It is not often these days that news consumers have something good to say about newspapers.
And magazines.
And TV stations.
And blogs.
And websites.
Individual and institutional transgressions—paid news, private treaties, medianet, Radia tapes, shrieking anchors, sensationalism, jingoism, corruption, etc—have all contributed enormously to the cynicism of the media among the consuming classes.
How heartening therefore to hear Debasweta Banik.
At 22, one of youngest to pass the civil services examinations this year, the NOIDA girl tells the Wall Street Journal‘s India Realtime, that she didn’t reach out for textbooks or attend coaching classes. Instead, she dipped into newspapers to keep abreast with current affairs and frame her essays better.
“A typical day, Banik says, would begin by studying three out of seven English-language news dailies her father – an engineer at a Noida-based state-run firm – subscribes to. Her staples were The Indian Express, Hindustan Times and The Hindu, but she would also dip into others.
“‘I made cuttings out of articles – commentaries and news stories – which interested me,’ said Ms. Banik, who ranked 14th in the exam. ‘These were my notes.’
“Opinion pieces written by political analyst Ramachandra Guha and economist Abhijit Banerjee helped her better frame long answers in the exam, she added….
“‘People underestimate the knowledge in newspapers,’ said Ms. Banik, who is from Noida. ‘I don’t know how I would have done this without them. They were my lifeline,’ she said.
The fears over what happens when a big business house with deep pockets and political influence across parties funds a big media house to legitimise its hitherto-hidden media interests, are coming true even before the controversial Reliance Industries -Network18/TV18-Eenadu Television deal can be inked.
Obviously, the political class is silent. Obviously, TV18′s competitors won’t touch the story for reasons not difficult to imagine. Obviously, The Hindu won’t even publish a media column for reasons not difficult to fantasise.
But there has been no serious discussion of the implications of the deal on the media or on democracy in the mainstream media. Not on any of Network18′s usually high-decibel shows since the tie-up was announced on 3 January 2012. Not even on Karan Thapar‘s media show on CNN-IBN, The Last Word.
Print media coverage too has at best been sketchy. Even the newspapers and newsmagazines which have attempted to probe the complexities of the menage-a-trois, The Economic Times and The Indian Express, Outlook* and India Today, have barely managed to go beyond the numbers into the nuance.
Anchored by Girish Nikam, a former Eenadu reporter who wrote five years ago on Eenadu‘s travails, the RSTV debate—with an honourable mention for sans serif in the third segment—flags all the important issues raised by the deal and underlines the role public service television can play in the service of the public when the corporate media gives up—or gives in.
Some of the comments made by three of the four participants on The Big Picture:
S. Nihal Singh, former editor of The Statesman: “My first reaction [on reading of the deal] was that it was time for India to have a really good anti-monopoly law for media, which is the norm in all democratic countries in the world, including the most advanced….
“The press council of India is totally dysfunctional because of the new chairman Justice Markandey Katju, who is baiting the media, who doesn’t believe in conversing with the media, or exchanging views with the media.”
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Madhu Trehan, founder-editor of India Today and director, content, of the soon-to-be-launched media site, News Laundry: “It need not have happened if the government and corporates were more alert. One person owns much too much….
“Already every policy is decided by corporates as the 2G tapes (of Niira Radia) show. Not only is it dangerous that Mukesh Ambani will be deciding what policy will be decided, as you know has happened in the past, but he will also decide whether we can talk about it, or criticise it or expose it….
“Why is Reliance interested in media? It is not for money; it is obviously for influence. Rupert Murdoch was endorsing PMs and Presidents in three continents. Now we have the richest man in the country owning the largest network. Yes, there is an independent trust, but I don’t believe that. The purpose is to control the media. You are influencing policy, you are influencing how the government decides, and now you are going to decide how the people will hear about about you and the government….
“When a politician or a government spokesman speaks, we don’t believe them, but when somebody like Rajdeep Sardesai or Sagarika Ghose speaks, or anyone at IBN7 or TV18 comes on, we presume we should believe them. Now there is a big question mark [when RIL has indirect control over CNN-IBN]….
“In a deal of this size we are looking at very subtle plants of stories, subtle angles, subtly putting things in a certain way so that people think along in a certain way for a particular way. I don’t know if anyone can shut the door. It’s too late.”
“Oligopolistic tendencies are visible in global media today, whether it is Silvio Berlusconi or Rupert Murdoch, the fact is they exercise humongous influence not on media but politics. Are we headed down the same road? At this time, the answer seems to be yes. Is it good? The universal answer from the question is that it isn’t, not just because it affects the quality of news but because it affects the quality of politics….
“The entry of big capital is not new or news. What has happened in this case is a big distinction between foreign investment and domestic. Because of 4G, because the same business house owns the pipe, owns the content, there could also be another issue of monopoly. If I were the owner, I would say there needs to be a publicly visible ombudsmanship [to dispel the doubts]….
“There is room for concern, there is room for elements of self-rgulation. As a country we are not able to legislate for two reasons. One because of the influence business houses have on policy making. And two, when you bring in legislation (on regulation) up, the other group that is affected are politicians who own media houses of their own. You are talking about now a coalition of forces which the public is incapable of handling. You won’t see Parliament doing the kind of regulation they should, in an open manner, because there are interests on all sides.”
Although his reputation as a political journalist lies in tatters after the Niira Radia tapes, Vir Sanghvi is still a marquee food name in the Hindustan Times‘ Sunday magazine, Brunch. When not reporting for his paper’s hunger project, former HT managing editor Samar Halarnkar whips up a food column in the business daily Mint, titled Our Daily Bread.
Business Standard opinion pages editor Mihir S. Sharma used to do a food column of sorts in his former port of call, The Indian Express even while he was gorging on sweet meat. And rare is the journalist who doesn’t confess to spending quality time in the kitchen to “destress”.
Which leads us to ask, after cooking up stuff at their day-job—in a manner of speaking—does cooking food come naturally to journalists? Or can only a cook who knows what to serve for the body know what it takes to serve for the mind?
Sourish Bhattacharyya writes about the latest chef on the block in Mail Today:
Journalists seem to have discovered a second career in the kitchen. [Former ToI and Express staffer] Satish Warrier led the way with the much- acclaimed Gunpowder in Hauz Khas Village and now Arun Kumar, journalist-turned-filmmakerturned-chef (in picture, above), has rescued Zambar from its amateurish foray into South Indian cuisine….
Unlike Jiggs Kalra, who was the first journalist to get into the food business but has never cooked in his life, Arun Kumar ( like Satish Warrier) has been a serious hobby chef. He picked up recipes on his many filmmaking assignments across the country and replicated them for Ritu Dalmia’s catering company.
After gripping the nation’s attention for nearly a year, the Niira Radia tapes that brought the politics-business-media nexus into sharp focus, is now on a slow but screechy rewind.
The lobbyist Radia has shut shop; arrested politicians (Kanimozhi) are on the way out of jail; the corporate bosses and business executives have secured bail; the government is busy reassessing the quantum of the scam (from Rs 173,000 crore to zero-loss to something more agreeable) and the case goes on.
Now, Vir Sanghvi, the former editor of the Hindustan Times, who “suspended” his weekly column in the Delhi paper and was redesignated “Advisor, HT Media” instead of “Advisory Editorial Director, HT Media”, after he was caught in conversations with Radia, claims he is on the way to resurrecting his “Counterpoint”.
Why did you feel the need to withdraw the column and from political journalism?
Because the allegation was that I was hand-in- glove with the Congress and that I was willing to offer Counterpoint to industrialists who wanted me to write things about them. These were damaging allegations. There are two ways to react to it. One is to say they are fake and I will ignore them. Or there’s my way. Which is to say they are fake and until I can prove they are fake, I will not do anything because I think it’s only reasonable that I go away and prove my innocence. I took the second approach.
Are you going to revive the column?
Yeah. Once I finish shooting the two television shows I’m working on.
For the record, HT replaced Sanghvi’s column in the same slot with a column bylined Chanakya six months after he “suspended” his.
The more-than-just-a-neutral-observer position taken by sections of the media on the Anna Hazare agitation has clearly begun to rile politicians, and at least two of them cutting across party lines have argued in the last couple of days that the media too must be brought under the purview of the proposed anti-corruption legislation.
Exhibit A: Union minister for law and social justice, Salman Khurshid.
According to a report in The Hindu, Khurshid asked Headlines Today executive editor Rahul Kanwal as to why media corruption should not be investigated under the Team Anna version of the Lokpal bill.
“Do I need to go back to the Niira Radia tapes? Now you are asking why the government has not investigated. If we go ahead with the investigation, we would be accused of being insensitive. If we do, there would be a mass moment for the media.”
Exhibit B: Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Again, according to a report in The Hindu, Mulayam’s demand that the media also be brought under the Lokpal was met with thumping of desks by his colleagues.
“We [Samajwadi Party] suffered in the hands of media [during the polls],” he said during a debate on corruption. Even as a section of the treasury and opposition benche demanding that “media corruption” be also inquired into by Lokpal, Mulayam went on to state that it had become a practice for electronic channels to collect money during polls and air views in support of one party.
Photograph: Television reporters deliver their piece to camera at the Ramlila grounds in New Delhi, against the backdrop of the stage on which Anna Hazare is fasting for the Lokpal bill
The mention of TV news in India brings up the usual names among news aficionados—Times Now, NDTV 24×7 and NDTV India, Aaj Tak and Headlines Today, CNN-IBN and IBN Awaaz, et al.
But there is another player in the ring from India’s oldest satellite network. And Zee News, says its CEO Punit Goenka, is the only one among the lot making money.
In an interview in the 1 July 2011 issue of Campaign India, Goenka says:
“The news business is doing phenomenally well for Zee. We are the only news entity in the country that makes money. All other news entitites in this country are losing money as of today. From that perspective, that’s working well.
“We have to expand in the news genre in order to enter into the English language (news sphere). We have so far been focusing on Hindi and other regional markets which have done really well. Now we’ll be rolling out in the next two to three years into the English languages.”
In conversation number #132 in the infamous Niira Radia tapes, the lobbyist whose name has become synonymous with the 2G scam, talks to M.K. Venu, then of The Economic Times, in July 2009:
Venu: Is Manoj (Modi) is here (in Delhi) today also, no?
Radia: Yeah, he is here, he is leaving in the afternoon, later part of the afternoon. We are meeting Prannoy (Roy of NDTV) today. We need to support Prannoy, you know… We feel it needs to be supported.
Now, the penny drops.
Money Life, the personal finance magazine run by the investigative journalist Sucheta Dalal, reports that the American investment firm D.E. Shaw has picked up a 14.2% stake in NDTV, providing an exit to another blue chip investor, Goldman Sachs, which held an equivalent stake.
Reports Money Life:
“Interestingly, the D.E. Shaw investment in NDTV has happened in less than two weeks since it joined hands with Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) to enter the Indian financial services sector. Now we know that Mukesh Ambani has a soft spot for NDTV’s promoters and anchors and that they had previously approached him for an investment.”
Manoj Modi is Mukesh Ambani’s Man Friday. Niira Radia represented Mukesh Ambani and counted NDTV Imagine among her many clients before the 2G scam broke.
M.J. Akbar‘s Sunday Guardian reported in March that Radia was behind the January 2010 launch of a book by bureaucrat-turned-politician N.K. Singh in London, for which Ambani, Venu and NDTV’s Barkha Dutt travelled together on the same plane.
In the inaugural column, Chanakya who describes himself “as an outside admirer of the Left”, suggests the purging of Prakash Karat after the Left defeat in West Bengal.
So, who could Chanakya be?
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Hindustan Times has had a strange history with pseudonymous authors.
In December 2008, Raju Narisetti, the founder of Mint, the business daily launched by HT, exited the paper in the wake of an open letter by “a serving IAS officer writing under the pseudonym Athreya“, which attacked prime minister Manmohan Singh.
The open letter by the IAS officer led to a question being posed to the government by the opposition BJP in Parliament and an abrasive response from then home minister P. Chidambaram.
Narisetti wrote a blog post answering Chidambaram and then printed the clarification in the paper on the use of pseudonyms:
“In November 1937, the Modern Review, then India’s most well-regarded journal of opinion, published an article on Jawaharlal Nehru written by Chanakya, an obvious pseudonym. The author hit out at Nehru’s latent dictatorial tendencies and his “intolerance for others and a certain contempt for the weak and inefficient”. Its author warned: “Jawaharlal might fancy himself as a Caesar.” There were howls of protest from loyalists until it was revealed much later that Nehru himself was the author of this piece.”
Thanks to Niira Radia, “Chanakya” returns to Kasturba Gandhi Marg.
The former Congress prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao was routinely referred to as Chanakya. Hindustan Times chairman Shobana Bharatiya is a Congress member of Parliament.
Among the two-dozen conversations on the Amar Singh CD—fondly referred to in media circles as “Amar Singh ki amar kahaniyan“—is one involving Prabhu Chawla, the former editor of India Today and currently the editorial director of The New Indian Express.
The conversation is centred on a press conference Amar Singh is threatening to call to tell the world about how an Aaj Tak reporter (Prachi Jawadekar Wagh, now with NDTV) sneaked into a hospital ward in Bombay, where the film star Amitabh Bachchan was recuperating and allegedly invaded his privacy. Chawla’s call to the then Samajawadi Party leader is aimed at stalling the press meet.
In a cover-mention titled “Is the Indian Express running out of steam?”, Gupta takes questions from the adman-columnist Anil Thakraney over oranges fresh from his farm in Haryana.
Shekhar Gupta reveals that Sonia Gandhi is the most interesting interview guest he has had, and that he passed along a story on the President blocking a Supreme Court judge’s promotion to a rival newspaper because the judge had ordered the sealing of the building from where the Express operated.
He also says journalists caught on the Niira Radia tapes “definitely” crossed the line:
Anil Thakraney: Niira Radia didn’t call you?
Shekhar Gupta: I’m sure she must have.
You think the journos caught speaking to her were guilty of a breach of ethics?
SG: Of the 100-odd people she may have spoken to in that period in the media, about five or six have got caught in varying degreees of indiscretion. It’s OK to string along a source; journalists are SOBs (sons of bitches), so that’s fine. The worst indiscretion would be quid pro quo. That has not been established in anybody’s case.
Do you think these journalsits crossed the line or not?
SG: Oh, yes, they definitely did.
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Gupta also says:
#Am I happier compared to where we were three or even 10 years back? Yes. Am I happy, satisfied and in a lean-back state of mind? No. The potential of the Express is still unrealised….
# I don’t think any editor can say, “I have got it right”. The beauty of journalism is that it brings you surprises and challenges every day.
# Oh yes, we do (make money). Our balance sheet is in the public domain. All of us get our salaries paid, and we get paid very decent salaries.
# The Express is a top-of-the-mind paper…. It must go to every Indian who matters. While we want to improve our numbers, we don’t want to flood the market with cheap copies.
# There are a lot of young Indians who want their newspaper to be stimulating, intelligent and empowering. Only two papers in India fulfil that role: the Hindu and the Express.
# I always carried two visiting cards: one of “Editor-in-Chief” and the other of “Group CEO”. I said to myself, as long as I am using them in the ratio of 10:1, I am doing fine.
# I find the Times of India (Bombay edition) a comprehensive newspaper; it’s very good. I have great respect for that organisation because they change with the times.
# The qualities a good journalist must possess: Knowledge, language, enterprise, contacts… all that you can develop with time. The most important attribute has to be curiosity.
# Journalism means that when you get a piece of information, you verify it. Even if a reporter has seen someone steal something, she should still ask the person before publishing. The new definition of courageous journalism seems to be: You have the information, you publish it. You don’t check with the other guy. That’s the question I would raise about the Radia tapes as well. This is hit-and-run.
