RETROFIT
Target Media: Yes, all over again
Dang, media is once again in the news. Yup, the newswallahs are verymuch in the news again. Targeted in the crosshairs, they are onceagain everyone's favourite whipping boys. Sadly their role has beenthrown into stark relief again. And it does not make for happy reading. After a stirring bout of counter punching where media stood up defiantly on the Shahrukh Khan vs IPL issue and parallely on Ram Gopal Varma's so called expose of their trade - Rann, they are back to carrying the can. Unable to come to grips with bignews developments, the continue to be like Keystone Cops meets MarxBrothers, maladroit and floundering. Two trenchant critiques of medialand in the last couple of days have ensured that the spotlight isonce again on media. And believe me they find themselves in hot water.I could go on, but I would like to reproduce an excellent piece by PSainath in The Hindu for wider dispersal and dissemination.
Before that, there was a piece by Vrinda Gopinath in Mail Today wholaunched into SRK for being a naked media manipulator. Gopinath wrote,"Suddenly, both the Sena and SRK look stranegly similar, even thoughone uses brute force, the other cute righteousness - for just as theloutish Sena grabs eyeballs for a cause that serves its purpose,Bollywood's Brandasaurs also uses the media to delude and lure thepublic. In a market place that uses contract conditions to giveoneself an unequal position, rolls out the gigantic battleship of PR,marketing and media conglomerates tro create a monopoly, uses megastar power to stamp out any fair dissension, that SRK, is calledfascism." What Gopinath has done in her treatise is highlight thedeliberate intent behind SRK's 'cute righteousness' hand in glove ashe was with his favourite channel - NDTV. Here is how - But let ustalk about the unmentionable there were several niggling factors thatdid not match up to Bollywood Badshah's new social and politicalconsciousness. First SRK made the outburst in a news studio for thepromo of My Name is Khan, along with his co guest, best buddy anddirector of the film, Karan Johar." Strong words.
But wait till you read Sainath's demolition job. He wrote: Issuestoday have to be dressed up in ways certified by the corporate media.They have to be justified not by their importance to the public but bytheir acceptability to the media, their owners and sponsors. That theterrible tragedy in Pune demands serious, sober coverage is a truism.One of the side-effects of the ghastly blast has been unintended, though. The orgy of self-congratulation that marked the media coverage of just about everything since January is now in pause mode. Maybe the flak they copped for their handling of the November 2008 Mumbai terror blasts has something to do with it. But there is, so far, some restraint. At least, relative to the meal they made ofthe 2008 blasts.
Otherwise, through January and early February, the media stood upbravely for freedom of expression and some other constitutional rightsyou've never heard of. They slew the demons of lingual chauvinism andworse. And they're just spoiling for a fight with any other enemy ofour proud democracy. Just so long as they can keep Bollywood incentral focus.
Every issue is now reduced to a fight between individuals, heroic,villainous or just fun figures. So the complex issues behind theshunning of Pakistani cricketers by the Indian Premier League arereduced to a fight between Shah Rukh Khan and Bal Thackeray. (As onetelevision channel began its programme: “Shah Rukh stands tall. Hismessage to the nation ...”). The agonies of Bundelkhand are not abouthunger and distress in our Tiger Economy. They are just a stand-offbetween Rahul Gandhi and Mayawati. The issues of language andmigrations in Maharashtra are merely a battle between Rahul Gandhi andUddhav Thackeray. And the coverage is all about who blinked first, wholost face.
The devastating rise in food prices (let's skip the boring factors)and the mess in agriculture are a face-off between Prime MinisterManmohan Singh and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. The patheticsquabble within the Samajwadi Party is virtually a television serial.A blow-by-blow account of Amar Singh's valiant bid to retain hishonour against Mulayam Singh's yahoos. (Indeed, some Hindi channelshave begun using the language of theatre to report it — Act II, SceneII. And there was one programme which Mr. Amar Singh ended hummingverses from his favourite film song). The Bt brinjal story had mostlyonly one villain — Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. He had novisible adversary unless you pose the humble Brinjal as the hero. Butthat won't work for television. The other, more sinister heroes inthis media story preferred to function from behind the scenes, plyingnewspapers and channels with faked data and false information. Hellhath no fury like a powerful corporate scorned, as the Minister islearning.
Issues? The same media that passionately fought for freedom ofexpression for a month from mid-January had billed the 2009 Lok Sabhapoll as one without issues. The country was actually burning withthem, but they didn't make good television either. More accurately,the dominant media hadn't the slightest intention of covering themwith any sincerity. The story of rising food prices remains one of theworst reported — no matter how much space it has been given. Sure,there have been exceptions — as in the case of some outstandingreports on Bundelkhand. But they've been just that. Exceptions.
If these last six weeks have been about freedom of expression, we haveneither. Or, at best, a twisted freedom and a tortured expression.There is little freedom for thousands of journalists in the corporatemedia and the few editors who still believe we ought to be doing abetter job of informing the public on the key issues of our time.There's very little freedom for readers or viewers, too. For days onend, it didn't matter which television channel you switched to, it wasSRK on all of them. When that movie drew to a close, the 'Rahul Gandhistorms Sena den' film was released and sustained. A visit of somehours produced days of footage. But with the end of Mr. Gandhi's visitto Mumbai, it was back to Shah Rukh Khan. Of course, viewers had thefreedom to choose, which sets us apart from totalitarian states. Theycould choose any channel, from among many, to watch SRK saying exactlythe same thing, at the same time. And they will be free to chooseagain when the figure is Amitabh Bachchan or Aamir Khan.
If what we've watched on critical issues these past weeks isexpression, we're through scraping the barrel. We're drilling holes inits bottom. Many corporate-owned media houses have sacked hundreds ofjournalists and non-journalist staff since late 2008. Hundreds ofother journalists have suffered wage cuts. Of course, the ‘right to know' ofreaders and viewers does not extend to this information. Why scare thepoor lambs? And how can you tell them the truth about that whileeveryday crowing about the once-again booming economy? It might leadaudiences to ask that dull, boring question: “If things are so good,why are you axing so many people?” Answering that means revealing theinterests the corporate media have in the fate of the stock market. Itmeans talking about their need to keep the shares of the companiesthey are linked to (or have heavily invested in) afloat and buoyant.That is regardless of how rotten they are within. No matter how theirown shares in those companies were obtained. And no agonising over howunethical the means used to keep them heated. This was in part behindthe fatwa issued by some newspapers to their staff banning the ‘R'word last year. Recession is what happens in the United States. InIndia, it was a slowdown — and it's already turning aroundbrilliantly. The hundreds of sacked and ruined staff have littlefreedom to speak of. Even the professional communicators within themcannot tell their own audiences their story. Cannot tell them theywere laid off, let alone tell them why.
Leave aside escaping a recession, India Shining is back. The coverstory of a leading weekly gushes over the fantastic ‘rural resurgence'that is, in fact, saving all of us. Farmers are doing just great.Drip, micro-sprinkler, and other micro irrigation, the stories in itsuggest, played a major role in this hidden-from-the-human-eyerevival. This resurgence is seen more in urban media than in ruralIndia. And the proliferation of such stories across the media spectrumreflects, in part, the strenuous media efforts of a majorMaharashtra-based company. A corporate group that spends a fortune onpropaganda and whose interests in this line of irrigation are pushedby some of the most powerful members of the Union Cabinet. Oddly,stories such as these come out even as the government's ownprojections for growth in agriculture are dismaying.
The main ‘rural resurgence' story hit the stands the same day theNational Crime Records Bureau officially brought the 2008 data forfarm suicides on to its website. The 16,196 suicides that year broughtthe tally of farmers' suicides since 1997 to 199,132. That's thelargest single, sustained wave of such suicides ever recorded inhistory — anywhere. Guess nobody told them about the resurgence.Farmers in 2008 did know of that year's loan waiver, but it didn'tstop large numbers of them from taking their lives.
The ‘rural resurgence' story comes after any number of thegovernment's own committees, commissions and reports suggest that itrevise poverty figures upwards. Whether it's the Suresh Tendulkarcommittee, the BPL Expert Group, or earlier the National Commissionfor Enterprises in the Unorganised sector. Or a U.N. study whichreports that 34 million more Indians remained poor or joined theirranks in 2008 and 2009, because of the ‘slowdown.' That is, 34 millionmore than would have met that fate prior to the 2008 crisis. Itmatters little if Census data show us that 8 million cultivators quitagriculture between just 1991 and 2001. (That is, on average, wellover 2,000 a day, every day for 10 years.) Or that the 2011 Censusjust months from now will show us how many more have fled agriculturesince then, un-seduced by the rural resurgence. Never mind the facts.One giant private irrigation company stands to make its already hugefortune bigger. Good for growth.
The ABC of Indian media roughly translates as Advertising, Bollywoodand Corporate power. Some years ago, the ‘C' would have been cricket,but that great sport is fast becoming a small cog in the large wheelof corporate profit. (In the IPL, the ABC of media converge, evenmerge.) And, of course, everything but everything, has to bebollywoodised. To now earn attention, issues have to be dressed uponly in ways certified by the corporate media. They have to bejustified not by their importance to the public but by theiracceptability to the media, their owners and sponsors. The moreentrenched that ABC gets, the greater the danger to the language ofdemocracy the media so proudly claim to champion."
Absolutely fascinating, a confluence of powerful lobbies andinterests. I couldn't have said it or written it better. A dirge whichsymbolises and typifies the times that we live in. Out of sync withreality, caught somewhere in cuckoo land. Enough said.
(exchange4media)
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