When politicians change sides: Welcome to India, land of political acrobatics

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on April 5, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/04/05/when-politicians-change-sides-welcome-to-india-land-of-political-acrobatics

Some newspapers have named this pre-election period the “dance of democracy”. But skim the headlines and you’ll wonder whether we’re witnessing the “farce of democracy” instead.

Every day at dizzying speed, some politician associated with a party for many years – known well by their constituents as a member of that party which has a particular profile – suddenly switches sides, that too just before the election.

Changing parties is an Indian political game for which we could probably claim copyright. But the speed and pace at which it is being played out in this election season surpasses anything we have seen in the past.

As a result, election-related news reports – and here I am referring to the mainstream print media – would be of passing interest to the average reader who is not steeped in the minutiae of the political merry-go-round. What many readers may well ask is whether the party system, or even elections, have any meaning if this special type of political acrobatics takes place just before we go out and vote. 

Today, there is no way to ensure that the person we vote for continues to represent the ideology of a party they belonged to when they contested, even if some people do vote for an individual irrespective of the party to which they belong. But if the cynicism that underlines the party-switching game gets across to voters, one wonders if more people will hold back and choose not to vote at all. 

As a young man who seemed interested in politics, especially of his home state of Bihar, told me recently, “Even though I was eligible to vote when I turned 18, I have never voted. And I’m not sure I will this time either.”

We know now, of course, why the big political players switched sides. In an excellent piece of reporting, Deeptiman Tiwary of Indian Express put together information that gives us a graphic view of not just who changed parties, but why. For instance, cases against two top NCP leaders – Ajit Pawar, currently deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, and Praful Patel, former aviation minister – were closed shortly after they joined the BJP. Tiwary documents that of the 25 opposition leaders who joined the BJP since 2014, 23 have had cases against them dropped or put in cold storage. The pattern for lesser-known politicians who have had a sudden change of heart and sought space in the BJP is likely to be the same. 

While this current political circus has established that the BJP is not “the party with a difference” as it once wanted people to believe, welcoming as it is of politicians with serious corruption charges against them, this also speaks to the quality of people entering the political arena. The decline has been evident for some time but now it has crossed new summits.

Which brings us back to the meaning of an electoral democracy with a party system.

The rest of the world is watching this election as well, given the sheer numbers involved, with almost a billion people voting in an election spread over 44 days. There is no other election of this size anywhere in the world. But already questions about the elections and Indian democracy are being raised.

The Financial Times, a well-respected international business newspaper, wrote a critical editorial last week headlined “The mother of democracy is not in good shape”. The paper’s particular concern was the way law enforcement agencies have been used against opposition leaders culminating in the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. It quotes Rahul Gandhi’s accusation that the BJP was resorting to “match fixing” in this election and says it is puzzled that the governing party should even feel the need to “squeeze the opposition”.

Of course, critical comments such as this in the Western media are most often dismissed by the BJP, which accuses these media groups of having an agenda. Yet, despite this public stance, it is not able to ignore such criticism entirely. We cannot forget that it was the Modi government that banned a BBC documentaryin January 2023 even though it was not going to be televised in this country. 

But apart from these passing pinpricks from foreign shores, there is little that the party need worry about with the Indian media. We will have to wait and watch the quality and the slants in the election coverage, but it would be fair to guess that there would be precious little that’s critical of Narendra Modi or the BJP in mainstream media.

Since the 2019 election, the changed reality as far as the media is concerned is the noticeable growth of small, independent media houses that have used social media effectively to put across a different narrative. We saw this most vividly, as I mentioned in my last column, in the coverage of the electoral bond scam. It was Project Electoral Bond, a joint effort by The News Minute, Newslaundry, Scroll and independent journalists, as well as the investigative work of the Reporters’ Collective since 2019 that finally told us the real story of who paid which party and what they got in return. R Rajagopal of The Telegraph has rightly acknowledged their work in his article “Keyboard guerrillas”. Those stories are still tumbling out (read here).

Also, YouTube hosts numerous news-based programmes by former mainstream TV journalists, apart from Ravish Kumar, in Indian languages that are watched by millions. In cities, your local vegetable vendor, carpenter, plumber, painter, or taxi or auto driver does not have the time to sit in front of a television and watch the news. All of them catch it on the run, usually on their phones. And the channels they watch are not just the mainstream channels that can also be found on YouTube but these independent channels that have a greater connect. 

On the other side is the BJP’s IT cell that’s excelled in using all forms of social media. It is already on overdrive. And assisting it are dozens of YouTube channels, also apparently independent, that daily spread not just disinformation, but also direct propaganda that will help the BJP. Kunal Purohit writes in this piece in Al Jazeera that media studies have established that Indians “place greater trust in news they view on YouTube and WhatsApp, over the news delivered by mainstream media outlets”. The days when we asked someone where they got their information, and the reply would be, “Akhbar mein padha” (read it in the newspaper), are well and truly in the past.

We will have to wait and watch which form of media succeeds in changing people’s minds, or confirming their biases, and whether any of this will have an impact on voter choice.

A question of judgement: Lessons for independent media from the Meta-Wire affair

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on November 4, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/11/04/a-question-of-judgement-lessons-for-independent-media-from-the-meta-wire-affair

The Meta-Wire affair, as it has come to be called, has thrown up many questions that touch on editorial processes, the survival of independent media, and the response of the state to criticism.

The Wire, an independent digital news portal, has publicly admitted that it erred in running a series of stories that implicated tech giant Meta, which runs Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The stories made the false claim that Meta gave Amit Malviya, the head of the BJP’s IT cell, the right to directly take down posts on Instagram that he finds offensive. 

In its apology on October 27, the Wire acknowledged that the “internal editorial processes which preceded publication of these stories did not meet the standards that the Wire sets for itself and its readers expect from it.” However, it did not issue an apology to Malviya or Meta. Two days later, Malviya filed a case against the Wire for cheating, forgery, criminal defamation and criminal conspiracy. The Delhi police followed this up with raids on the homes of the Wire’s editors and its office.

In the meantime, the Wire has also filed a case against its researcher Devesh Kumar for “forgery and fabrication”.

The most obvious questions that arise are about the Wire’s editorial processes. The platform is run by three experienced editors: Siddharth Varadarajan, MK Venu and Sidharth Bhatia. How could they have allowed these stories to run in the first place? Why were they not put through the kind of rigorous editorial scrutiny expected of investigative stories that name a specific individual and an institution? Given that Devesh Kumar, who investigated these stories and lined up the so-called “evidence”, was not a journalist but on contract to the website for tech input, why did the editors buy his story without double-checking every detail?

The Wire’s editors have still to provide adequate answers to these questions. In their statement, they also admit that an obvious learning from this incident is that the “editing process for any investigative story should involve multiple layers of editors. We are instantly putting in place appropriate protocols to ensure this happens.”  

But such an editing process for investigative stories is a standard practice in any respectable publication. Why did the Wire not have this in place earlier? 

Any editor ought to know that a story that implicates an individual – in this case a person who belongs to a powerful political party – must be handled with even greater rigour because of the possibility of a criminal defamation case. This does not mean that you cannot, or should not, take on the powerful. In fact, the phrase “speaking truth to power” means precisely that the media must be prepared to take on the risks involved in exposing the wrongdoings of the powerful. But such reporting comes with a cost.

If there is even the slightest doubt, the axiom “when in doubt, leave out”, that we are taught as journalists, is the best one to follow. This is even more pertinent today as technology has allowed the proliferation of fake news to such an extent that even people who are not particularly tech-savvy are able to manipulate information and visuals and put out false narratives. Today, the gatekeepers in the media need to be even more sceptical and cautious when offered “scoops” that expose the powerful. Given that the Wire does not have the funds to fight protracted legal cases, it is unclear why such precaution was not taken. Besides, this is the least a journalistic organisation must do to retain credibility if it positions itself as an independent news organisation.

Apart from questions around the Wire’s journalistic processes, there is more that needs explaining. Although Malviya filing a case against the Wire after its first story was almost a given, the Delhi police’s response to conducting “raids” on the Wire office and the homes of its founding editors, as well as deputy editor Jahnavi Sen and head of business Mithun Kidambi, came across as excessive. As several lawyers have pointed out in this report, the police could have summoned them and asked them to surrender their electronic devices. 

Devesh Kumar, in an interview to Times Now, says he too has surrendered his electronic devices to the Delhi police, but will not say anything more than what has already been stated publicly by the Wire’s editors. He confirmed he is not on the staff of the Wire and accepts the mistakes he made. He also said he handed over the documents on which the stories were based to the Wire’s editors.

The news portal has been criticised for passing off all blame onto one individual, even though it is obvious that a series of this kind was a collaborative effort. In fact, the first story had Jahnavi Sen’s byline and the second had hers and Siddharth Varadarajan. Kumar’s name was mentioned only in the third story. Although people at the Wire say this was done to protect Kumar’s source, this explanation does not pass muster because Kumar defended the story online and eventually did share a byline.

The Wire also failed in following an established journalistic norm of seeking a response from persons or organisations named in its stories. Even if Malviya or Meta did not respond to their queries, the portal would have been on more solid ground.

Therefore, the Wire has no defence on why it failed on so many counts editorially. 

At the same time, we must acknowledge that by retracting the stories and admitting its mistake, the Wire has at least begun to acknowledge the scale of its mistakes – something we rarely see in a large section of mainstream media. Mainstream media also makes mistakes. Yet we seldom see an apology. The reason the Wire is facing so much flak, even from people who support it, is because it has set higher standards for itself.

That said, we must  also recognise that we live in a country where media freedom is constantly under attack, and we are governed by a dispensation that has no time for critics, however small their reach might be. The Wire has been consistently critical of the current regime. This has been evident in its reports and its opinion pieces. That the portal is a source of irritation for a government that prefers the media to sing its praises is more than evident. And that ideally, it would like such irritants to disappear altogether is also obvious.

Unfortunately, the Wire-Meta affair has given this government the opportunity to cripple it, and it is unlikely to stop until it succeeds. 

What lessons should independent digital platforms draw from this incident? Their presence in India’s media ecosystem is crucial because they provide the space for incisive reporting and critical comment that is largely absent in much of mainstream media. 

But given the power of the government to move against critics, it is incumbent that these platforms double down on rigorous journalistic processes so that the chances of a repetition of the fiasco by the Wire are minimised.  

In a strong editorial, the Deccan Herald mentions the recent remarks of prime minister Modi at a meeting of state home ministers, where he said that it was time to destroy “urban naxals” and Maoists holding pens. The warning for critical and independent media is clear.