Money for jam

GROUND ZERO

NEWS FOR SALE - AN ABHORRENT PRACTICE

With so much clutter in media and the news tellywallahs bombarding youyou with all types of news day in, day out (some of it is pure drivel,particularly on the Hindi channels), there is no time to read newsweekliesanymore. The last good story written by India Today for instance wasthe composite air travel bill of the UPA Cabinet which waspainstakingly put together by a Hindi India Today journo using thepower and instrumentation of RTI. Outlook on the other hand triesdesperately to stay relevant by being provocative. Its dal scam storyrocked and now comesanother eye opening and cerditable effort - On Sale - Journalism. In a terrificexpose pinpointing the new and growing malaise inIndian media and its unhappy nexus with politicos, Outlook shoots fromthe hip. A confluence of news, money and politics though prevalent insmaller regional papers has now metamorphosed into a gargantuan scamspreading wildly across big media. Editor Vinod Mehta in a no holdsbarred fulmination attacksthis barefaced media-politician nexus. This is Medianet of adifferent, elaborate and scarier kind. A malignant sore which isgetting deeper rooted by the minute. Medianet when it was architectedbegan with the Page 3 types in the city supplements. It brought themovers and shakers of different cities to the pages of the citysupplements for a charge. Gradually the Page 3 wallahas morphed intoPage 1 denizens using this stratagem. It has gained currency rapidlyand more than one publication is known to use it now.The exercise hasover time become a robustnew revenue stream. It was taken to the next level when businessbriefs etc were also paid for. Now Outlook tells us that money fornews is far more widespread than what we construed.
In a hard hitting edit, Vinod Mehta lambasts this latest trend atduplicity. Yes, news is for sale and it is a dangerous new trend whichwill only mutate faster in the days to come. But let Mehta himselfexplain this spanking new paradigm: "Indian media doesn’t dointrospection. We recommend it to others—MPs, political parties,militants, judges, scientists.... They are alladvised to look deep inside their own trade and clean up the rot.Meanwhile, the rot creeping into the fourth estate is studiouslyignored or airbrushed, usually by organising a “studio discussion” inwhich the citizen is asked: Does the media need to be accountable?Discussion over. Issue over. Fortunately, even that stratagem iswearing thin. The chicanery is conspicuous.
"And yet who can deny that while our media has much to be proud of,there is increasing public disenchantment, not just with its slant,shrillness, sermonising and sensationalism, but with its core value,namely integrity. It is hardly a secret that the media is capable ofmisjudgement and laziness. However, what the aam aadmi seldom doubtsis the “news” it transmits. That trust, alas, is breaking down.
"I am not referring to the blurring of news and opinion, which itselfviolates the time-honoured principle: News is sacred, comment is free.However, even when news and comment are mixed up, it is possible forthe alert consumer to separate the two. At any rate, even in the mostadvanced of democracies, the media does carry ideological/party bias,which is reflected not in the editorial pages, but in the newscolumns. That practice, however deplorable, a free press can livewith.
"If all these burdens were not enough for the media in the world’slargest democracy, consider this: Sections of the media are now for“sale”. For a price, you can buy news on the front page. It is a trendwhich has been with us for a few years, but thanks to the exposure bythe late Prabhash Joshi, P. Sainath and others, it is emerging as thesingle-most serious threat to our collective credibility. Indeed, thesystem is getting fast institutionalised, with TV channels andnewspapers approaching politicians, especially during elections, witha “package” which, interestingly, is negotiable. It is an offerdifficult to refuse.
"I am not unmindful of the difficult times the media industry is goingthrough. The market is too crowded, the advertising cake is too small,the economy is too sluggish. We are all furiously engaged in findingnew and innovative ways to augment our dwindling revenues. Outlook(like others) is neck-deep in this skirmish. As you may have noticed,the Outlook ‘Spotlight’ feature is sponsored, the client has almostfull editorial control. The only redeeming aspect is that the readercan easily spot it, since it is clearly marked on the page. News forsale is not. The purpose here is to pass off sponsored news asprofessional news.
"Dog does not eat dog. True. In the investigation you are about toread, the intention is to shed light on a malaise which, if nottreated, will surely destroy the Indian media. I hope our colleaguesin the business will take it in that spirit." The most damaging partof this editorial is that the 'package' which is negotiable. Paid for news isthe latest entrant in the b*******d lexicon of modern news purveyorswho are under pressure to keep up with the Jones' as far as revenues go.
Expressing serious concern over the increasing number of reports ofpaid news in some media organisations, the toothless and vapidEditor's Guild of India has formed an ethics committee which willunveil an initiative toencourage transparency regarding the "pernicious" practice. Nicewords, but don't offer anything more than lip service from these oldfogies.
In its annual general body meeting held last Tuesday, the Guild notedthat it was always for publication of news which is in publicinterest, news which has been gathered due to the professional effortsof journalists and news which is not influenced by malice, bias,favouritism or monetary influence.
The ethics committee which would be headed by T N Ninan,Editor-in-Chief Business Standard and have B G Verghese, SumitChakravarthy and Madhu Kishawar as members. Ho-hum...zzzzzz.
Anyway back to the Outlook effort. There are some real pithy examples.This is what it says, "When a victorious chief minister openly admitsthat he himself approached the leading newspaper of his state withmoney for “positive stories” after learning that the newspaper hadsigned a “package deal” with his rivals to print negative stories, youhad better sit up andtake urgent notice. It can only mean that the selling of editorialspace has become both blatant and institutionalised, and that neitherthe print nor the electronic media are immune to the malaise.When Outlook sounded out Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hoodaabout allegations doing the rounds that he paid for favourable newsduring the assembly elections in October, he was surprisingly candid.“When I noticed the leading paper of my state printing baselessreports on its front page day after day,” he said, “I called them upand offered money to print the right picture. The paper in questionapologised. They even returned the money taken from my rival topublish news items against me.”
“I was aware,” the CM went on to add, “that packages were offered tocandidates from my party, but my state is small and people can seethrough sponsored reports.” Hooda holds media barons responsible forturning newspapers into mammon-worshipping behemoths where everythingis available for a price, including sacred editorial space. “Thejournalists are not at fault here because fact-finding journalism hasnow become a commercialised activity with the present owners havingturned newspapers into a business proposition,” he says.But approach the newspapers, and they turn the blame right around onthe politicians. Like a top management executive from Punjab Kesri(readership 1.04 crore) who admits that the newspaper made anywherebetween Rs 10 crore and Rs 12 crore during the assembly electionseason. “We had to go in for selling editorial space,” he says,“because of tremendous pressure from politicians. We were also beingpushed by the so-called national English dailies who had theirpackages and were mopping up revenue. We could not have missed out onthe opportunity.”
Similarly in Maharashtra, chief minister Ashok Chavan declared he had spent justRs 11,379 on advertising but as English daily The Hindu reportedrecently, this was hugely disproportionate to the reams and reams ofpositive coverage he got in the media. Tacitly, of course, additionalsums would have been paid by either his party or his well-wishers.The report then goes on to give other examples of how print media inthe south have traversed down this road to peridition. And it is notjust the print media that is guilty of publishing news for cash.Television news channels are equally guilty of selling editorialspace. Congress MP Sandeep Dikshit says he was shocked when a newschannel in Delhi approached him with a package to cover Rahul Gandhi’svisit to the East Delhi constituency during the 2009 Lok Sabhaelections.
“Imagine my surprise and shock when the reporter actually negotiatedthe price of Rs 2.5 lakh for an hour of live coverage,” says Dikshit.“The channel even said they would arrange the crowds.” The MP said hewas equally taken aback when a leading Hindi daily made an offer forpositive coverage of his campaign. “Packages for print and TV for athree-day coverage varied between Rs 12 and Rs 20 lakh,” Dikshitelaborates. “You watch your opponent misusing the media and you’reforced to part with the money. I won’t take names but everyone isinvolved.”
In fact, campaign managers of the Congress say money had to be spentfor the Delhi assembly elections last year when a TV channel insistedon projecting a lesser tally for the Congress in its opinion polls.“The tally improved after the channel was paid off,” reveals acampaign manager. “In fact, the last three days before the actual polldates, money had to be spent on the channels to ensure good coverage.”
Marathi channel IBN-Lokmat too found itself in the middle of acontroversy when it ran a feelgood interview with one of itsdirectors, Congress candidate Rajendra Darda, during the Maharashtraassembly elections. Editor Nikhil Wagle, however, says he took extraprecaution to ensure that Darda got lesser airtime than otherpoliticians. “We accepted only two sponsored features, one of the NCPand the other of the BJP, during the elections,” Wagle clarified.
More examples: Imagine leading editor Mrinal Pande ended up as a majorcasualty of war. Shockingly, during the last Lok Sabha elections,leading Hindi daily Hindustan (from the Hindustan Times stable)carried a four-page special on an independent candidate from Varanasi,with the sponsored tag at the bottom of the last page in fine print.This went againstthe rules set by then editor Mrinal Pande. She was flooded with callswhen the report (which read like news) was published, she says.
“I had laid down specific guidelines for sponsored features duringelections,” says Pande. “These were flouted without even informing theeditor in charge.” She admits to having quit because of pressure fromthe management and because of sponsored news. “Among other things, itwas the paid-for news arrangement that made me put in my papers. Inthe end, it is important to keep one’s integrity intact,” she says.
The Outlook story ends by saying, "Does itmean that the Indian language media is the inventor of this trendyirregularity? No. As everybody in the trade remembers, the leadinglight amongst English dailies launched a scheme to sell editorialspace to corporate and socialite buyers. The daily maintained this wasno malpractice as the transactions were accounted for and thepublished items were attributed. Yet the reader was completelydeceived—as in the case of recent election packages in languagedailies—because the legend was kept so minuscule as to render the ‘MN’of Medianet nearly indistinguishable from the ‘NN’ of News Network.And of course, the management never bothered to tell the reader what‘MN’ or Medianet really stood for. A fig leaf of deception. Thelanguage media walked this beaten path of the English brand leadersrather more crudely during the recent elections. Like a Madhu Koda orShibu Soren or Laloo Yadav or Mayawati negotiating the political kajalki kothri (a proverbial soot-smeared room out of which it’s impossibleto come out unsullied) more clumsily than their supposedly moresophisticated peers.
"Why this crudeness? Obviously because of the hurry to catch up withthe more materially successful sophisticated Joneses of the trade.Despite the larger readership reach of language newspapers in India,look at the imbalance of earning they suffer from vis-a-vis theirEnglish counterparts. The readership of Dainik Jagran, the largestHindi daily, is more than double that of the largest English daily,The Times of India. But ToI’s revenue of nearly Rs 5,000 crore is morethan thrice Jagran’s approximately Rs 1,400 crore. Such a differenceshows proportionately both in the quantum and rate of advertisementsof large Hindi and English dailies. Any back-of-the-envelopecalculation will place the average earning of an English newspaper atleast three times more than a Hindi daily of similar standing andcirculation.
"The corporate clout of English newspapers, which depends on theirturnovers and the purchasing power of their readers, is far ahead ofthe language ones. But the language newspapers beat the English oneshollow in political clout because of their much larger circulation,which matters more in the game of numbers that is democracy. Duringthe elections, the language media saw an opportunity to lessen the gapin corporate earnings vis-a-vis the English media by their politicalclout. Political leaders, too, sought to pander to the language mediamuch more than the English media during the elections. The crude hurryinherent in this phenomenon caused more din."
But at the core of the problem remains this frenetic need to be thefirst with the news. It is merely institutionalising something thatbig media did in the garb of a revenue stream. Medianet supportedsocial climbers in their quest for being seen, politicos are doing itfor larger swathes of votes. And media is genuflecting itself beforethe power of money. God knows, what depths we will plumb next. Welldone, Outlook.