"Indian media one of the best in the world"?! Surely you jest, Ms Sen!

While reading the DNA newspaper a few days ago (Mumbai edition, October 26^th, 2008), I was stopped by a text box in a piece by Ms Antara Dev Sen. The text in the box read “Indian media is one of the best in the world. Our press is critical, combative, entertaining, thought-provoking, and free.' 

This box really got me, not least because I have long held a pretty dim view of Indian media (which includes our press). Now that we are in the midst of the Diwali vacs out here in Mumbai, and the family is busy with whatever keeps them busy and me out of their way, it seems like a good time to put down my thoughts, and mayhap share them with Ms Sen.

I am not making a distinction between press and media – in this day and age, TV, and increasingly the Internet are asimportant as print. Also, I must confess that I watch about 6 odd TV channels, including one in Bengali, read some 5 newspapers (4 in English, and one in Bengali), and 3 magazines all in English - the sum otal doesn't even begin to be representative of all Indian media. But, I think this net is representative of the English media in India. 

“Critical” – sure, the Indian media is critical of everything, and not necessarily supportive of much that needs to be supported. I was a member of the studio audience the other day – they were taping a show on the impact of Raj Thackeray on Mumbai, for the We the People show on NDTV. Quite naturally, the audience, and the panellists, were anti Raj Thackeray’s party for the violence and fear his party has inflicted on North Indian labourers in the state. This, of course, has received widespread and highly well-deserved condemnation in all media vehicles.

The audience and the panellists, though, were uniformly supportive of a key plank of the MNS – preference for the bhumiputra for unskilled jobs in the state. As an Indian born in Kolkata, Bengali by birth and upbringing, resident in Mumbai since 1973, and proud to call himself a Mumbaikar, I too support this plank – this has to be a priority in all states of India, and not just Maharashtra; otherwise the local governments will have failed in their very purpose of existence. But I don't recall much media coverage on this need for the benefit of any state, and the failure of governments and industries to put in place a strategy for large scale local employment. 

I have not seen much coverage in media about two things – first, that the Railway Board examination papers were not made available in Marathi, but were available in other Indian languages; second, past records of similar examinations show that there is a very high percentage of passes from candidates of one state, and a very low percentage from Maharashtra – the difference is so huge that it begs the question as to whether the whole examination thing was a fraud in the first place.

In short, these two things indicated to me that had the Railway Board, or a higher authority, had conducted the whole exam process in a fair, just and transparent manner in the first place, one key reason for Raj Thackeray’s party to go out rioting would have vanished into thin air.

And I should have expected the ‘critical’ media to have taken this up and ‘criticised’ the Board, the Railway Ministry, etc to ensure that there is a thorough overhaul of these and similar other processes for large-scale recruitments.

“Critical?” Of course, but selectively so. If there’s an easy target, great. If it’s an issue which looks likely to live beyond a few days, then perhaps not; after all, the whole world is after the short-term, so why bother about the long-term?

“Combative” – yes, of course, so much so that the Shiv Sena mouthpiece is called ‘Samna’ (confrontation) and Narayan Rane’s paper is called ‘Prahar!’ Anyways, let’s be serious. Combating who or what is what I’d like to ask. Whenever I see Karan Thapar on TV (thankfully, not very often), and I see him contracting his eyebrows, and chewing up the words in his teeth, he seems to be ‘combating’ the interviewee rather than an issue,  a point of view, or a policy, or something more substantive than just the individual. His heroes are, presumably, Larry King, or maybe David Frost; in any case, someone should tell Thapar that he will always remain a disaster by comparison – his research is minimal, his body language abrasive, and his mannerisms irritating.

Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN is so combative that he shouts every time he’s doing the news, as if he wants to be heard by his audience without the help of broadcasting technology. Surely, he is combative. So is Arnab Goswami, who sometimes is combating his own ground reporter, live on TV! I kid you not! There was one story he was doing himself on Times Now TV, in which he asked his London reporter about anti-Asian racist feelings in the UK, triggered by a local event. The reporter asked him, what did he mean anti-Asian feeling, there were none that he had been told by those he had met. Arnab insisted that there were such feelings, and cut out the reporter. Was Arnab ‘combating’ his own staff, because he had decided that the racial angle is what he’s going to follow, whether there’s evidence for it or not? 

“Entertaining”. You’re bang on the button, Ms Sen, absolutely right on this. I always watch TV news in English and Hindi, mainly to be entertained. The English news channel Headlines Today seems to cover only Bollywood, fashion shows, parties, etc – I love this, since I don’t get invited to these parties, I feel like a guest who’s successfully sneaked in past the guards. Most of the Times of India is entertainment – the City Times (as in Mumbai Times, Delhi Times, etc) section is all entertainment, and you can get covered if you pay for the space. The editorials are also entertainment since most of the times, they are written by Jug Suraiya and Shobha De; it’s been such a long time since I have read anything by the editor that I don’t even know if they have an editor any more. 

News media became entertainment the day the Times of India decided some years ago that news is trivia, and trivia is news. That’s the whole paradigm shift that’s taken place over the last decade in India. To prove my point, let me present to you India TV – this one beats all the entertainment channels for sheer fun, joie de vivre, and in proving the eternal truth in P T Barnum’s words: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” 

When I checked it out in July, the main story every evening was that aliens have landed, have set up camp on the moon, they’d done it years ago and when Armstrong et al had dropped in, they’d been told by the aliens that they can go back and tell their masters (Armstrong and company's) that they should never come back to the moon. 

A week later, the story changed – 8^th of August 2008 is the day on which the world will come to an end. The ancient Mayans, or the ancient Egyptians, or someone equally ancient had said so, and one current Godman appeared on TV to tell all and sundry that the world was surely, definitely, absolutely positively, without fail, going to end on 8-8-8.

Another week later, I was really glad to know that we’ve all won a reprieve; the destruction of the world had been postponed. To 21^st December, 2012. But this was the final date, no postponements, no more reprieves, no use praying, no use weeping, nothing. On that date, time not specified yet, we shall all be cast to the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

If this doesn’t beat saas-bahu dramas, I don’t what does. Properly packaged and presented, this could even beat twenty20 cricket.

“Thought-provoking”. Mmmmyess, really Ms Sen I would agree with you here too. Indian media does provoke a lot of thought, like

• Why is it so short-term in its outlook?
• Why doesn’t it investigate and talk of the larger and deeper issues?
• Does the media, by and large, actually recognize and understand what are the larger issues?
• Why is there so little research in their ‘stories’?
• Why does it love sensation? If there a video of someone throwing a stone, why is this shown 300 times on the day, and another 100 times in repeats over the next few days?

I haven’t been able to figure this out, so I take refuge in Doordarshan and a few selective TV and Internet news channels – and particularly agency reports. In these channels, they’ll tell you just flat what happened. They don’t get into interpreting, analysing, root cause, etc, etc – everything that you would expect from the ‘one of the best media in the world’. And thankfully so – at least DD and the agencies tell you what actually happened instead of trying to push its own agenda on you.

To come to the last adjective used by Ms Sen – “free”. Absolutely right, too. This is the really good thing about Indian media – anybody can say any old thing, and frequently everybody does. This is to me the healthiest thing about Indian media – no shackles, no gags, no censorship. Sure, ownerships will colour the news and angles; media has to pay the price for patronage, political or otherwise. But overall, we are lucky to have a free media, where most of the world does not. And I really mean this without sarcasm or cynicism. 

Does all this make Indian media one of the best in the world? Not by a long shot, Ms Sen. I accept that there are many countries where media is shackled and forced to state a point of view presented by the governing powers. And freedom of the press is one of great achievements of modern India. But I would love to see three characteristics in Indian media, before I start using epithets like “one of the best in the world” – a deep understanding of the real issues that affect the well being and prosperity of our people; the ability to do high quality research into these issues; and third, the knowledge that media has the power to shape thinking and action, and hence that power should be exercised towards the good of the country and its people.

Not there yet, not even half there, Ms Sen.