Rot that’s destroying India’s TV news came from newspapers

 Broken News

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/amp/story/2020%2F09%2F10%2Frot-thats-destroying-indias-tv-news-came-from-newspapers?__twitter_impression=true

 

 

On September 7, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Patrika Gate in Jaipur built by the Patrika group of newspapers.  He said that the world was now listening to India with more attention. 

 

On that same day, the world was listening to India, by way of reports in the international media, including this report in Washington Post,  which noted that India had beaten Brazil in the number of Covid-19 positive cases. Only the United States remains ahead of India.

 

One would have expected the Indian media that Modi exhorted ought to have a "global reputation", would have front-paged this fact.  Yet although there was a mention in the print, it was mostly on inside pages if at all.

 

If you survey the front pages of most newspapers, you find that the pandemic has slipped off the radar of the media. This, at a time, when Dr V. K. Paul of the Niti Aayog has stated, "Our Covid-19 numbers are rising -- we haven't stablised yet. The pandemic is still on... a large population is still vulnerable."

 

Apart from absolute numbers, which must be viewed against the size of our population, what is worrying is the rate of the spread.  It is far higher than that of any other country.  In India, it took five months for Covid-19 positive cases to grow from 0 to 10 lakhs; 21 days to increase from 10-20 lakhs; 16 days to grow from 20-30 lakhs and only 13 days to exceed 40 lakhs. On any measure, this is a story that ought to have remained a prominent part of news.

 

What is also significant is that the growth is now seen not in the big metros but in the smaller towns. While big cities have reasonable health infrastructure, it is meagre in smaller towns.  One can well imagine the havoc the pandemic must be causing there. Yet, our metro-centered media is simply not reaching out to report.  Why has it taken its eye off the ball?

 

The consequences of pushing the pandemic story to the back are many.  For one, we do not fully know how people in these smaller towns are coping with the spread of the virus. Who will record their stories?

 

Second, the absence of a constant focus on the pandemic allows the authorities to pretend that things are under control when they are not.  In the early months of the pandemic, the media did stories that illustrated the shortcomings in the health care infrastructure.  This helped put pressure on governments and municipal authorities to invest in additional infrastructure such as isolation centres.  Despite this, reports about people not reaching medical centres in time appear from time to time suggesting that the last line connectivity, such as having adequate ambulances, is still a problem even in bigger cities. 

 

The questions about the death rate, whether the data is truly reflective of the reality, and also about the increase in testing still remain.  The Ken, which does in-depth stories on issues, carried this useful piece on testing, basically pointing out that the majority of tests being carried out are the antigen tests that really do not capture the extent of the spread of the infection.

 

And finally, by reducing the focus on the pandemic, the media has possibly contributed to the sense of complacency in the public. We are already witnessing this in cities like Mumbai where with the gradual opening up, many people believe that the crisis is now behind us. Overcrowding in markets and people walking around without masks are now every day occurrences. All those messages about prevention being the only real cure in the absence of a vaccine, and that physical distancing and face covering were essential appear to have been forgotten.

 

Apart from the pandemic, we now have the facts on the economy.  With GDP shrinking and growing unemployment -- a loss of 21 million salaried jobs according to the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE) -- this is another big story waiting to be investigated and reported.  Yet where are these stories?  The New York Times sent a reporter to Surat and gave graphic details of what happens to people when the GDP shrinks.

 

None of this appears to have any relevance for the majority of TV news channels. They continue to focus obsessively on just one story, that of the death of Sushant Singh Rajput in June and the subsequent investigations around it. 

 

The way his former girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty has been hounded is now legend.  Here the Indian media has certainly built a "global reputation"; I doubt if there is any other media in a democratic country that can match this performance.

 

While people can choose not to watch television news, or at least the channels that are doing this kind of coverage, the impact of this trend in TV news has wider repercussions.  It is also the culmination of a process that began with print several decades back but has now found its true home in TV news.

 

And it is this process, of tabloidisation, of converting news into a commodity, of making media houses profit centres with no other concern than the bottom line, that is worrying.

 

Mainstream media is today interested primarily in catering to its "market"; the idea that it is the fourth estate, that it is there to speak truth to power has receded into some distant past.  Not all have succumbed to this entirely; as always there are honorable exceptions.  But the most popular channels, or the most read newspapers by and large defer to profit over relevant content.

 

The trend began in the 1990s, led by Times of India but swiftly followed by several others. Apart from calling the newspaper a "brand", a term that was necessarily foreign to many old-school journalists who still worked there, over time what counted as "news" was judged by its marketability.

 

Not just that, but sections were created that would enhance the sale of the newspaper. These had paid content about celebrities but displayed in a way that readers presumed they were being reported, as was other news.  Separate companies were set up to deal with these sections. 

 

Once you erase the line between journalism, and paid content, there is only one way you can go, and that is down. Or rather up, if you are interested in profits. 

 

As I see it, what began then is now manifesting in the crazy chase for ratings at any cost by television channels, started once again by a channel that belongs to the same group as Times of India, but which has now become the template for success imitated by all and finessed by the daily performances on Republic TV.

 

In fact, this recent editorial in Times of India is truly disingenuous in that it deplores "hysteric TV anchors" when the channel belonging to this group pioneered hysterical anchoring.

 

When journalism becomes entertainment and performance, you have truly entered a dystopian world.

 

Perhaps print media, and digital, can still bring back some sanity.  But with shrinking revenues, and the lead given by TV news, it is possible that news sense will be decided by the noise on the channels and not the reality on the ground.

 

Is there a way out?

 

I believe there is. Often the search for an alternative is felt more strongly when you reach an extreme, as the media surely has today. After the Emergency of 1975-77 for instance, the media was compelled to appreciate what freedom of the press really meant. The decade after that was probably one of the best so far as the Indian media is concerned in the quality of reporting and the range of reporting.  It was, of course, before the age of 24/7 private news channels.

 

This is an issue that should elicit much greater discussion not just amongst journalists, those that still believe that the media has a role to play as the fourth estate in a democracy, but also readers and viewers who look to the media not for entertainment, but for credible news and information.

 

 

 

 

 

Making sure that consent is informed

My column in Mathrubhumi, published on September 13

 

 

Every day we wake up and hope that there will be some end in sight to this global pandemic that has killed thousands in India and around the world in a few months, and infected many more.  But that hope lies shattered as we continue to hear about more infections, and more deaths.  Even in states, and regions within states, where there was some success in dealing with the pandemic, Covid-19 has reappeared.

 

On top this, we have the recent news that the Phase 3 trials for one of the most promising vaccine candidates, the one being developed by AstraZeneca, has been put on hold temporarily.  Although politicians who want the vaccine to be delivered quickly, so that they can claim credit for it, are disappointed, people should in fact be glad that the problem has been detected. And trust that science will fix it.  As the Chief Scientist of the World Health Organisation, Soumya Swaminathan has said, "I think this is good. Perhaps a wake-up call or lesson for everyone to recognise that there are ups and down in research, and that we have to be prepared for those."

 

Coincidentally, the participant in the trial who developed adverse symptoms is a woman. This reminded me of the importance of "informed consent" before anyone participates in these trials.

 

The Covid-19 vaccine trials are high profile.  The whole world is watching, and waiting.  Here no one can afford to take shortcuts.

 

Unfortunately, this is not true of other such drug trials that have been conducted in the past.  And especially when it comes to the issue of "informed consent". 

 

There are examples that come to mind from not so long ago when women took part in clinical trials for vaccines without really knowing what this was all about.

For example, in 2009, a clinical trial to test the efficacy of the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine on young girls was conducted in Khammam district, Andhra Pradesh.

 

This vaccine held out the promise of preventing cervical cancer, something that afflicts and kills millions of women worldwide. So it was an important health intervention and its success would help women everywhere.

 

The problem was the choice of girls on whom this trial was conducted.  They were tribal girls, living in hostels away from their families. Neither they, nor their parents, understood what the trial was about. Yet, 14,000 girls between the ages of 10 and 14 were given three doses of the vaccine.

 

Things began to go wrong when four of the girls developed health problems after being given the vaccine and died.  It was not clear whether their death could be linked directly to the vaccine.  But what was clear was that these girls were not in the best of health and that they did not understand the possible complications of being injected with a live virus. The literature about the vaccine was in English, which neither they, nor their parents could read. In fact, even the health providers administering the vaccine could not read English.

 

Finally, due to the intervention of a women's group, the trials were suspended.  But they brought home forcefully the importance of respecting individuals, regardless of their social or economic status, if you put them through a human trial for a new vaccine.  One hopes that the fight to stop this trial is a lesson learned and that such a thing will not be repeated.

 

What we need to take home from such incidents is that the disempowered, including poor women and girls, often become the easiest choice for experimentation because they do not have the ability to object.

Feasting and hunger

 My column in Mathrubhumi, published on August 30

 

 

The season for feasting and festivities is upon us.  But this year, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it will be subdued.  This provides us with an opportunity to think about those who are literally going hungry every night because of the pandemic.

 

In some ways, there is nothing new in this. There are millions of poor people in India who can barely afford one decent meal. But recent studies are painting an alarming picture of the extent to which hunger is spreading since the pandemic, and how women and children in particular are being affected.

 

According to a recent report by Oxfam, an estimated 100 million people in India are facing what it calls "food distress".  In other words, these millions are literally without anything to eat. The situation is especially acute for women, and women-headed households.

 

These statistics are particularly distressing because since 2012, India had begun to make some progress in dealing with malnutrition, especially amongst children, and hunger.  Many programmes were launched and at least in the better-administered states, the results were visible amongst children and women.

 

The largest number of malnourished children in the world live in India and on the Global Hunger Index 2019, India's rank was 102 out of 117 countries. This is truly shameful, given how often our leaders keep talking about making this country into a global economic giant.  But in truth, while some Indians are being recognised around the world for the riches they have accumulated, millions of Indians, especially the most vulnerable, continue to remain hungry.

 

Apart from children, this hunger crisis has also hit women in ways that we need to recognise.

 

Recent data released by the government reveals that women's share in MNREGA by way of total number of person-days has declined. It is currently at an eight year low.  Women constitute 49 per cent of MNREGA workers.  Yet today, they are getting less work, and therefore earning less than they used to just four years ago.  These figures are an average for India.  In a state like Kerala, for instance, women's share is 91 per cent, the highest in the country.

 

This decline in women's share in work is partly explained by the return of male migrant workers to their villages.  With no other work available, many of them have enrolled in MNREGA. As a result, women would have been displaced.

 

But the consequences of this are far greater than just the wages that these women have lost.  When a woman works, and can bring in income to her family, she enjoys better status.  She is recognised as contributing to the welfare of the family, although sadly, the unpaid work that all women do to take care of members of their families is never counted. 

 

When she loses even these small amounts that she is able to earn, she becomes far more vulnerable, especially if she lives in an abusive relationship.  Apart from being trapped by tradition, that expects women to suffer and accept anything that comes their way in the marital home, including violence, she is unable to assert her rights as she has lost any semblance of economic independence.

 

When women lose paid work, there is also a direct impact on children.  Countless studies have established that women in paid work use their income to feed their families, especially their children.  In fact, women neglect their own health and nutrition in the belief that the children, and their husbands, must be looked after first.

 

The country today faces its most serious health challenge with the Covid-19 pandemic. But apart from health, we must not forget the long-term consequences of this crisis that include pushing millions more into poverty. 

 

 

 

 

 

How Big Media invisibilises the sufferings of India’s poor and marginalised

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry.com on August 27, 2020

Link:
https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/08/27/how-big-media-invisibilises-the-suffering-of-indias-poor-and-marginalised

 

Suddenly, beginning this week, there was so much excitement over politics that one could almost forget that India had crossed the 3 million mark in Covid-19 infections.

 

The Congress Party, dismissed by many as moribund, appeared to have stirred itself when 23 of its senior leaders suggested a serious re-think about its functioning. Mainstream political parties in Jammu and Kashmir, whose leaders have been detained and some like the former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti remain so, were able to get around severe restrictions and issue the first political statement on their state since it was locked down and splintered on August 5, 2019.

 

And, of course, in the midst of this, we were also treated to visuals of the prime minister feeding peacocks after his morning exercise routine. Evidently the turmoil and troubles facing ordinary people in this country do not penetrate the salubrious surroundings within which the man who leads this country resides.

 

But all this political and persona-building activity aside, the news cycle was barely dented by the ugly reality of India that pushed through every now and then with a story here, or a news item there.

 

As someone who has been a part of the media for five decades, and looks at mainstream media critically, I am always interested in the stories that are told only in passing, or not reported at all. I believe this is what illustrates best the preoccupations and compulsions that drive mainstream media and those who fund it and not just the news that dominates. 

 

On the night of August 7, a Boeing 737 operated by Air India Express crash-landed at Kozhikode airport in Kerala, killing 18 people including the pilot and co-pilot.  This was big news and dominated the news cycle for days.  Follow up stories on the survivors, on how local people helped, on theories about why it crashed, about the pilot, Deepak Sathe who had previously been with the Indian Air Force and other stories appeared in most newspapers.  This was to be expected.

 

On the previous night, August 6, over 250 km south of Kozhikode, in the verdant hills around Munnar in Kerala, a huge landslide occurred.  It buried a settlement of tea garden workers. Munnar is known for its tea estates that earn millions of rupees in profits from domestic and international sales.

 

The disaster occurred on a night of heavy rain over Pettimuddi, where workers, employed by the Kannan Deven Hill Plantation lived.

 

Eighteen people died in the Kozhikode crash.  Over 70 people were buried in the Pettimudi landslide.  The media told us stories and the names of the 18 who died in the air crash.  But it took many days before we even knew who were these men, women and children who lost their lives in Pettimudi.

 

While Kozhikode airport was accessible by virtue of its location, Pettimudi even in the best of times was remote. According to some reports, the nearest BSNL optical fibre link, providing Internet access, ends 30 km from the site of the disaster.  Although recently some mobile towers were erected to provide connectivity to the workers who lived there, most of the time there was no electricity and therefore no network.

 

None of this is surprising.  Yet what is heart-wrenching is that the dead in Pettimudi remained faceless and nameless for days.

 

The stories emerged much later, on a couple of digital news platforms like this story in HuffPost India, and this in the Lede. They inform us that these plantation workers are landless Dalits from one district in Tamil Nadu and that the conditions in which they lived had remained unchanged for decades. Till today, more than 16,000 plantation workers in Kerala live in rows of single rooms called "layam". Anyone who has visited such plantations, not just in Kerala but also across India, would tell you about the huge disparity in the living conditions of the workers and the managers.  The British ran these estates during colonial times.  Today, 73 years later, it is as if nothing has changed.

 

I give this as one example of how the reality of death, and life, in India is increasingly being tilted by media coverage to obscure one reality while giving precedence to another. What better illustration than the ongoing obsession in the media, and the shockingly misogynistic coverage of the death of an actor, Sushant Singh Rajput. The Pettimuddi disaster reminds us yet again that poor people in India are dying unnoticed, and sometimes even uncounted, while the gaze of "the nation" and its media rests elsewhere.

 

In fact on August 15, when the prime minister declared from the Red Fort that within 1000 days, all villages in the country would be connected by fibre optic cable, this heart-breaking story appeared in Indian Express.  It is a report from the village in Chhattisgarh from which 12-year-old Jamlo Madkami had gone to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh to work on a farm growing chillies.  After the lockdown, and after waiting one month for wages that were never paid, she walked back a distance of 100 km with other women from the village only to die on the way from dehydration and malnutrition.

 

Her village has no electricity, no school and is 45 km from the nearest hospital. Once in every two months a mini truck negotiates the dirt road to bring items for sale like soap.  Under these circumstances, what meaning does a promise of Internet connectivity have for Jamlo's family or the survivors of the Pettimuddi landslide?

 

The other important story that ought to have been the subject of much more discussion is the ruling of the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court. It is relevant not just for the fact that it shows how the executive misuses laws for political purposes, but also how media in India plays a role in this.

 

In its judgment on August 21, in response to an appeal by 35 members of the Tablighi Jamaat, including 29 foreigners, who had been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Epidemic Diseases Act, the Foreigners Act and the Disaster Management Act, the court minced no words about the role the media had played in the "big propaganda" against this sect.

 

It’s a sobering judgment that ought to result in some introspection by mainstream media.  Yet predictably, although the judgment was reported in the print media and on digital news portals, there was little by way of comment or analysis of this important ruling. 

 

At a time when the media has played more than just a passive role in fuelling Islamophobia in this country, the manner in which the entire episode of the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in Delhi in March and the subsequent charge that its members were responsible for the spread of Covid-19, remains an ugly reminder of the depths to which our media has fallen.

 

While some of the "propaganda", as the court terms it, was willfully promoted by pliant media houses, even those that consider themselves somewhat independent fell into the trap of furthering the narrative.  This happened by way of some of the graphics used, as well as the constant juxtaposing of the increase in Covid-19 cases and the travels of members of the Tablighi Jamaat.

 

The price for this was paid by lakhs of ordinary Muslims, men and women who were just going about living their lives under difficult circumstances but became targets of hate yet again. Who can forget the videos of Muslim vendors being chased away from middle class colonies for no other reason than their religious identity, not to speak of the lynchings that continue to occur with frightening frequency?

 

The judgment ought to be required reading for future journalists, for it illustrates how laws are twisted to meet political agendas, and then how the media furthers these agendas.