3,500 km but who’s watching? How Big Media dropped the ball in its coverage of Bharat Jodo Yatra

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on October 13, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/10/13/3500-km-but-whos-watching-how-big-media-dropped-the-ball-in-its-coverage-of-bharat-jodo-yatra

As journalists, we can support or oppose a political party, like or dislike a politician. But that is an individual choice. In our capacity as journalists who report on events, we are compelled to put aside our personal prejudices when we report. At least, that is the ideal and that is what we are trained to do as journalists.

We know, of course, that such an ideal scenario barely survives today. With a nation so deeply divided along political and religious lines, especially in the last eight years since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power at the centre and in several states, we have seen these divisions reflected in media coverage.

An ongoing example of this is the Bharat Jodo Yatra, or what is being called Rahul’s Yatra. Rahul Gandhi has set off with a group of Congress supporters and others not in the party to walk roughly 3,500 km from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. Just the concept of a group of people undertaking such a journey, irrespective of who they are, should pique the media’s interest. Even more so when the central figure is a leading opposition politician, one who has been the focus of much derision from the governing party.

Yet, if you want to know what’s happening with this yatra, you must look hard to find reports. There are reports, but they are skeletal at best, simply stating the route the yatris are taking and quoting either Gandhi after his daily press conference or some other Congress leaders.

You can also watch the yatra on YouTube on the official feed of the Congress party. Unfortunately, this consists of endless footage of people walking with flags. The camera is always focused on Gandhi who leads from the front. There is no commentary. Every now and then, you see him hug children or the elderly or someone who has been in the news, like the mother and sister of murdered journalist Gauri Lankesh.

But that’s it. You don’t get a sense from these reports of the places the yatra has touched, or of the people watching from the sidelines. Who are they? What are they thinking? Is this just a tamasha they feel they cannot miss? Do they even understand the concept of Bharat Jodo? These are some of the obvious questions that come to mind, especially if you are a journalist reporting on such an event.

But in the mainstream media, much of this remains unanswered.

Instead, the media features the usual discussions on whether the yatra will yield political dividends, whether it will work as a public relations exercise to refurbish Gandhi’s image as he has been frequently accused of not being a serious politician, or why the yatra is spending so many days in one state and not in another. While such speculation is unavoidable given the rapidly declining political stature of the Congress party – and the fact that even if Congress spokespersons insist this is not “Rahul’s yatra”, he is the most obvious focus of it – there is one more reason why the reporting must go beyond this.

For instance, when reporters are sent out to cover elections, they report what politicians say and speculate on the hold of one party or another. But going out into the field also gives them an opportunity to get the pulse of the public, to speak to ordinary people, to understand the issues that concern them, and to convey this to readers. Such reporting has been on the decline in recent years as media houses cut back on investing in news gathering. But there is still enough of it to provide a granular feel of the issues that concern people during an election.

Covering an event like the Bharat Jodo Yatra ought to be seen as a similar opportunity. How many photographs can you keep seeing of Gandhi beaming at some young girl or boy who has rushed up to him (carefully curated, of course), or of his bending down to tie his mother’s or some other yatri’s shoelaces? There is surely more to this yatra than that. 

To find such reporting, you must look hard and literally search the net. It is possible, of course, that regional language papers have been giving it more detailed coverage as the yatra traverses these states. And it is more than likely that the Delhi-based “national” media will wake up to it when it hovers closer to the national capital. But so far as mainstream English language newspapers are concerned, the reports with the kind of details one is looking for are so few as to be missed entirely.

As always, the independent digital platforms fill the gap in reporting. For instance, Shoaib Daniyal of Scroll wrote about the people walking with Gandhi. The profiles give you a hint of the variety of individuals who must be part of the exercise. He writes: “One of the biggest benefits of reporting on the big political palooza that is the Congress’s cross-country Bharat Jodo Yatra is seeing the diversity of the people who participate in India’s political system.”

Another report, also in Scroll, has greater depth, perhaps because it is written by a non-journalist. Ramani Atkuri is a public health professional based in Bengaluru. She joined the yatra with a group of friends. She explains, “For me, joining the Yatra was a personal protest against the state of the nation today, and a chance to show solidarity with someone standing up against it, especially the hate and divisiveness. It was also a protest against the shrinking of our freedoms. I guess there comes a time we must each stand up and be counted.”

In Karnataka, Dhanya Rajendran of the News Minute has been tracking the yatra. Her reports provide both the political and the larger atmospherics of the yatra, as in this video. Even though it is essentially an interview with Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh, we also hear other voices, both sceptical and supportive.

Occasionally you come across a story that tells you about the places the yatra is passing through. For those not familiar with the southern states, many of these places are just names. Yet each point on the route has a history, sometimes of conflict between religious groups, sometimes between castes. Has there been a negative reaction from the dominant groups here? If so, was there any display of hostility? It would have been interesting to know. But largely, that aspect has remained uncovered by the media.

Yogendra Yadav of Swaraj India is a supporter and participant in the yatra. But he is not a Congress worker. And his perspective remains interesting because it explains, perhaps, why so many from civil society, such as Ramani Atkuri quoted above, have set aside their reservations about the Congress party and decided to join the yatra at various stages. 

Yadav spells out why he believes the yatra should be viewed as more than a political tamasha. Even if one does not agree with all he writes, his opinion is worth more than a glance. An important point he makes, for instance, is that this is an actual padyatra, where participants, including the leading lights, are physically walking every day up to 26 km. This is unusual as the routine “road shows” by politicians consist of them driving to a spot where the media is present, talking to “ordinary” folk for photo ops, and then driving on. Their feet don’t touch the ground for very long.

The Bharat Jodo Yatra still has a lot of ground to cover. And as I said earlier, it is entirely possible that the so-called “national” media will wake up to it when it enters their territory in the north. But till then, we can read and watch some of the better reporting on the Bharat Jodo Yatra so that it also becomes the Bharat Samjho Yatra.

Two families, and the ‘chor gadi’

 

October 12, 2022. A day like any other day in post-monsoon Mumbai. Muggy, cloudy, a brilliant evening sky.

 

But also, a day when hearts, hearths and homes were cruelly broken.

 

Let me backtrack.  I live in a mixed neighbourhood in Mumbai.  It has buildings with government officials, private buildings with a mix of rich and middle-income families, a large enclave exclusively for Parsis, and an even larger, in terms of population, urban poor settlement where a mini-India jostles for a limited space.

 

There are some private gardens, such as those exclusively for the government officials, and a short distance away public gardens for the rest of us.

 

There are also shops, a police chowki, a Hindu temple, a mosque and a Buddhist shrine. The road leading up to our neighbourhood is narrow, but on one side, it has something resembling a pavement.

 

For at least two decades, I have observed a family that consisted only of women and children living on the side of this road opposite the pavement.  They are waste pickers, originally from Tamil Nadu.  I sometimes saw a man, but mostly the women – an older woman and her daughter.  In the course of time, the daughter gave birth to a little girl, and thereafter to two boys.

 

The girl, Uma, grew up before my eyes.  She was toddler, then a little girl with neat plaits who would wind her way up the road to a municipal school. I bumped into her on most mornings when I went for a walk.  She would beam up at me, her eyes luminous. Over time I saw her grow into a statuesque young woman, clearly conscious of her beauty.

 

Then the entire family moved across the road, to a spot in front of the closed gate of the government officers’ colony.  They spread themselves out.  The older woman told me they had the contract to collect the dry waste from the government colony.  They seemed confident that they would not be asked to move.

 

I noticed at one point that the younger woman, Uma’s mother, looked ill.  She seemed to be literally wasting away.  They said that she might have TB but were not sure.  One day, I saw that she was not there anymore.  She had died. Of what, I asked Uma’s grandmother. Not sure, I was told. 

 

So now there was the grandmother, her grand-daughter, and a couple of boys.

 

Then another family arrived on the same spot.  The man had been around.  I had seen him as he collected the dry waste from our building.  But the woman and her daughter were new. They were also from Tamil Nadu.  The daughter’s name was Pooja.

 

The two families were uneasy allies – united in their homelessness and yet competing for contracts from the buildings and colonies in the neighbourhood.  The man managed to hustle Uma’s grandmother out of the contract with the government colony.  She found something else.

 

They fought often, but also shared a basic level of camaraderie.  Pooja was friends with Uma who was considerably older than her.  When her mother was out collecting waste, Pooja hung out with Uma and her brothers.

 

Then one day, I saw Uma with a tiny infant in her arms.  Whose? I asked. Mine, she said, her eyes gleaming.  And then by way of an explanation, the father did not want to marry me.  Uma was 16 years old then (although later she insisted that she was 18).  

 

Another child of the street, Uma’s little girl, is now almost four years old.  They call her Karooramma.  She is cheerful, waves out to the people she knows, keeps herself busy playing with whatever is lying around.  She imitates her mother and great-grandmother by pretending to wash clothes or the dishes.  She sometimes goes off on her own to the tea stall at the top of the road where she’s given a cup of tea, more like a thimbleful, and a biscuit.   

 

Over the years, both families followed a pattern.  During the rains, they would stretch out a tarpaulin over their belongings and sleep under it.  And once the rains were gone, so was the temporary cover and they continued to sleep in the open.

 

On October 10 this year, the municipal corporation descended on this little settlement of two families and demolished their shelter.  It was still raining.

 

For two days, they somehow continued to occupy the spot, which had now been ‘beautified’ with large potted plants.  They kept their belonging behind these pots and slept on carboard spread out on the pavement. The little girl slept under an umbrella.

 

I asked them what they would do now, as living this way was clearly untenable.  Could they not find a room in one of the many urban poor settlements scattered in the area, including the one nearest to us?

 

How is that possible, asked Pooja’s mother.  The rents start at Rs 7000 and more for a small room.  And then there is a deposit.  Of at least Rs 50,000.  Where will we get that?

 

And then on October 12, the municipal van came again – the ‘chor gadi’ as it is called.  And took away most of their belongings – pots, pans, mattresses, almost everything.  To get them back, they would have to go to the ward office and pay a fine, I was told.

 

When the clean-up operation was being conducted by the maintenance department of the municipality, I asked the man in-charge why they had to confiscate their belongings when they had already destroyed their temporary structures? We have had complaints, he told me. In any case, it was evident he was not going to stop.  He had his orders. And he was following them.

 

I want to record this moment because it illustrates the heartlessness of a big city like Mumbai where there is no place for the poor.  These families are poor, but they earn their living by providing an essential service.  Yet, the city can make no place for them.

 

For the people living in the area, the majority would only see them as the dirty poor ‘spoiling’ their neighbourhood. I can bet that even the woman who complained about them has never spoken to them and has no idea what they do for a living.

 

This moment also tells me how the entire system is stacked against the poor. Little Karooramma, for instance, cannot get an Aadhar card because she has no birth certificate.  She was born, literally, on the street.  Hence, even the municipal school will not admit her.  For the State, she is invisible, as is her mother, and her great grandmother. They are not even a statistic. 

 

I sleep tonight with a heavy heart as I think of Karooramma, who smiled at me when I passed her on the pavement, even as the BMC men were confiscating their belongings.  “BMC aya”, she told me solemnly.  “Sab le gaya”.  And then she waved and said her usual “bye”.

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A longer version of this post was published in Scroll.in.  Here's the link:

https://scroll.in/article/1034969/what-the-story-of-two-families-says-about-the-unchanging-reality-of-living-on-the-streets-of-mumbai

 

 

 

 

 

Hate speech by media: Will regulation really work?

 Broken News 

Published in Newslaundry on September 30, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/09/30/hate-speech-by-media-will-regulation-really-work

In the flurry of political developments around the election of the Congress party’s president, perhaps the significance of the Supreme Court’s recent observations on the media and hate speech has been overlooked.

On September 21, while hearing a clutch of 11 writ petitions seeking the court’s intervention to regulate hate speech, Justices KM Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy made some observations that are worth considering and debating.

As reported in the Indian Express, the judges singled out the debates conducted on the electronic media which they held were “the chief medium of hate speech”. This has been pointed out innumerable times, especially this episode of  TV Newsance on this platform, but to hear it said from the podium of the highest court in the country carries with it added gravitas.

Speaking about talk shows in television, Justice Joseph said, as reported in Live Law:

“The role of the anchor is very important. Hate speech either...takes place in the mainstream television or it takes place in the social media. Social media is largely unregulated… As far as mainstream television channel is concerned, we still hold sway, there the role of anchor is very critical because the moment you see somebody going into hate speech, it’s the duty of the anchor to immediately see that he doesn’t allow that person to say anything further.”

Furthermore, although the question of whether and how the media should be regulated on hate speech was the primary focus of the discussion in court, Justice Joseph reiterated the importance of press freedom: “Political parties will come and go. But the nation will endure. The press is a very important institution. Without an independent and totally free press, no nation can go forward. It’s absolutely important that we have true freedom. The government should actually come forward, not to take an adversarial stand but to assist.”

Of course, in a democracy, only a free and independent media can take an “adversarial” stand against governments. But taking such a stand at present in India has serious adverse consequences, as is evident from the intimidation of independent media, or what remains of it, and of journalists who dare to be critical. 

The case is still being heard. But it has already thrown up several important issues relevant not just to the media but to consumers of media. It asks us to consider, even if we agree that a free and independent media is essential for democracy, whether specific laws are needed to check the role played by the media in spreading hate speech. Balancing freedom with government regulation has always been a tricky issue. 

An additional factor was highlighted in this comment by Justice Roy: “Hate drives TRPs, drives profit.” For it is not just the “how” of feeding hate but the “why” of it. Media houses today think of themselves as “profit centres”. Thus, anything that feeds the bottom line is acceptable, including allowing people spewing hate to speak unchecked on television. 

Of course, the fundamental problem in dealing with the spread of hate through media is that there is no legal definition of hate speech. There are laws that exist that can be used but these are not specific. In 2017, the Law Commissionsubmitted a 53-page report specifically on this issue and pointed out, “The apprehension that laying down a definite standard might lead to curtailment of free speech has prevented the judiciary from defining hate speech in India and elsewhere.” It recommended changes in the criminal law. 

To date, no action has been taken on it. 

We must also keep in mind that hate speech is not a new phenomenon. Those of us who covered the communal riots in Mumbai following the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 cannot forget the role that the media, and one particular newspaper, played in ratcheting up communal feelings. Those were the days when print media was still important. 

As Sujata Anandan reminds us in this report, there were several cases filed against Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray for hate speech and also against the editor of the Sena’s mouthpiece Saamna. But as journalist and author of Riots and After in Mumbai: Truth and Reconciliation Meena Menon found, many of these cases were either dismissed or not pursued. 

Amongst the cases against Thackeray was one filed by a former municipal commissioner of Mumbai JB D’Souza and journalist Dilip Thakore. One of the editorials from Saamna, which they quoted to make their case on hate speech, said: “Streams of treason and poison have been flowing through the cities and Mohallas of this country. These Mohallas are inhabited by fanatical Muslims. They are loyal to Pakistan. Riots occur only in those cities and Mohallas with a growing Muslim population. It is clear from this fact that the root cause of riots lies in the Muslim community and its attitude.” 

This case too was dismissed both by the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court. 

Many years later, the ruling in a 1987 case on hate speech against Thackeray was upheld by the Supreme Court. He was debarred from standing for election, which in any case he never did, for a period of six years – later reduced to two. These experiences underline the difficulties of using the law to convict people and, by extension, the media for hate speech.

Justices Joseph and Roy have asked the government to come back with proposals of what can be done to regulate the media on hate speech and suggested that perhaps something along the lines of the Vishaka guidelines, issued by the Supreme Court in 1997 before the law on sexual harassment was enacted in 2013, could be considered. 

This suggestion raises many questions.

As an editorial in Indian Express rightly points out, “At the heart of the problem is the political economy of TV news which thrives on hate speech today more than ever. There is little cost to pay for hate speech, there are few incentives for TV at prime time to be fair and accurate. Indeed, most anchors are paid employees of their channels and they know they can get away with peddling hate because someone in the boardroom has taken a call in its favour.” 

Corporate ownership of media houses has fed this monster of hate speech because it attracts eyeballs. It is further exacerbated by the silence of those in power, who benefit from it. 

At the same time, any kind of regulation will be difficult to enact for numerous reasons, including provisions on freedom of expression in the constitution that the Supreme Court has upheld in the past in other cases and which the Law Commission also bookmarked in its report. 

To quote again from the Indian Express editorial: “And when politics fuels, legitimises that hate, judicial interventions are unlikely to work. A new law on hate speech, as the court has suggested, runs the risk of being challenged – and violated – every second given the ceaseless cycle of news and social media.” And concludes: “Nothing is a stronger deterrent against hate speech than those in power speaking up against it, calling it out every time, without fail.” 

That last sentiment is clearly wishful thinking given the predilections of the current dispensation. Perhaps a better suggestion is to urge consumers of the media to reject and speak out against the channels that spread hate, thereby shaming these sellers of hate that masquerade as “news” channels.