw attention to sexual harassment charges by women wrestlers against BJP MP and former Wrestling Federation of India head Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh. But not only has Singh remained untouched, his proxy Sanjay Singh won the WFI election on December 21. Newspapers carried photos of a smiling Brij Bhushan wearing garlands as if he himself had been re-elected while Sanjay, the new WFI president, stood demurely by his side.

Soon after, Malik announced that she would quit wrestling. Bajrang Punia and Virender Singh Yadav announced they would return their Padma Shri awards in solidarity. Vinesh Phogat returned her Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna award and Arjuna award.

Their actions remind us that, despite media attention on their struggle in the early part of the year, the government dragged its feet after persuading them to call off their agitation. It filed a case against Singh only after directions from the Supreme Court. Till date, it hasn’t reprimanded Brij Bhushan. The case against him filed by the Delhi police, which comes directly under the union home ministry, has gone nowhere. 

With the issue refusing to die down, the sports ministry finally moved and suspended the newly elected WFI and Brij Bhushan said he was no longer involved in wrestling. 

For the media, there are lessons to be drawn from the trajectory of this high-visibility campaign. Media attention did help the wrestlers put pressure on the government. But given the nature of the complaint (sexual harassment) and the person at the centre of it (a powerful politician), there were no tidy endings. More reason then for the media to continue to follow the story rather than wait for another dramatic event to remind us that, in under a year, precious little progress has been made on the wrestlers’ demands.

In many ways, the story of the wrestlers’ struggle for justice is the story of much of India. Dramatic public protests catch the eye of mainstream media. But once these end, or are forced to end, media attention moves on. And on issues where the people affected do not possess the social capital to launch eye-catching campaigns, there is little to no media attention.

The wrestlers’ protests ought to have reminded us in the media that despite the MeToo campaigns of 2019, the problem of sexual harassment remains an unfaltering reality that women face every day. But there is an even more dramatic example of what we don’t find in the media – or at least not enough of it.

The dramatic “attack” on Parliament by six young people trying to draw attention to unemployment and lack of freedom is another example.  On the anniversary of the December 13, 2001 terror attack, two of them got into the building, jumped into the chamber where the Lok Sabha was meeting, and released canisters of some kind of coloured gas. It was front-page news, but the issues they raised have not been addressed.

Why would young people, who surely knew the consequences of this kind of protest, take such risks if they were not desperate? How representative are they of the thousands of unemployed men and women who see no future, despite the government’s boasts that the Indian economy is growing by leaps and bounds?

Although some mainstream newspapers profiled the youth and their families and wrote about their motives for undertaking such a daring form of protest, television news, as expected, continued to refer to them as “terrorists”.

Unemployment is one of the biggest stories that mainstream media has chosen not to report. The reason is obvious. A government that refuses to accept anything in the media that is even slightly critical of its policies, and has clearly indicated what it will do to tame its critics, is unlikely to look kindly at media that investigates the darker side of an ostensibly growing economy that leaves so many millions behind.

Senior journalist Ajaz Ashraf, in his column in Mid-day, is one of the few to point out why this action by the six has not got the support of even the opposition. No one wants to be seen to be sympathetic to persons charged under terror laws. Perhaps the media too has held back from taking forward the demands raised by the six.

In any case, the taming of our mainstream media by this government is almost complete.  A few voices remain, principally in print. But the rest literally “follow the leader”. 

The road ahead

As we now head into an election year, will we see any change in the media sphere? That is the question any journalist who believes that the job of a free media in a functioning democracy is to question the powerful must be asking as 2023 comes to an end.

The answer to that could lie in asking how many journalists have managed to continue questioning the powerful despite the current government and the threats to press freedom.

The spaces that have remained open for such questioning are mostly on independent digital platforms.  Through this year, this is where we have seen some of the best investigative stories: coverage of the ongoing conflict in Manipur about which the prime minister continues to remain silent, stories on displacement, disasters, and disease, and on the despair felt by those whose stories are rarely told. 

In early December, when the Mumbai Press Club announced the Red Ink awards for journalism, there was little surprise that the majority of awardees in several categories were from these small, spunky digital platforms. When the future history of these times is written, the record of what really happened will be found on these independent spaces as the traditional media, that is supposed to play the role of the recorder of history, is falling woefully short.

That said, the 2024 general elections, or even before they are held, could mean the beginning of the end of these little islands of freedom that still exist in the media sphere. 

The winter session of Parliament rushed through the Telecommunications Bill 2023 even as 146 opposition MPs were suspended. The law was brought in ostensibly to regulate the telecom industry, but serious concerns have been raised about privacy of users as this article by Apar Gupta in The Wire explains. 

More worrying is the draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill 2023 which was open for public comments. Designed to regulate what it terms “content creation”, the law will bring under its ambit all digital news platforms like Scroll, The Wire, The News Minute, NewsClick, Article14, Newslaundry and scores more in other languages as well as hundreds of news-related programmes on YouTube such as the one by Ravish Kumar. 

These comments, made by the Internet Freedom Foundation, make it clear that if passed, this law will most certainly curtail the freedom presently enjoyed by those using the digital space for news. Let me quote this paragraph to illustrate: 

“The bill extends the Ministry’s regulatory ambit to any person who broadcasts news and current affairs programs through a digital medium (such as online paper, news portal, website, social media intermediary, or other similar medium). This provision will apply to any individual, and not just media companies or journalists, who chooses to share news as part of a ‘systematic business, professional, or commercial activity’. Concerns over how “news and current affairs” is currently defined under the bill and uncertainty over the scope of application of this Clause augment concerns around erosion of democratic principles of online free speech. This will threaten journalistic expression as well as a users’ right to access multiple, diverse points of view, especially given the high penalties prescribed in the draft bill for failing to comply with ethical codes and government orders.”

I had hoped to end this on a more optimistic note. Unfortunately, given the way laws are being bulldozed through our Parliament, it is difficult to hope that this government will heed comments such as the one quoted above and many more that have been sent to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. 

Does this government really need such a law, given that most of the mainstream media in the country rarely questions and is always ready to distract from the real issues? The fact that it has even devised such a law should tell us that this is a government that wants to paper over all the cracks, even the smallest ones that will allow for free “journalistic expression”. 

From Gaza to Kashmir: Why is Indian media suffering from selective coverage syndrome?

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on December 15, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/12/15/from-gaza-to-kashmir-why-is-indian-media-suffering-from-selective-coverage-syndrome

For more than two months, the world has watched the virtual obliteration of occupied Gaza and its residents by Israel. The visuals, the videos, and the testimonies of residents, doctors, UN officials, and journalists are flooding social media portals. Those who want to know what is happening on the ground seek out these sources, watch, and read.

But if you depend only on mainstream television channels or newspapers, the horror of what is unfolding will pass you by. This is because even if there is reporting, it is selective and one-sided, playing up one side and playing down another.

In India, the reporting, what little there is, consists of reprints from the New York Times or a precis of reports from different western-based news agencies. You rarely find anything from Al Jazeera, which has focused on Gaza since Israel’s bombardment began, or other sources in the region. 

To illustrate, look back at what Indian newspapers reported during the brief ceasefire when Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails were exchanged for Israelis held hostage by Hamas after the October 7 attack. Most reports that appeared in our newspapers, which were reprinted from western sources, focussed on the Israelis who had been released. We read who they were and some of what they experienced while held captive. But there was next to nothing about the young Palestinians who were released in the exchange. These Palestinians had been held in Israeli prisons without trial. Their lives had been upended. They saw no hope of ever being released. Their stories also needed to be heard. But in India, we heard only one side. 

Occasionally, you come across reports like this one, taken from Reuters. It tells us that even those who survived the relentless bombing by Israel that has already killed around 18,000 Palestinians, many of them children, now face the prospect of the spread of diseases that will result in more deaths. It quotes data from the World Health Organisation that between November 29 and December 10, incidents of diarrhoea in children under 5 years have increased by 66 percent. In the absence of clean water or healthcare, these children might not survive the inevitable dehydration. Also, according to the WHO, 21 out of the 36 hospitals in Gaza are now closed.  

A notable exception in Indian media was Frontline magazine. It made the Israel war on Gaza its cover story in its November 17 issue, and for this, it was trolled by supporters of the government. It has continued to carry informative reports on the war.

Why are we seeing this partial and one-sided coverage in our media? One explanation is the dependence on western news agencies and newspapers for foreign news. If you look at the world news page in any newspaper, most reports are attributed to these sources. Practically no newspaper in India can now afford to send correspondents to provide direct coverage of such a conflict. Inevitably, this means that Indian readers get international news through the filter of a western perspective.

In the 1970s, there was talk of a New International Information Order, and some attempts were made to set up news agencies staffed by journalists from the Global South who could bring a different perspective to world news. Most of these efforts failed due to a lack of funding. As a result, we are back to our dependence on western news sources for news of developments outside our borders.

Even if this reality cannot be changed, is mainstream Indian media compelled to follow the line taken by the government on foreign policy issues? You would think not, given that we are constantly reminded that there is freedom of the press in this country. Yet, a survey of Indian media would show that, by and large, it toes the line of the government. 

This has been especially obvious recently in the coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Modi government has chosen to back Israel, going against India’s historical support for Palestine (although in the last days, it has modified its stance and voted for a ceasefire in the UN General Assembly). 

The one-sided reporting on the Israel-Palestine war, which has galvanised protests around the world demanding a ceasefire, and continues to be the lead story in media in many countries, also illustrates a deeper fault line in our media, linked to the business model of mainstream media. For several decades, we have watched “news” that sells the “product” gaining dominance, while other events and developments deemed too far or not of interest to readers or viewers are either ignored, or barely noted.  

Thus, for instance, Manipur was in the news for a short while when the extent of violence in a state caught in a civil war just could not be ignored. But today, it has virtually disappeared from our news pages. Nothing is normal in that state. Yet, we read next to nothing about it. 

Similarly, look at the coverage of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the abrogation of Article 370. The region affected by it is Jammu and Kashmir. Most newspapers carried details about the judgement, learned interpretations of it, some opinions – both critical and supportive, and statements made by a few politicians from the region. And all major newspapers printed the identical article by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the judgement. 

But so far, there is practically nothing about how ordinary people in Kashmir feel about the ruling. Those who want to know have either reached out to people they know or read their guarded comments on social media. Guarded because of the fear that pervades the region since 2019.  

A rare and brave article that has appeared, predictably, on an independent digital news platform rather than in any of our national newspapers is this one written by Toufiq Rashid in The Wire. Titled “Why there is silence in Kashmir over the Supreme Court’s verdict,” this beautifully written, and evocative article is worth reading not just once but several times. Let me quote just one paragraph:

“The silence in Kashmir is loud and deafening and its people are isolated. Kashmir continues to be the paradise it was, people continue to remain the best hosts you will have but we are far from happy. With every passing day, as the voices in Kashmir are muffled, we are stepping closer and closer to complete political alienation.”

It is in these pockets of silence – Kashmir, Manipur, our tribal belts, the areas that seem entrenched forever “below poverty line” – that the real stories of what is happening in this country lie. These are the stories that we in the media need to report, and through them inform the comfortable that there are millions who are afflicted.

Even if we argue that the sorrows and tribulations of the people who are still alive in Gaza are some distance from us, what is our excuse for not keeping the focus on the areas engulfed in silence within our own boundaries?

The answer is so obvious that it does not need repeating. 

Big media’s strange self-censorship of Cricket World Cup, and why it mustn’t now forget ‘rat-hole mining’

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on December 1, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/12/01/big-medias-strange-self-censorship-of-cricket-world-cup-and-why-it-mustnt-now-forget-rat-hole-mining

In the good old days, when print was king, people got all their news from newspapers. Depending on your preoccupations or interests, you could start with page one, or turn to the back of the newspaper.  Page one, as now, consisted of headline news – mostly politics, some business, disasters, wars, and sometimes sports, if an Indian team or sportsperson won a tournament.

The back page, then as now, was exclusively sports. No place for politics here. Or so you would think.

But there is politics in sports. That has always been the case. Especially, in the most popular of Indian sports, that is cricket. The difference today is that in the newspaper age, sports journalists also wrote about the politics in sports, about the politics behind team selection, the politics that resulted in certain people dominating certain sports. They also reported on tournaments and wrote about individual sportspersons. The sports pages had space for all of this.

Not any more, it appears. Although, I am one of those who still reads page one first when I pick up a newspaper, I am conscious of the changes in the way the world of sports is reported on today.

At no time has this been more evident than in the reporting on the recently concluded ICC Cricket World Cup, leading up to India’s loss to Australia in the finals on November 19 at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.

Reporting on any sport in print has been compelled to change because people can now watch the sports events live as they happen. Readers look for nuance, for the back story, for something that was not obvious as you sat before your television screen and watched. And many of the excellent sports reporters in major Indian newspapers do provide the kind of copy that makes for good reading, even if you’re not passionate about that particular sport.

But during the recently concluded Cricket World Cup, it is intriguing that practically none of these sports reporters in mainstream newspapers, as far as I can tell, reported on crowd behaviour. We learned about this only from the international media covering the matches, from social media and from independent digital platforms that carried some critical articles.

The usual controversies about the choice of the pitch chosen for a particular fixture were also barely reported. Once again, it was the international press that picked this up, such as this report in Britain’s Daily Mail. And as for the politics around the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the richest and most powerful sporting body in the world, we have yet to read a more perceptive piece than this one by one of India’s best sports journalists, Sharda Ugra in Caravanmagazine. 

It was also Sharda Ugra who informed us on the curious matter of the politics behind the colours the Indian team would wear for fixtures. Apparently, there was talk of changing the colour to saffron or orange from blue as she writes in this article in The India Forum. 

My short point about the coverage of sports in India’s mainstream newspapers is to ask whether it too has been infected by the self-censorship bug that has become the norm in other coverage? Why else would the unsporting behaviour of crowds at the Modi stadium, for instance, not be reported where ultra-nationalism seemed to overwhelm love for the sport to the point spectators would not applaud a batsman from the other side scoring a century, and senselessly booed the umpires when they were felicitated? Several reports in the international press referred to this such as The Guardian and this from an Australian website.

Since that Sunday, when most of India seemed to have been pushed into gloom barring those who don’t follow cricket, a minuscule minority I admit, the rescue of the 41 workers trapped in the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand has provided some solace.  

In fact, the country has been introduced to a new phrase: “rat-hole mining.” Most people who heard or read this term on the day of the rescue would not have known what it means. Since then, most newspapers have run explanatory articles that inform us about what this entails, including the dangers and the skill required. 

There is little so far about what these men, who come from the most marginalised communities, in this case all Muslim or Dalit, are paid for this hazardous work. Rat-hole mining was banned by the National Green Tribunal in 2014 and then partially permitted in 2019. The abject poverty of the workers is evident from some of the reports such this in The Hindu, where one of them asks for a “pucca” house, and is then reprimanded by his mate for asking a favour of the government.

We must wait and see if the media follows up on this important story of rat-hole mining, of the lives of those who are engaged in it, and whether there are any regulations that apply to the kind of work they do and the hazards they face. The Telegraph, in its editorial on the lessons to be learned from the tunnel collapse, brings this out.

An equally relevant issue that the media must pursue is the environmental angle. The Silkyara tunnel, which is part of the Char Dham project of building wider roads in Uttarakhand to facilitate pilgrimage to Hindu holy sites, apparently did not get an environmental clearance as this editorial in Times of India points out. The region where such projects are taking place is ecologically extremely fragile. This has been pointed out repeatedly by several expert committees. Yet these warnings are not heeded. 

It is incumbent on the media, that has been reporting continuously for 17 days as the 41 workers remained stuck in the collapsed tunnel, to now follow up on these infrastructure projects. Are they safe for the workers, and for the terrain in which they are being built? Have they received environmental clearance? If not, why not? Who is responsible for cutting corners? 

One report suggested that even the plan to construct a rescue tunnel alongside the main one was not implemented in this case. Surely, there must be accountability. And if the government prefers to sit back and soak in the glory of the successful rescue, without holding an inquiry, it is the job of the media to build up the pressure so that this is done, and we don’t have to report on more such tunnel collapses. 

This year has been marked by the terrible consequences of unchecked building of roads and other structures in fragile mountain environments in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Too many lives have been lost due to this push to build without pausing to consider environmental sustainability. While several independent digital platforms, despite limited resources, have been writing about this, it is time mainstream media woke up and assigned reporters to investigate, rather than waiting until tragedy strikes again. 

In Indian elections, Gaza violence, some misses and misfires by traditional media

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on November 16, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/11/16/in-indian-elections-gaza-violence-some-misses-and-misfires-by-traditional-media

Cricket and elections, in that order, have dominated the Indian news cycle for the last few weeks. The world media on the other hand is focussed on the war declared by Israel against Gaza following the October 7 attack by Hamas. The daily mounting toll of casualties reported from Gaza, especially of children, has resulted in a mounting cry across much of the world for a ceasefire, but so far to no effect.

Leaving aside cricket, reporting on Indian elections, and on the war on Gaza challenges journalists in a most essential way.

Election coverage in India consists mostly of reporting what she or he said and some reports on what the public perceives. Journalists are also expected to make a guess about which way the wind is blowing, in the direction of the incumbent, the opponent, or neither.

This format permits prominent political figures to get away with statements that are either inaccurate, or even outright lies. Yet, rarely does the media call them out. As a result, for the record, what a politician says, including the prime minister, is uncritically recorded, and reported. Without challenge, it gets accepted as fact.

As politics is essentially a battle of perception, this approach of the media contributes directly to popular perception about a personality or a political party. There is little doubt that the blanket and uncritical coverage by the Indian media, especially television, of everything Prime Minister Narendra Modi does or says, from the inauguration of a minor railway station, or highway, to a political rally, has contributed to the personality cult around him. We witness this again in the ongoing election campaigns in the five states that are holding elections – Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Mizoram, and Rajasthan. 

While reporting what politicians say during elections cannot be avoided, it ought not to be the bulk of coverage. There are, of course, reports of what voters think, with some kind of random sampling done by most reporters. Very few try to reach out to women, or to the most marginalised. Generally, the vox popconsists of people you bump into and who are willing to talk.

The opportunity that is missed during election coverage, which sends droves of reporters on the ground, is the chance to assess whether the declarations made by incumbent governments, boasting of far-reaching benefits given to the poorest communities, are true or not. Have various government schemes that are projected as successful benefitted the poorest? 

In this round of state elections, such reporting has largely been missing, barring a few exceptions. Thus, the rare report tells us that the much-touted Ujjwala scheme, for instance, that is supposed to have helped households switch from polluting biomass chulhas to LPG gas has been less than successful. The reasons remain the same as those documented in numerous studies. That after the first free gas cylinder, families simply have not been able to afford the replacement. Women are compelled to revert to using firewood that affects their own health directly and increases their workload. 

Doing such stories is not difficult if you have reporters already on the ground. Given that most media houses have drastically reduced investment in ground-based reporting, this is an opportunity missed. And especially so in these elections, where we have seen intense competition between opposing parties to announce ever more generous benefits to the poor.

Of course, in this age of social media, whether traditional media really affects voting choices is a moot point. Do what we report, or the way we tell our stories as journalists, really contribute to perceptions that affect political choices, or even an understanding of what’s happening in the country given the all-pervasive presence of social media? 

Take Manipur, for instance. It is now seven months since the state has been embroiled in a virtual civil war between two communities, the Meitei, and the Kuki-Zo. The conflict continues to fester without any serious intervention by the central government to find a solution. Just when you think things have quieted down, another incident is reported of killings or destruction.

For the people living in the state and in the region, the veracity of what circulates as “news” continues to be challenging. Increasingly, each side is convinced that what it has seen circulated on social media is the fact. Even journalists from the two opposing sides are caught in this battle of what really is “the truth” and what are facts.

Similarly, the current Israeli attack on Gaza has raised many questions in the international media on how to sift fact from fiction in the reporting. 

Take, for instance, this report in the New York Times on an attack on the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza on November 10.  The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that it was a misfired missile from Hamas. The New York Times went to some lengths to verify facts and has concluded that it was Israeli shells that hit the hospital.

However, it also adds, “The evidence reviewed by The Times from Al-Shifa points more directly to strikes by Israel – whether on purpose or by accident is unclear.” That caveat speaks to the lengths some in the Western media are going to prove that they are “balanced” in their reporting, even as they ignore the clear statements by numerous Israeli politicians about why their country has launched this devastating attack on Gaza. The politicians make no bones about the motive behind the bombardment.

Earlier, on October 17, a blast at the Al Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza also triggered a similar debate in the international media. While Palestinians claimed it was an Israeli rocket, the IDF insisted it was a misfired rocket by Hamas. In its report, the NYT concluded: 

“Using satellite imagery to triangulate the launch point in those videos, The Times determined that the projectile was fired toward Gaza from near the Israeli town of Nahal Oz shortly before the deadly hospital blast. The findings match the conclusion reached by some online researchers.”

The lengths to which media houses have gone to question versions put out by the warring sides illustrates the tremendous challenges in reporting on conflict in general, and this kind of conflict in particular. There are no easy answers. But apart from the individual incidents such as the two cited above, what informs readers and viewers is the choice of what is reported. Here the bias, stated or otherwise, of a publication or TV channel comes through even as they project themselves as being balanced. 

In any case, irrespective of what major news outlets in the West such as NYT or others report, people are getting their information about the war from other sources. The thousands of young people on the streets of western capitals, demonstrating every weekend demanding a ceasefire in this war even as their own governments continue to support and arm Israel, are not depending on these traditional sources for their information.  

There are dozens of independent platforms streaming on social media that provide anyone interested with the realities that Gazans live with every single day since Israel began the bombardment followed by the land invasion. These images and video clips are a record that cannot be erased even if mainstream media chooses to downplay the reality. 

Meanwhile, a sobering side of the Israeli war on Gaza is that an estimated 41 journalists covering it have been killed, according to this report by Reporters without Borders.  That number has increased since that report was published and is now thought to be touching 50. 

Even as some in the media debate what are the real “facts” in this terrible war, those trying to do their job in recording events face dangers that far exceed anything we have witnessed in other conflicts.  

Mainstream TV tattered the flag of press freedom. It can’t use it for a cover-up amid INDIA boycott

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on September 21, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/09/21/mainstream-tv-tattered-the-flag-of-press-freedom-it-cant-use-it-for-a-cover-up-amid-india-boycott

A new parliament building and the passage of a 27-year-old law have pushed to the background what had the potential of becoming a raging controversy. I am referring to the decision taken by the opposition alliance to boycott 14 TV anchors and not appear on the shows they host.

On September 20, the daylong Lok Sabha session on the Women’s Reservation Bill – the Constitution (128th Amendment) Bill 2023 – brought back memories of a parliament that once existed, where we heard both sides put forward their views. In the past, this kind of debate allowed the public to be informed about the pros and the cons of a law or a policy. Today, such debates are conspicuous by their absence.

Another takeaway from that day was to see the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, sitting through the discussion and ultimate passage of the bill. He has a record of the lowest attendance in parliament of any prime minister so far.

But whether this special session in its spanking new building will inform the way future sessions are conducted remains to be seen. Old habits die hard, and it is likely, as we enter election season, that we will once again witness little real debate and more walkouts and grandstanding even as important laws are rushed through.

The controversy around the boycott of 14 anchors has also been useful in some ways. It has brought into focus the state of mainstream television media in India. Irrespective of what people think of the opposition’s strategy of naming specific anchors, there is little doubt that this move has compelled viewers to look again at the channels where these anchors appear, and to ask whether what they see each night at prime time is even journalism.

Ideally, we need a forum to debate the state of mainstream media. But as the latter will certainly not provide space for a fair and reasoned debate, once again it is the independent platforms where the issue has been discussed. 

There have been several well-argued articles such as by Anjali Mody in Scroll and by Ravish Kumar in Wire. The lawyer Apar Gupta has written about why he chose not to appear on certain channels and suggests that “broken news will only be fixed by collective action”.

And Aakar Patel, in this article in Wire, argues that the opposition has every right to refuse to be part of what he calls “a rigged game by large sections of the media”.

On the other side, those against the opposition’s move, including the BJP, have conjured up scenarios about the freedom of the press being threatened and comparing what is a voluntary boycott to the Emergency. They also interchangeably use the term “ban” and “boycott” even though they must know that governments impose bans – individuals and groups can voluntarily boycott.

Furthermore, it is laughable that a political party that has allowed freedom of expression and the press to deteriorate under its watch until India is ranked amongst the lowest in the world in press freedom ranking, should talk about press freedom being threatened by a voluntary boycott.

Also, while we debate this issue, we cannot forget that the prime “boycotter” of the media is none other than the prime minister. In the last 10 years, he has made his disdain for media amply clear, cherry-picking a few journalists for ‘exclusive’ staged interviews and otherwise refusing to engage or answer questions.

Most of the mainstream media is not troubled by this “boycott”, and Modi knows this. Hence, every day, anything the prime minister says, or does, is reported uncritically in print media, and telecast on TV channels. There is not a whisper of criticism barring an occasional op-ed or an edit, questioning what he proclaims from various platforms. And this in a country that claims there is press freedom. 

While the opposition rightly blames some TV channels for spreading hate, and cutting out other viewpoints, there is little doubt that the same media is also responsible for perpetuating and building up the Modi cult.

But coming back to the opposition boycott, the listing of specific anchors has deflected attention from the principal reason the mainstream media, especially TV news, has declined so precipitously in its content and credibility. And that is the ownership of these channels and media houses. 

We tend to forget that the corporatisation of the media began in the 1990s and coincided with the growth of private television channels. The media became a “brand” and a profit centre for the owners of these media houses. The job of the media was not just to report all the news but to highlight the news that would sell the brand.

This is also when “celebrities” (film stars, models, the ultra-rich) entered the picture. What they did, or did not, became “news”. It attracted readers and viewers in a changing consumerist-oriented India. And once it was clear that the strategy worked, it was monetised. Soon we had the advent of “paid news” masquerading as reportage by journalists. 

On television, Arnab Goswami, when he was with Times Now, can be credited for taking the combative nature of TV debates that had already begun on other channels to another level. His “brand” sold the channel. Soon it became the norm in TV discussions across channels. Goswami moved on to Republic TV, but his style is visible each time you switch on any news channel.

A book worth revisiting at this time is Amrita Shah’s excellent 2019 take on mainstream media, ‘Telly-Guillotined, How Television Changed India’ (published by Sage and Yoda Press). It is a new version of her 1997 book, ‘Hype, Hypocrisy and Television in Urban India’. Re-reading the first paragraph of the preface would make you think she is referring to what’s happening today.  I quote:

“Loud, sensationalistic, irresponsible, trivial, dangerous – these are some of the ways in which the Indian news media is perceived by many in the country today. Terms like ‘fake news’ and ‘paid news’ are freely and sometimes gratuitously applied to journalistic output. Diminishing public respect has rendered journalists vulnerable to pressures of various kinds. Journalists are sacked en masse, heads of media companies are raided for expressing anti-establishment views, senior news staffers are fired for taking on powerful politicians and attacked for exposing corruption and wrongdoing. Even among crowds, while covering news events, reporters and photographers are liable to be roughed up and assaulted by random members of the public. How did we get here?”

Shah’s is a detailed exploration and cannot be summarised here. But essentially, she has traced how the process of what she calls the “decline of the journalist” and the power of “the salesman, the technician and the entertainer” grew and shaped what we see today.

Whether the boycott decision by the opposition can bring about any change in a system so well-entrenched is difficult to predict. Also, given the power and reach of this media, whether the opposition choosing not to appear on these shows and thereby lending them some credibility will dent their viewership is uncertain. One could argue that in election season, such a boycott might hurt the opposition more than those they criticise or oppose.

What can be said is that it is time that we debated the debasement of what is mainstream television news, and search for alternatives. As long as the owners of these channels allow the named anchors, and others not on the list, their poisonous and performative brand of journalism, and believe that they profit from this, there is little that individual viewers can do to intervene. Yet, boycotts have been effective if they are scaled up to the point where they hurt the bottom line of corporations.

At the end of the day, we are still left with the question: what is journalism? It is not what we are seeing day in and day out on our TV channels. But it is still taking place in spaces away from mainstream media.

Here is a piece that gives me hope that all is not lost. Not many of this generation would even know of Bhanwari Devi. She is not a celebrity. She still lives in her village of Bhatteri in Rajasthan. Yet, it is her life, and her fight for justice against the men who raped her, that led to a path-breaking law on sexual harassment at the workplace. In a deeply reported article in Print, that focuses on Bhanwari, Jyoti Yadav reminds us of the struggles that Indian women face today. So sensitive and informative journalism is still alive, as the article illustrates.

Amid G20 hype, exposé on Adani, Vedanta and Manipur crisis relegated to shadows

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on September 7, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/09/07/amid-g20-hype-expos-on-adani-vedanta-and-manipur-crisis-relegated-to-shadows

The G20 Summit has taken over the headlines and the news cycle. By the end of the week, the recent exposes on Adani, the opposition alliance’s Mumbai meet, or even the Manipur crisis would have faded from people’s memories.  

In the meantime, we also had the surprise announcement of a special session of Parliament from September 18-22 with no indication of the agenda, some kite-flying about whether the name of our country will be 'Bharat' instead of 'India, although it is both in the Constitution, and the proposal of One Nation, One Election.  Enough masala to cover up the real and more substantive issues on which the media should continue to keep its focus.

The expose by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project or OCCRP on the financial dealings of the Adani group, carried in detail in the leading daily Financial Times, and The Guardian, has provoked no more than a murmur in India’s mainstream media. Although, the day after the story broke, newspapers did report it on their front pages, there has been little to nothing by way of a follow up apart from a few editorial comments, such as in Hindustan Times and Indian Express.  

Admittedly, the Adani story is complex. It is not easy to understand for readers who are not informed about the way financial markets work. Yet, it is possible for the media to explain it,  like this report in Newslaundry.  

At times, the silence of the media tells a bigger story than its word. 

Sometimes, the silence of the media speaks louder than words about its status. And the ongoing Adani story, exposing cronyism and institutional failures under the current government, must surely qualify as one such instance of silence. 

Given its open and blatant biases, the Indian TV news media is not expected to touch the Adani story. Nor are we surprised that the only way it can deal with it is to spin out its usual conspiracy theory, about George Soros being behind the exposes. But mainstream Indian print media’s silence cannot be ignored, especially when independent media, such as the Reporters’ Collective and the stories by M Rajshekhar in Wire have reported on the expose.  

The Adani story eclipsed what I believe is as important a story, if not more, by OCCRP on the way the Vedanta group, led by UK-based business tycoon Anil Agarwal, has been the beneficiary of changes made in environmental laws for mining and other related activities.   

The investigation has these five key findings:

• “Mining and oil giant Vedanta ran a covert lobbying campaign to weaken key environmental regulations during the pandemic.”

• “India’s government approved the changes without public consultation and implemented them by using what experts say are illegal methods.”

• “In one case, Vedanta led a push to ensure mining companies could produce up to 50 percent more without new environmental approvals.”

• “Vedanta’s oil business, Cairn India, also successfully lobbied to have public hearing scrapped for exploratory drilling in oil blocks it won in government auctions.”

• “Since then, six of Cairn’s controversial oil projects in Rajasthan have been approved despite local opposition.” 

We need to let this sink in. After years of campaigning by environmental groups, laws and regulations were set in place to protect the environment.  An important feature was public consultation before any changes were made. This is only one of the rules that has been bypassed. And all this has happened without us noticing because these issues do not find purchase in mainstream media anymore. 

Of the other issues subdued by the spate of “breaking news” is, of course, Manipur.  Thanks to the fact-finding report by the Editors’ Guild of India, titled 'Media's Reportage on Ethnic Violence in Manipur', and the disproportionate response of Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh to it, what’s happening in that beleaguered state has not been entirely forgotten. 

The Manipur state government has filed an FIR against the EGI team accusing them of “promoting enmity between different groups”.  Not just that, but Biren Singh has gone on record to call the team members “anti-state, anti-national and anti-establishment”. 

Although the Supreme Court has intervened and stayed the arrests of the journalists, the action of the Manipur government is another reminder of how the ruling party in that state, and at the centre, looks at freedom of expression. To them, this fundamental right is purely transactional. One is free to report only information approved by them. Anything contrary is ‘anti-national’.  

This is the second such reaction of the state government to fact-finding missions. In July, it had filed an FIR against a three-member group of the National Federation of Indian Women for concluding that the violence was “state-sponsored”. Since then, there have been several such telling reports including one by a group of doctors. In this report in The Hindu, the displaced populations, especially in the Kuki areas, are facing a dire crisis due to a lack of essential supplies even for infants and medications for the ailing. So far, there has been no denial or action against this group of doctors by the state government. 

Coming back to the EGI report, it specifically looked at the role of the local media in inflaming the situation in Manipur. It even quoted some instances of this.  But it also revealed the structural inequality that is built into the location of media houses. 

In most states, media houses concentrate on the capital and some major cities. Many parts of a state, often the most marginalised and deprived, are left uncovered, or barely reported. It’s only when something drastic happens like a natural disaster, or drought and starvation, that these places feature. 

Manipur is much the same. The media is located mostly in Imphal and run by the Meiteis. Although the Nagas have a newspaper, Ukhrul Times, and other forms of media, the Kukis have never had an adequate media presence. When a crisis like the present one hits, where two sides are literally at war with each other, even the semblance of a media that reports from all regions disappears. 

It is not just the absence of the internet that has affected coverage in the local media, although the unjustified internet shutdown over an extended period is an important factor. More significant has been the way even journalists, who are supposed to set aside their personal identities and biases when they go out to report, have been affected by the passions dividing the state.  

This partly explains why the means of communication that were not cut off, such as mobile phones or landlines, were not used to verify news and get reports from parts rendered unreachable by local media during this conflict. After all, many of us have reported in the times when there was no internet, when phoning in your story and sending updates from a landline, or even post office, to the desk wherever it was located, was routine.   

Sadly, some Imphal-based journalists continue to resent what they call “parachute journalists” from the “mainland”. Yet had it not been for these journalists, we would not have heard both sides of the story on the Manipur violence. Perhaps, the best of the recent reports on Manipur is this one by Arunabh Saikia for Scroll, that tells us that the problem in the northeastern state is not going to disappear in a hurry. In fact, it is likely to escalate given that now both sides have the support of militant groups who were quiescent for some years. 

Whether it is Adani, Vedanta, or Manipur, these are issues that will inform the path India takes in the future. The coverage, or erasure of such issues from the media also informs us about the direction that the Indian media has chosen to take.