The sudden collapse of the Saradha Group in Bengal is
yet another reminder of the fact that a huge chunk of Indian media is
run by tainted money. The group set up several news channels and print
publications in Hindi and Bengali, among other languages, and the
failure of the core chit fund business means journos have been turfed
out of jobs.
The Sahara Group, which has been running illegal money-raising
schemes and asked by Sebi to wind up two of them, is still playing ducks
and drakes with the legal system. It runs several print and TV
channels. One cannot but wonder about the future of its newsroom if push
comes to shove.
We can multiply such examples in every state, and we can also draw
similar conclusions from the fact that many news organisations are run
by political parties not known for their probity. Among them, the YSR
Congress’
Sakshi channels. Their boss in still in jail. Once again,
Sakshi is not the exception. Every state has political parties, with dubious sources of funding, running media.
The question is this: if large parts of media, possibly even the
overwhelming part by volume, are run with funny money, how can Indian
journalism ever be credible? The abuse that many senior journalists get
on social media – including
Firstpost – is often the result of readers/viewers being unable to believe that any story is the result of honest journalism.
Can this change in the current climate of suspicion that all news media are dominated by vested interests?
Reuters
The answer lies, first, in acknowledging this truth. We are in bed
with powerful interests. It also lies in admitting to two shades of grey
in terms of credibility and bias.
First, one has to question the presumption that there can
ever be completely neutral and unbiased journalism in a situation where
media has to be funded by someone. The best we can hope for is that the
limited bias inherent in a media house owned by some moneyed interest or
the other will be countered by opposite biases in some other media
houses.
Second, we also have to doubt the assumption that somehow
media can be both credible and commercially viable at the same time.
Good journalism costs money; a serious investigation into wrongdoing can
swallow lakhs of rupees and months of painstaking effort to bring to
fruition. This can be paid for only by readers or advertisers. But how
many readers are willing to pay Rs 15 daily for a
Times of India?
How many advertisers will be willing to pay you good money if, at some
point, they are going to be targeted for their own wrongs?
This leads me to my first conclusion: Collectively media can be
independent, by neutralising each other’s biases, but individually we
will have limitations on perfect credibility.
This is why people may watch
Sakshi even though they know it is an YSR Congress channel. Ditto for
Sun TV,
which may have a DMK bias, and Jaya TV (AIADMK). As a society, by
letting each one play out their biases, we end up getting a better
approximation of the truth.
Biases emanate from multiple sources.
The first bias is the personal one. If I like
Narendra Modi
and you don’t, our journalism will reflect our respective biases. We
may couch our writing with arguments this way or that, but underlying it
all will be our personal biases. Personal bias (predilection would be
my preferred word) cannot be eliminated, and often we would not be human
if we don’t believe in anything or anyone. We have to live with it.
The second source of bias is related to how journalism is funded. In
India, there are many categories of funding sources. Here are some of
them.
#1: Big business with surplus cash. This is the main
legitimate source of media funding. The Aditya Birla Group has a stake
in TV Today, the Reliance group has funded the promoters of Network18
(publishers of
Firstpost), and Kotak Mahindra has a stake in
Business Standard, and so on. The inherent blind spot for these media
houses is that they wouldn’t be seen as being objective about the
activities of their financial backers. The problem here is not the
source of funding alone but perception.
#2: Politically funded newspapers. This is where the
bulk of Indian journalism gets tainted, because political funding is
always the result of backdoor funding – unless something is specifically
designated as a party mouthpiece. Media writer
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar says
that “more than a third of news channels are owned by politicians or
politico-affiliated builders. An estimated 60 percent of cable
distribution systems are owned by local politicians.” These news
organisations will have clear political biases, not to speak of business
biases where the business interests of their political patrons are
concerned. Most Indian politicians are also aligned to business
interests.
#3: Plain and simple crooked money. Given the size
of India’s black economy, there are not enough legitimate businesses
which can use these hidden cash. Investing in media is one way to
launder black money. Media investments are not only small (for crooks,
that is), but also have the ability to yield big dividends in terms of
political clout and respectability to owners. As Shekhar Gupta writes in
The Indian Express
today: “If you have a couple of news channels and newspapers, a few
well known (and well connected) journalists as your employees, give them
a fat pay cheque, a Merc, and they solve your problem of access and
power. They also get you respect, as you get to speak to, and rub
shoulders with top politicians, even intellectuals, at awards and events
organised by your media group. It is the cheapest ticket to clout,
protection and a competitive edge.”
#4: Mainstream media houses helped by covert compromises, even blackmail.
There are many legitimate media houses, both in English and in regional
media, that do regular journalism unaligned to politics. But to make
themselves viable, they use covert strong-arm tactics to earn revenues.
The Zee-Jindal case
is alleged to be one such example, but it is a well-known fact that
many in the regional media play this game to stay afloat. Their message
to advertisers: “If you don’t advertise, we may write nasty things about
you.”
#5: Formal alliances of media and business interests. In order to protect their commercial interests, some media groups such as
The Times of India
have sections where news is paid for, and advertisers are given private
treaties that more or less guarantee them some good publicity in return
for advertising revenues. This model has now been taken up by many
other media houses and is no longer unique to
The Times. In any
case, almost all publications create specific sections just for the
advertiser and call them marketing supplements, or advertiser-sponsored
supplements.
#6: A ready source of rentals. Some media houses
what obtained cheap land in the past from government are able to stay
afloat by using rental incomes from property. The
Indian Express lives partly of incomes from its real estate in Mumbai, and so does the
Statesman.
The Free Press Journal exists as a newspaper only to legitimise the real estate interests of its owners.
The short-point is this: media is compromised in many ways, and credibility can only be a shade of grey.
The larger question that journalists need to ask themselves is this:
can real journalism ever be fully viable without compromises?
My own (partial) answer is that digital journalism, by bringing down
content costs dramatically (due to very low distribution costs) is one
solution. Not surprisingly, powerful vested interests, including
governments, want to control freedom on the net. They are not lovers of
freedom.
But the long-term answer surely must lie in non-commercial funding
structures that reduce dependence on big business, tainted money or
dubious compromises.
Courtesy-
http://www.firstpost.com/business/shades-of-grey-the-many-myths-of-media-freedom-733151.html
