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

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on March 6, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why did India's media ignore Wired story on police planting evidence against Bhima Koregaon activists?

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on July 14, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/07/14/why-did-indias-media-ignore-wired-story-on-police-planting-evidence-against-bhima-koregaon-activists

News is always “breaking" and stories are sometimes “broken”. But then you also have important stories that are “broken” but are quickly forgotten. Not always deliberately, although sometimes that is the case. Quite often because there is just too much news breaking all around us, genuine and fake. As a result, many important stories that need to be followed up are relegated to the archives.

Meanwhile, those doing the essential task of sifting the fake from the real, like AltNews cofounder Mohammed Zubair, are arrested and treated like criminals. More on that later.

But first to an important investigative story that got barely reported in the Indian media.

I refer to the remarkable story broken by the Wired magazine on June 16. Headlined “Police linked to hacking campaign to frame Indian activists”, the story describes in some detail how the Indian police were able to plant evidence on the computers of some activists that ultimately led to their arrest. This is in reference to the 16 individuals – now 15 after the death of Father Stan Swamy last year – who have been in jail for over three years without trial in the Bhima Koregaon case.

A year ago, a story in the Washington Post had also revealed how evidence was planted on the computers of Rona Wilson and Surendra Gadling, both in jail in the Bhima Koregaon case.

Now, one of the companies investigating this, SentinelOne, has released the startling finding that the hackers who broke into the phones and laptops of the activists did so on the directions of none other than the Pune police, the very people who had announced the “conspiracy” for which the BK 16 were picked up and incarcerated.

Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade, a security researcher at the company, is quoted in the Wired article as saying, “There’s a provable connection between individuals who arrested these folks and the individuals who planted the evidence.” Although the company has identified the Pune police official linked to the hacking, it hasn’t made their details public yet. It is expected to do so at the Black Hat security conference, slated to be held in Las Vegas, United States, in August.

Such a story ought to have triggered a major response from the Indian media. After all, it was reported not by an unknown media organisation, but by a well-respected tech magazine.

Surprisingly, barring a few newspapers like the Telegraph and the Hindustan Times that reported on the investigation, the news was largely ignored by the Indian media with the exception of independent digital news platforms. As a result, this explosive story, establishing a nexus between law enforcement agencies and their actions that result in sending people who have broken no law to jail, has virtually sunk without a trace.

Why is it important even now, in addition to its obvious relevance to the Bhima Koregaon case? Because if the representatives of the state, namely the police, can use such tactics with such ease in this case, how do we know the next time an activist or a journalist is arrested, and their phones and laptops are “seized”, that the same won’t happen?

Take the case of Zubair. He was arrested on June 27 for a tweet posted in 2018 that contained a picture from a 1983 film by the renowned director Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Not only was he detained on these flimsy grounds, but his electronic devices were picked up from his home in Bengaluru.

In the meantime, multiple FIRs were filed against him in different locations forcing him and his lawyers to rush from court to court fighting for his right to get bail. In the Supreme Court, even as his lawyer argued Zubair’s bail plea in another case filed in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was representing the UP government opposing the bail plea, was reported as saying that Zubair was part of a “syndicate”. This remark is more than just a hint that before long there could be a “conspiracy" in which Zubair would be implicated.

Zubair’s "crime" was that he was doing journalism: sifting fact from fiction. But in this “new India”, journalists should not be doing this. Their job is not just to be loyal stenographers taking down the official narrative and repeating it, but enthusiastic promoters of it, irrespective of whether what they are reporting has any basis in fact.

Zubair’s case is further complicated because he happens to be a Muslim in a country where, increasingly, no Muslim, educated or unlettered, can feel safe anymore. Not even a person as highly respected as the former vice president Hamid Ansari.

At least AltNews and Zubair are well-known. They have a profile on social media. The work they are doing is talked about. And his case has garnered support in India and abroad.

There are, however, hundreds of journalists, many who are not even recognised as journalists by the very media organisations for whom they report, whose fate is even more fraught, and largely unknown.

That is the other story that ought to have drawn more attention but did not in these times of shrinking attention spans. It is a long and detailed story, one that most readers usually do not make the time to read. But it ought to be read if we really want to understand what is happening to the press, and to journalists, in this country.

I recommend this detailed and excellent report by Arunabh Saikia in Scrollabout a bunch of journalists in Uttar Pradesh and what they went through after they broke an important story.

The region where these journalists work is known for many different things, including widespread and open cheating during examinations. Three of them exposed this by getting hold of the papers that had been leaked. For this, instead of being applauded, they were arrested and sent to jail for several weeks. What is worse, the media organisations for which they reported, widely circulated Hindi papers Amar Ujala and Rashtriya Sahara, did not acknowledge their work, nor did they initially stand by them when they were arrested.

Furthermore, many of these journalists are not formally on the payroll of the newspapers using their stories. They are hived off into separate organisations so that the newspaper does not have to pay them the salary they are required to do on the scale set by pay commissions. In this case, one of them was paid Rs 450 per month and another Rs 500, less than the minimum wage paid to a labourer.

Clearly, what this story exposes about the conditions under which these journalists work in UP is not an exception. A little bit of digging would reveal that this is virtually the norm in smaller towns, places where journalists supply the gritty details so essential for well-reported stories. In 2007, Sevanti Ninan wrote a book recording the experiences of such journalists in Headlines from the Heartland. I suspect not much has changed since.

So freedom of the press involves not just freedom for journalists to do their work, and not be locked up like Zubair and earlier Siddique Kappan, Fahad Shah, Aasif Sultan, Sajad Gul and others. It also consists of journalists being recognised as professionals, paid a decent wage, and supported when they end up being jailed for no other crime than doing journalism.

 

Why do we keep ignoring violations of journalists’ rights in Kashmir?

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry.com on September 16, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/09/16/why-do-we-keep-ignoring-violations-of-journalists-rights-in-kashmir

When the news broke about two Afghan journalists being detained and subsequently brutally beaten up by the Taliban for covering a women's demonstration in Kabul recently, there was international outrage. And rightly so. After all, the two men – photographer Nematullah Naqdi and reporter Taqi Daryabi from Etilaat Roz – had not committed a crime; they were simply doing their jobs.

In Indian mainstream media too there was outrage, and the photographs of the two men with their injuries were reproduced. Yet, as several senior Kashmiri journalists like Gowhar Geelani asked on social media, why was there no such outrage in mainstream Indian media when similar violations of the rights of journalists take place in Kashmir all too frequently? Such as the beating up of journalists and photographers covering a Muharram procession in Srinagar on August 17.

This is as good a time as any to focus on the state of the media, journalists and press freedom in Kashmir. There is no better illustration of how impossible it is for journalists to do even their routine jobs when you see the response of the administration following the death of the chairman of the Hurriyat, Syed Ali Shah Geelani on September 1. Not only were journalists prevented from going anywhere near his home after news of his death spread, as this report by Shahid Tantray in the Caravan describes, but they were even stopped from filming the huge presence of security forces outside his home. Additionally, internet services were suspended yet again, crippling the media even if it wanted to report on developments.

The absence of any independent source of information, which would have been facilitated had the media had access, has left the public with two conflicting narratives about Geelani’s funeral: one of the family alleging that the police forcibly took the body and buried it without the immediate family present, and the other of the police which claims that the last rites of the Kashmiri leader were performed properly.

If you look back over the last two years since August 5, 2019, when Jammu and Kashmir's special status ended and it was split into two union territories, there are innumerable and frequent incidents illustrating the continuing pressure under which journalists and the media have to function there.

Priya Ramani, in this detailed piece in Article14 titled “The dangerous profession of journalism in Kashmir”, has recorded many of these incidents. She outlines not just the impact of the media policy for Kashmir of last June that essentially allows the administration of the union territory to control the media in multiple ways, but also reports the string of instances of journalists apprehended, jailed, charged, interrogated, detained and threatened if they deviated from the script the government now expects from them. That, according to the media policy, is to create “a sustained narrative on the functioning of the government in media”.

Ramani begins her report with the experience of a young photographer, Kamran Yousef, who was jailed for six months because, according to the National Investigation Agency, he had "never covered any developmental activity of any Government Department/Agency, any inauguration of Hospital, School Building, Road, Bridge, statement of political party in power or any other social/developmental activity by state government or Govt of India."

In other words, for not doing what the government expects, a journalist can be charged under the UAPA and jailed. Yousef got bail in 2018 but the following year, he was beaten up by the police while taking photographs in Pulwama in southern Kashmir.

Since then, there has been no change in the attitude of the government towards journalists. The latest incident took place on September 8, when the police raided and searched the homes of four Kashmiri journalists – Hilal Mir, Shah Abbas, Showkat Motta and Azhar Qadri – and confiscated digital devices and travel documents.

In an atmosphere where you can be apprehended, and even jailed, for any number of reasons, how can journalists function? How different is this from the challenges that journalists in other countries, such as Afghanistan, face today? The difference, of course, is that we insist we are a democracy where the freedom of the press exists, even though India's ranking in indices measuring this freedom is steadily plummeting.

The intimidation of journalists is not the only way to control the media. Another well-known tactic is to squeeze finances by withdrawing government advertising. In many parts of India, newspapers and local TV channels are heavily dependent on advertisements from the government. Since the pandemic and the downturn in the economy, this dependence has grown. Indeed, it is striking to see how much government advertising appears today in major mainstream newspapers. In Jammu and Kashmir, this is a well-honed tactic, one that the government has used to good effect to silence any semblance of criticism from the media.

The real moral duty of journalists: Not to dance to the tune of the powerful

Appeared first on Scroll.in

An NIA statement about an arrested Kashmir photographer should prompt journalists to consider how far their profession has drifted from basic standards. 

Perhaps the Indian media deserves a lecture from the National Investigation Agency about our moral duty. Given how far much of mainstream media has drifted from any concept of morality, leave alone accuracy or simple journalistic principles, we should not be surprised that India’s anti-terror agency has taken upon itself to pronounce judgment on who is a real journalist.

The context is the plainly unjustified arrest of 23-year-old Kashmiri photojournalist Kamran Yusuf on September 5. His family was not informed as he was taken away. More than four months later, on January 18, he was charged with sedition, criminal conspiracy and attempting to wage war against India.

On February 15, in documents presented before the Additional Sessions Court in New Delhi, the National Investigation Agency attempted to make out a case that Yusuf is not a real journalist but is actually a stone-pelter, and therefore, an anti-national.

The words used by the central agency to describe who is a journalist are fascinating. They illustrate how the state would like all of us journalists to be quiet, obedient note-takers who cover important functions, like the inauguration of hospitals, and ignore anything deemed anti-national, such as young Kashmiris venting their anger and frustration at the state of affairs in their land.

Making out an argument on why it believes Yusuf is not a real journalist, here is what the National Investigation Agency said in its court document:

  “Had he been a real journalist/stringer by profession, he may had (sic) performed one of the moral duty of a journalist which is to cover activity and happening (good or bad) in his jurisdiction. He had never covered any developmental activity of any Government Department/Agency, any inauguration of Hospital, School Building, Road, Bridge, statement of any political party in power or any other social/developmental activity by the state Government or Govt. of India.”  

According to the anti-terror agency, a real journalist’s moral duty is to cover developmental activity of governmental departments, such as inaugurations of hospitals, schools, roads and bridges, and statements of political parties in power. Clearly, reporting statements by the Opposition does not count as real journalism.

The National Investigation Agency also states that Yusuf was not a professional as he had not taken any professional training in photography or videography. Taken together, this non-professional was only covering anti-national activists in order to “create mass awareness amongst the local people about such activities so that they can be motivated to support such activities”.

By these parameters laid out by the agency, thousands of journalists would be suspect. For one, most journalists do not cover the kind of development activity the agency has described. This task is usually given to the junior-most person in a media organisation, and the event merits publication or air space only if a very important person is involved.

Most professional journalists think of developmental activity as something entirely different. It means burning shoe-leather, travelling to places that are ostensibly being developed by the government or some private agency, and then reporting on the true state of affairs. Such stories cannot be done on the basis of press handouts, or briefings.

Real journalism produces stories that most often run counter to the dominant discourse broadcast by government-friendly or government-owned media. This is developmental journalism in its true sense, something that is a somewhat endangered form of journalism in today’s media scene in India. If journalists were really doing this, they would be fulfilling their moral duty, or at least their professional duty.

Real journalists

Then let us look at the charge that Yusuf had not attended a professional training institute. By that measure too, many journalists in India would stand disqualified, particularly people of my generation and an earlier one. When I began journalism, there were no journalism courses. We learned on the job, as did our seniors. Yet, that did not make us less professional. We were real journalists and continue to be so.

Of course, it is no point dissecting every word of the National Investigation Agency as its purpose in arresting Yusuf is entirely different: to send out a message to Kashmiri journalists who have, at considerable risk to their own lives, informed India and the world about the state of resistance and suppression in their state. These are journalists who have tried to understand and convey the anger of young Kashmiris who are prepared to die or be maimed for life to oppose what in their view is an unjust regime. These journalists are doing their moral duty. They are real journalists, not stenographers.

The journalism drift

Yet, the agency’s statement should also prompt Indian journalists to look at the state of journalism in India today, and how far it has drifted from professional and basic journalistic standards.

Take the case of the sacking of Angshukanta Chakraborty, who was until recently the political editor of the DailyO website, part of the India Today group. She was summarily dismissed last week for a tweet she released on her personal Twitter handle in which she criticised journalists who spread fake news, without identifying anyone. She did not need to. Everyone knows that some of the main proponents of fake news in mainstream media work within the same media organisation from which she was dismissed.

Take, for instance, Abhijit Majumder, editor of the Mail Today tabloid. He was called out in January for tweeting fake news about a Hindu man being killed during the communal flare-up in Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh. The man was alive. Yet, by then Majumder’s tweet had travelled far. His bosses at the India Today group did not haul him up for spreading such dangerous and unsubstantiated information that exacerbated the communally-charged atmosphere in Kasganj.

On the contrary, far from being reprimanded, Majumder was recently recommended for an important position in public broadcaster Prasar Bharati. In a rare show of autonomy, the Prasar Bharati board on February 15 rejected the proposal that had come directly from the Union government.

Pliant media

This and several other pointers reiterate what is already well-known: that the state approves of those journalists who openly endorse the government’s or the ruling party’s line, and will reward them. Those who choose to do real journalism – to be sceptical, to ask difficult questions, to dig out the truth, to refuse to take things at face value, do so at their own risk.

What is pitiful is that unlike the actions taken against people like Yusuf, or several other journalists in places like Chhattisgarh, the media has quietly fallen in line without a hint of resistance. It bows to the government’s agenda, gives space and time to the issues that suit the powerful, and routinely overlooks what is going on in most parts of this country.

Worse still, this pliant media has contributed to the coarsening of public discourse on many issues, including politics. The space for a reasoned debate on any subject has virtually disappeared. Forcing every issue into antagonistic binaries only benefits those who want our society to be polarised. It is the anti-thesis of the role the media is supposed to play in a democracy – of a space that informs and engenders real debate and that speaks truth to power.

Bob Moser, former editor of Texas Observer, wrote in a recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review: “For reporters, it’s surely as close to a Golden Rule as journalism affords: Fear nobody and nothing in your quest to unearth hard truths and afflict the powerful”.

Journalism in India is certainly not afflicting the powerful. It is dancing to their tune.