Clichés and cacophony on your TV screen? It must be election season

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on May 18, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/05/18/clichs-and-cacophony-on-your-tv-screen-it-must-be-election-season

Even as many parts of India face excessive heat this year, the political heat before, during and after elections is likely to continue right up to next May, when we face a general election.

You would think that a media that has reported on elections for decades would now be wiser about how to provide viewers with coverage that informs rather than excites. Yet, year after year, we have seen a steady deterioration in the quality of election debates on our mainstream television channels, particularly once voting ends, exit polls are announced, and the results are available. 

Until last year, there were exceptions, principally NDTV and the team led by Prannoy Roy, who pioneered the use of psephology and polls. With the channel’s takeover by the Gautam Adani group last year, Roy has vanished from our screens.  

We are now left with mostly pumped up, highly excitable anchors who prance around the studio, punching video screens and providing high-decibel nuggets of information that are often just speculation. Studio guests are sometimes shouted down if they happen to question the anchor’s position.  And sometimes, as in the case of BJP’s Amit Malviya’s tirade against Rajdeep Sardesai on India Today, the roles are reversed – a spectacle Mukul Kesavan mentions in this perceptive article in the Telegraph. 

And, at the end of an exhausting few hours trying to make sense of what is going on, those wanting some sanity switch off the television, or at least mute it, and turn to refreshing the webpage of the Election Commission of India for accurate data.

But this year, five online platforms – the News Minute, the Wire, Caravan, Scrolland Newslaundry – came together to provide an alternative.  Despite virtually non-existent budgets compared to mainstream channels, they managed to give viewers a more balanced understanding of what was going on in Karnataka before and after the elections.

Take just one aspect. In the run-up to the elections, the women’s vote was mentioned frequently. The number of women voters now almost equals men and the percentage of women who come out to vote in the state is also almost the same. Do these women vote for whoever their menfolk do, or do they have the agency to make up their own minds? And why, despite this visible presence of women in the electorate, are political parties so reticent about putting up more women candidates? 

We saw little discussion on this aspect in mainstream channels. On the other hand, the independent platforms mentioned above began counting day with an instructive discussion with Tara Krishnaswamy who heads Political Shakti on this aspect of the elections. She was also interviewed for this article in Quint.

Then take another feature that appears to have been overlooked.  Karnataka has a range of civil society groups that have been active on campaigns such as opposition to the citizenship laws, calling out hate campaigns against Muslims, and issues such as the wages and working conditions of conservancy workers in a city like Bengaluru. Did their work over the years, especially with poor and marginalised groups, make any difference in the way people voted?

Some reports suggest it did, such as this one by Vinay Kooragayal Sreenivasa in the News Minute. Yet you would have to work hard to get that perspective from mainstream television.

After an election, print media comes into its own providing context, analysis, and data. Most newspapers now use graphics to explain data, given most readers don’t have the patience to read tables.  A map of Karnataka showing how the saffron (BJP) that dominated in 2018 has given way to blue (Congress) in 2023 is enough to explain the gains and losses.

Yet, while those interested were taking in these data points, and reading the analysis by political scientists and sociologists, what were TV channels doing? Endlessly speculating about “kaun banega mukhya mantri” – who will become the chief minister.  Even before the Congress could savour its decisive victory over the BJP, some of these anchors were virtually dismissing the party as a loser.

There’s little doubt that the analyses of the Karnataka election in print and on digital platforms bring out a more nuanced understanding of the factors that led to the Congress victory than the heated debates on television. But they also point to several lessons that the media needs to learn when covering elections. 

Several commentators emphasised after the election, and some even before, that the media should not use the familiar yardstick of caste and religion to predict how people would vote. They pointed out that each state, including Karnataka, has its specific history. So, the formula used in a north Indian state like Uttar Pradesh, for instance, cannot be automatically superimposed on a southern state like Karnataka. Sociologist Dipankar Gupta, for instance, wrote in Times of India: “When elections are dissected and discussed on the basis of caste, the assumption is that the voters are like dumb, driven cattle.”

Yet, if you watched the coverage of the elections on TV, you would find that none of this granularity was evident in the so-called “national” channels headquartered in Noida. Barring a few honourable exceptions, the same old clichéd way of analysing elections has been evident for some time . Even this election in Karnataka does not appear to have made our “national” mainstream anchors any wiser. 

Apart from debating non-issues, one must also question mainstream media’s use of language in political reporting. Take for instance, the use of the term “high command”. It is used exclusively when referring to the Congress party. Yet every journalist covering politics knows that over the last nine years, no state where the BJP has won can choose its chief minister without the approval of that party’s “high command”– Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. By continuing to use this term only for one party, the media continues to perpetuate the myth that only the Congress party has a top-down structure when in fact most parties, including the BJP, have precisely the same.

The Karnataka election will be talked about for a while, at least until the next round of state assembly elections, for what they reveal about voters and their choices, and the factors that impact those choices.  But for the media, and for readers and viewers interested in politics, they also remind us that at such times, it is best to turn to media houses based in the state and follow their analysis and reports.  

For example, a poll taken well before the election by a small, independent, virtually unknown Kannada digital platform, Eedina, got the results absolutely right. Also, some of the best reportage on the elections accessible to non-Kannada speakers was on the Bengaluru-based News Minute website.

So, if mainstream television channels are willing to reflect, the Karnataka election results remind us that India is a “union of states” as stated in our constitution. One size does not fit all. To make sense of politics in such a state, you need people on the ground who speak the language and can accurately gauge the mood. You cannot decide what people are thinking sitting in Delhi. 

What media coverage of wrestler protests, Malik’s remarks and Mann Ki Baat tells us about press freedom

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on May 4, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/05/04/what-media-coverage-of-wrestler-protests-maliks-remarks-and-mann-ki-baat-tells-us-about-press-freedom

The ongoing protest by Indian wrestling champions Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia demanding action against the head of the Wrestling Federation of India, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, on charges of sexual harassment, has held up a mirror not just to Indian society but also to the media.

National English language newspapers have given the protests prominent coverage, not just on the sports page, but also on the front page. On April 26, for instance, after the wrestlers decided to resume their protest at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, most papers carried stories on both pages simultaneously and strong editorial comments (read here, here, here and here). 

It is likely that a combination of this kind of persistent coverage, allowing the voices of the women and men involved to be heard, as well as the intervention of the Supreme Court in admitting the protesters’ petition demanding that the Delhi police file an FIR against Singh, finally shamed the latter into doing so. 

But the coverage also threw up other questions that need to be answered. The most glaring one was whether other women in sports have also experienced what these women wrestlers have brought out in the open. Can other sportswomen also speak up? If not, why?

Finally, one newspaper has begun the process that needs to be pursued in greater depth by the media. An investigation by the Indian Express, published on May 4, reveals that 16 out of 30 sports federations have not set up the very minimum that is needed to deal with sexual harassment, that is an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) as mandated by the 2013 Prevention of Sexual Harassment Act. If some have, then the process is incomplete even though the law lays down very clearly the composition of these committees.

We must remember that in most sports, especially in athletics, the women who do well often come from smaller towns, even villages. Their families cannot send them to the kind of private schools that would give them an opportunity to explore a career in sports. Often such families choose to invest what little they have to give their talented daughters a chance. For every girl who succeeds, there must be thousands who never get a chance. That is why the story of women in sports in India is one that needs greater focus in the media.

Many of these young women and girls, who overcome dominant conservative and patriarchal norms, and make their way to training camps to prepare for their lives in sports, do not possess the social capital to question or confront the powerful men in control. They also cannot risk losing the chance to get ahead in their sporting careers. Hence the silence that has now been broken by the women wrestlers.

This is a story that must be investigated at many levels. The absence of the ICCs is the first step.  The sub-par conditions in the training facilities have sometimes been highlighted but they need more exposure. And we need to know more about these young women and girls who are dreaming of making it big in sports. Only then can readers and viewers understand the significance of this protest by the women wrestlers.

The fact that at least some media have followed up on this protest also reminds us of recent stories that continue to be ignored. For instance, the revelations of the former governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Satyapal Malik, in various interviews he gave last month about the Pulwama tragedy of February 2019. Many questions remain unanswered and despite Malik’s controversial statements, the government has chosen to remain silent. Some of the media did report what he said, but there has been little to nothing in mainstream media by way of a follow-up so far. The silence is telling.

In contrast, it was interesting to see the almost uniform, and uncritical coverage of the hundredth episode of the Prime Minister’s monthly monologue, Mann Ki Baat. Every newspaper front-paged it. All the praises by various people, including film stars, were reported. The narrative set out for this occasion, that this was a way Modi connected to the people in India, was repeated uncritically throughout.

Curiously, the media did not ask why a programme by a prime minister – on government media and further amplified by a virtual diktat to private channels to also relay it – needed to be celebrated when it crossed a particular number? Was there any doubt that it would not cross this milestone? Furthermore, were millions of people really stopping in their tracks to listen when the prime minister’s voice came through the airwaves? 

Only some independent digital platforms like The Wire had the temerity to tell us something else, that in fact a majority of those surveyed had never listened to even one of the 100 episodes of Mann Ki Baat. A little scepticism is the norm in any country that boasts of having a free press.  

So how free is the media in India? Not much, according to the World Press Freedom Index 2023 released on May 3, World Press Freedom Day.

India has slipped 11 points on the World Press Freedom Index, from 150 out of 180 countries last year to 161 this time. 

This news was not greeted with concern, or disbelief. While digital news platforms and social media did take note and comment, most newspapers carried routine reports. So far, there has been nothing either expressing concern or scepticism about India’s ranking on this index. The government, predictably, has chosen to ignore it completely. If it does comment, it will probably dismiss it as a Western conspiracy to attack India’s “vibrant democracy”. 

Yet, this precipitous fall in the press freedom ranking in just one year calls for further investigation. 

According to the report by Reporters Without Borders that puts together this index each year, India is one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist, given that on an average, three to four journalists are killed every year. Additionally, the report notes, “Journalists are exposed to all kinds of physical violence including police violence, ambushes by political activists, and deadly reprisals by criminal groups or corrupt local officials. Supporters of Hindutva, the ideology that spawned the Hindu far right, wage all-out online attacks on any views that conflict with their thinking.”

The report points out that although there are laws in place that should protect journalists, provisions of defamation, sedition, contempt of court and endangering national security are in fact being used against journalists who are critical. Proof of this is evident if one looks at what’s happening in Kashmir, where a combination of threats, intimidation and arrests have silenced what was once a vibrant media scene.  

The report concludes, “The old Indian model of a pluralist press is therefore being seriously challenged by a combination of harassment and influence.”

The real story about the deterioration in press freedom lies away from the big cities where mainstream media is concentrated. We need to focus on the stringer, the rural journalists, the district level papers and local channels and assess how they survive financially, what are the challenges they face from local authorities, and if they have survived, how have they changed. This would give us a better understanding of why the World Press Freedom Index has ranked India so low.  

In any case, press freedom as a concept has been slowly and steadily hollowed out, especially in the last nine years since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in Delhi. As a result, readers and viewers of the media are gradually accepting that what we see today is the norm, that the job of the media is to support the powerful in politics and business, not to question and expose them. 

In India, press freedom is unlikely to ever be a burning election issue. It will not reflect in commitments in election manifestos, whatever such promises are worth. Nor will it get people out on the streets defending it.

One reason for this is the gradual loss of trust in the media, particularly by those who are already marginalised in our society.  

The Reuters Institute conducted an interesting study recently on trust in the media in four countries – United States, United Kingdom, India, and Brazil. 

Through discussions in focus groups in these countries, comprising representatives from marginalised communities, the study found that many such groups felt that the media either misrepresented them, or under-represented their concerns, or put out inaccurate news about them. This has resulted in not just lack of trust but in some instances even harmed such communities. 

I will leave readers with this observation in the report which I think is prescient and reflects accurately the real condition of the media in India. 

“The news media as an institution, especially in the UK, the US, and India, was often viewed as an extension of systems aligned to serve those in power – systems many felt excluded from… News media were rarely seen as catering to the entire public so much as reinforcing the interests of those already most privileged and powerful.”