Vadra revelations and the Print media

Activist turned politician Arvind Kejriwal in his recent stint of revelation of corruption in high places have caught hold of the links of the corporate world and the government. Even though corporate-government ties have already been exposed during the 2g scam. Now reliance industries is on the dock and kejriwal alleges that subsequent governments at the centre have favored them. NDA and the UPA governments both have favoured the reliance group in various ways. These were the revelations made by IAC president Arvind Kejriwal.

In an day and age when media earns revenue from the corporate houses and many corporate houses owning media outlets, it is important to analyze how media reacts to a story where a corporate house is involved. Interestingly in an interview of Manu Joseph of Open Magazine by Newslaundry he admits having suffered loss of advertisement because his magazine carried the famous(infamous) Radia Tapes in which heavyweight corporate were also involved.   In this article an analysis of the articles published in the various national dailies is presented. The analysis discusses the space devoted to the story along with the tone and tenor of the story.

The Indian Express :

The Indian Express carries the story in the front page just below the main lead. The story is written in a balanced manner carrying the statements from both the sides, i.e. the Arvind kejriwals allegations and the statements made by the Reliance India limited.The story mentions that Kejriwals expose was not “pretty big” in his revelation as he himself had promised that much of it is already has been reported in the media. More or less the story was balanced. But what is interesting is that along side the story Shekhar Gupta’s interview with Anna Hazare’s interview is carried with prominence. The interview is titled as “Anna’s advice for former protege:‘Don’t attack too many together’ where Anna Hazare advises Kejriwal to excersise restraint while attacking personalities restraint while targeting personalities one after theother, without taking any case to its logical conclusion.

The Times of India:

This newspaper carried the story as its main lead on 1^st of November. The whole story comes in three pieces written differently.

 In the main story the allegations leveled by Kejriwal are discussed in details. The story was detailed in its description of the allegations and also in describes the press conference in details. The article was written in simple words and would be intelligible to an ordinary reader the economic terms used by the activist. Times of India seemed to speak from Kejriwals side. The same story carried issues like Gas pricing and kejriwals call for a total against the loot of public money. The main story only presented the side of the IAC and clarification by the RIL was carried separately in a small box along with the main story. The main story also came with a sub-heading saying: Chaotic Conference where they mentions how a former Congress worker Jagdish Sharma shouted slogans and tried to hurl a shoe at the stage. He was overpowered by IAC supporters and led out.

The Hindustan Times:

On the publication of 1^st November,2012, the paper (The Hindustan Times) brought out two stories related to the Reliance/Congress affair. The first was found to be on the front page as the lead story, that occupied 3 columns, and the rest was continued in the 6^th page. The other story was seen to be in the 10^th page of the edition. After having a brief analysis on the stories covered by the said newspaper, one can easily recognize that the tone of the paper on the issue was more or less biased towards the U.P.A government.

The First story headlined, “Now, Kejriwal fires old ammo at Mukesh”. By having read the story, it can be clear with whom the newspaper stands. The tone of the story tends to tilt more towards the ruling government. The story starts it’s sentence with, “After taking on the Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra and B.J.P president Nitin Gadkari…”. The paper also used certain phrases like “anti-corruption activist turned politician Arvind Kejriwal…”, etc. By such phrase, the paper tries to show Kejriwal’s shift from an activist to a power hungry politician, which may seem very critical in nature.

The other thing that sounds more convincing about the biasness is the use of a sentence “The press conference also witnessed high drama when a Congress worker wanted to question Kejriwal, but was 8i87heckled by the camerapersons and I.A.C volunteers, and was forced to leave the venue”. The sentence clearly tries to state that Kejriwal and his fellow mates were not ready or were afraid of the question that was about to be put before them by the Congress worker.  Though certain details were also found regarding the matter, it was found to be limited and in brief. The evidences of the allegations provided by Kejriwal were given only in the 6^th page. The readers have to be very interested inorder to reach the continued page. The most important part about the story is that, the story is more of just what Kejriwal said and had alleged. It can be rightfully said that the newspaper had no important role to play in the story, except the arrangement and the structuring part. It can be seen that the newspaper had tried to show itself to be objective by giving some limited and brief details but ultimately it failed to do so.

The second story titled, “B.J.P to govt: Was Jaipal shifted to benefit R.I.L?”, was a bore because the entire story talked about what Jaswant Singh said, Likely, Singh said this, was said by Singh, Singh also wondered, Singh further said, etc. By going through the story, it could be said that the tone of the story was similar as of the previous one, having been started by saying, “Even as I.A.C launched a scathing attack on the government over alleged benefits being provided to Reliance Industries LTD…”. The word ‘scathing’ seems a bit judgmental in this regard.

It can be just a coincidence, but it cannot be ignored that Shobhana Bhartia, the editor of the Hindustan Times happens to be the daughter of the industrialist K.K Birla. Therefore, one cannot forget the roots and that she may as well have similar views towards corporate houses as of her father’s. So, supporting another Industrialist or Corporate lobbies may be expected from her. Also it is well known to all, that, she had been nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and had also received ‘Padma Shri’ for journalism, though criticized by many. There have been many claims that, both the Padma Shri award and the Rajya Sabha nomination, which she received during the U.P.A government’s regime, were merely the rewards for certain biasness towards the Congress and Sonia Gandhi in respect to the paper’s editorial policy. Thus, it is very important to keep these factors in mind and analyze and as well as have a better understanding of the paper’s approach towards the interest of the Congress and the Corporate houses.

THE BENGAL POST, with The Times of India and The Telegraph

Attack on one of the most prominent and influential industrial giant, Mukesh Ambani by Arvind Kejriwal is been treated differently by various English language both national and regional newspapers in India. Started as a regional newspaper from Kolkata which has been able to capture the reader’s attention in less than 3 years, The Bengal Post considered this story as one of the important news. Being a regional newspaper, the lead was covered by state news, but even though RIL (Reliance India Limited) versus Kejriwal story got the place on front page as a anchor story. The space covered was 14 inches 3coloumns and also continued in inside page covering space of 18inches 2coloumns plus important points of press release covering same length and space covering two columns.

The story doesn’t seem biased to any side, since it has presented every claims and accusations made by Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan. After reading the story anyone wil become clear about the issue and can also be able to understand the background story and more importantly its implications to general people of India.

From the headline itself one can make out that RIL is playing biggest role in functioning of most important political parties of country as well as the functioning of our government. The headline “Both Congress and BJP in Ambani’s pocket, says IAC” is forecasting the role of Ambani in manipulating the major parties. And if we compare same story with the most circulated English newspaper of India, The Times Of India’, the same story or the accusations of IAC has not been carried at al whereas with the heading “Both Congress and BJP attacked Kejriwal” is being published in inside page in same day’s newspaper. If we go through the pages of the most circulated and popular English newspaper of the eastern-region covering north-east also “The Telegraph” we won’t find single story on this particular issue.

The major portion of population mostly well educated depends upon these English newspapers for the news or information on current happenings. And after reading the news stories they discussed it in their offices or any kind of working places with their colleagues and also in the homes with family members. The public sphere will be created and newspaper not only become a forum or platform for discussions and debate but also creates platform for discussions and debates in open space. But ignoring this kind of story of importance to general mass and simply keeping major portion of population out of opinion or knowledge will create knowledge gap and that will be major setback of the national progress.

Noam Chomsky’s 2^nd filter of his ‘a propaganda model’ from his book manufacturing consent is relevant in this context. “The advertising license to do business: the second filter” talks about how the media house is dependent upon corporate house because of the advertisement. Gradually, newspapers started becoming dependent on advertising revenue. With the advent of advertising feeding newspapers and other media outlets many were ceased to exist. “The advertisers’ choices influence media prosperity and survival” which is rightly said by Chomsky and become more prevalent in recent time.

Attacking the industrial conglomerates or supporting those who exposes the misdeeds of those is directly loosing large scale of money without which their existence will be questioned. Therefore many newspapers might have ignored the story.   

Worlds Happiest Nations

Happiness is often a very personal experience, even though related to people around us. I remember reading a quote by one of the most popular artist Salvador Dali saying,"Each Morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure that of being Salvador Dali" This is other way of saying that by being what i am and with whatever resources i have, i am happy. The aim of this article is not to tell what makes us happy but to discuss a very interesting report published by the the United Nations on happiness called "The Worlds First Happiness Report".

A conference was mandated by the United Nations General Assembly. The report was published by the Earth Institute and Co-edited by the institutes director Jeffrey Sach. The report demands a new worldwide demand for more attention to happiness  and absence of misery as criteria for governments policy.

The report is interesting from many points of view. it says that happier countries tend to be richer countries but more important than income are social factors such as strength of social support, absence of corruption and the degree of personal freedom. the authors have cited the example of the United States which has achieved striking economic and technological progress over the past half century without gains in the self reported happiness of its citizens. Instead , uncertainties and anxieties have widened considerably, social trust is in decline and confidence in government is at an all time low.

Happiest countries in the world are in Northern Europe(Denmark,Norway,Finland,Netherlands). The least happy countries are all poor countries in Sub Saharan Africa(Togo, Benin, Central African Republic,Sierra Leone). It is not just wealth that makes people . Factors like political freedom , strong social networks and an absence of corruption are together important than income alone in explaining well being differences between top and bottom countries in the rating of happiness.

The report cites unemployment as  a major cause of much unhappiness as much as bereavement or separation. A work, job security and good relationship and good relationship do more for job satisfaction than high pay and convenient hours. The report also says that stable family life and enduring marriages are important for happiness of parents/children.

India as a nation mired by corruption,unemployment, poverty and a tendency to copy the Western nations has resulted in deteriorating social relation. We would like to see our nation in a much elevated postion in this report than in its present position.

The link is of the happiness report:
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Sachs%20Writing/2012/World%20Happiness%20Report.pdf

Propaganda, new media and racism

In the matter of the exodus of the north-east people, as important as safeguarding the cogency of the idea of free flow of information, is recognising and discreetly annihilating racial ideology from Indian society, says PRIVAT GIRI

Posted/Updated Friday, Nov 09 01:18:34, 2012, The Hoot

The recent exodus of North-East Indians living in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune in the wake of mass circulation of SMS and MMS warning a possible “reprisal” against the killing of Muslims in Kokrajhar, has generated a fresh debate about the role of media in a democracy. Two crucial issues needs to be fore-grounded here. One, there is a need for a substantive debate on the question of media ethics and the need to differentiate between propaganda and rhetoric in the epoch of media modernity. Two, there is this equally important issue of racial discrimination and a sense of cultural alienation suffered by the north-east Indians in “mainland India”.

The SMS and MMS contained fabricated phone videos of alleged atrocities inflicted on Muslims in Assam. The SMS warning a possible violence against the north-east Indians were circulated simultaneously among the Muslim youths and the north-east people. The entire episode smacked of an endeavour to dismantle the already fragile communal relationship among various communities in India and, more importantly, it signalled the entry of propaganda and rhetoric in the digital/new media platform.

Truth and public opinion

The use of media for the purpose of influencing the mind of the people is not a new phenomenon. There were the rhetoricians, professional speechwriters in the ancient Hellenic world (Poe 2011). Plato complained that there were charlatans who were not really interested in the Truth at all. Rather, their only aim was to teach politicians to flatter their constituents and construct a favourable public opinion. Plato wanted to find the Truth, by which he meant reasoned discussion, a kind of debate in which real people present arguments and the other real people affirm or refute them by means of logic (Poe 2011).

A similar idea of attaining Truth through unrestricted public discussion among citizens was the basic principle guiding the philosophy of press freedom that developed in Britain during the eighteenth century (Keane 1991). John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859) offers three reasons why the guarantee of freely circulating opinion is essential. First, any opinion which is silenced by the government because it is allegedly false may prove to be true, in a sense that it may conform to the facts and survive vigorous counter-arguments about those facts. Second, though an opinion turns out to be false, it often contains an ounce or two of truth. The prevailing opinion on the matter is rarely the whole truth. Finally, Mill argues that even if the opinion is the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, it will soon degenerate into prejudice--into a “dead dogma, not a living truth”--if it goes unchallenged.

Mill developed his argument during the period when the main antagonist intervening “free information flow” was the government. Government censorship was the foremost challenge facing the champions of the “free flow of opinion”. The only existing form of modern communication channelling and facilitating “opinion flow” was the print and the press in particular. On the contrary, today, there has been colossal transformation in the media landscape. Several sophisticated media such as telegraph, telecommunication, cinema, radio, television, mobile communication, and internet have been introduced. Media ecology characterised by digitalisation and convergence is a big industry catering to and fulfilling the diverse needs and interests of various stakeholders. Of course, Mill might have anticipated this possible future alteration in media and communication technologies, but his rationality behind the justification of the “free flow of opinion” needs retrospection, especially within the context of changing habits of media use where vested interests have entered their realm.

Opinion and propaganda

Indeed, John Stuart Mill did not consider the flipside definition of “opinion” which was due to gain special attention from political critics during the mid-twentieth century after the Second World War. That alternative form of “opinion” was “propaganda”. Prior to the War, the term propaganda was used quite openly and freely. It invited negative connotation after the Second World War when Hitler vehemently used media, particularly the radio, for disseminating anti-Jew sentiments (Chomsky 1997). Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their book Manufacturing Consent, defines propaganda as a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one’s group. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out and construct and manipulate information to control the public mind. Chomsky and Herman caution of immediate threat to public opinion because of the size, concentrated ownership, and profit orientation of the dominant media firms, particularly in U.S., and also because of heavy reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and “experts” funded and approved by the agents of power ( Herman and Chomsky 1988).

While considering the above facts, propaganda may be also defined as constructed opinion or information aimed at influencing public mind or sentiment for the purpose of furthering the vested interest of the constructor or the manipulator. Here, the very contradiction between Mill’s “true opinion” and the “constructed opinion” needs to be figured out and adjudicated. And this will be a big challenge for the media policy-makers. The exodus of the north-east people from the Indian metropolitan cities, after the mass circulation of doctored video footages through mobile telephony and social networking sites, is one of the reflections of such contradiction. 

India had never confronted such extensive use of the new media for propaganda before, though use of propaganda in the State broadcasting network is a recognised fact. During the colonial period, the imperial government made a liberal use of radio for countering propaganda from both Berlin and the growing “Home Rule” movement (Thomas 1993). Even after independence, that tradition was retained (Thomas 1993) by the new Indian State, mainly in governance of State broadcasting, until the promulgation of the Prasar Bharati Act, 1990. The enactment of the Prasar Bharati Act, that freed broadcasting from government’s monopoly to some degree, was an effort to legitimise free flow of information ( free flow of information suffered a heavy setback during the Emergency) within the masses. Simultaneously, during the nineties, India adopted the neo-liberal economic policy bringing far-reaching reforms in its economic structure. One of the outcomes of such a change was felt in the media industry brought about by the rapid entry of satellite television, mobile communication, and internet, thus transforming media habits, use and choice of the people and guaranteeing de-monopolisation of information vis-à-vis opinion flow.

Thereafter, India’s information environment appeared optimistic. But the events in recent years, where media failed to safeguard the lustre of free information environment and non-interference, have raised critical questions on the Indian legitimacy of “free flow of information”. The exodus of the north-east people is the classic account of such failure in addition to numerous other instances such as the issue of media trial, consolidation and concentration of media firms, irresponsible reporting (the case of Mumbai attack), to name a few. Under these settings, India needs a clear and integrated information and communication policy without invalidating the Constitutional right to “Freedom of speech and expression”.

It may not always be feasible to arrive at a single answer for a question. While explicating the matter of the exodus of the north-east people, as important as safeguarding the cogency of the “idea of free flow of information”, is recognising and discreetly annihilating “racial ideology” from the Indian society.

Racism and India

Racial discrimination against the people from the north-east in mainland India is an established fact. Contemporary Indian political and social science have remained mute on the process of racialisation of the north-east (Thounaojam 2012). No extensive literature exists that explores and studies it (Thounaojam 2012). However, if we carefully decipher the historical lineage of “racial ideology” in India, we need to go back to colonial times. British rule in India lasted from 1757 to 1947. The most fundamental and far-reaching policy that the British introduced to Indian society was the structure of political representation in the legislative assemblies based on the notions of proportionality (Chakraborty 2002). Nationalists such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi abhorred this process and ideology that governed it, namely, communalism or racism(Chakraborty 2002). Among many other things, one of the key changes brought by such legislation in the Indian society is “race consciousnesses” among its subjects. And the post-colonial state in India only expanded such ideology and has failed to subvert it. Instead, race consciousness is being institutionalised by the political establishments for petty political gains. But now, after the Kokrajhar incident and its aftermath, it is quite apparent that not only political institutions but also some extremist elements are striving to make the best-possible use of such deep-rooted fault line in the Indian society. Thus, in addition to the challenges upholding the nitty-gritty of “free information flow”, another major challenge facing India today is to terminate the very characteristic of race thinking in the India society which is evident in its social interactions.

The media which are considered to be the guardian of free flow of information have a big role to play. During the initial days of the turmoil in Kokrajhar the mainstream media had no clue of what really was happening there. This reflects the extent of understanding our mainstream media have on the social issues concerning India. Media in India are centred heavily towards politics. The mainstream media and the regional media should work in tandem and exchange information, ideas, and concerns. Particularly in a country of India’s diversity, the media should reflect and accommodate the voices of its entire people having so that they develop a better understanding of one another and in the long run annihilate “racial ideology” from the Indian society.

References:

Akoijam, Bimal, A., 1990, Ghosts of Colonial Modernity: Identity and Conflict in the Eastern Frontier of South Asia, in Peace in India’s North-east: Meaning, Metaphor and Method, ed. Prasenjit Biswas and C. Joshua Thomas, New Delhi: Regency Publications.

Chakraborty, Dipesh, 2002, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the wake of subaltern studies, New Delhi: Permanent Black.

Chomsky, Noam, 1997, Propaganda and Control of Public Mind (Recorded at Harvard Trade Union Programme, Cambridge, Massachusetts), ArtDamage Productions: San Francisco.

Herman, S., Edward and Chomsky, Noam, 1988, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Delhi: Random House, 2010.

Keane, John, 1991, Liberty and the Press, in Media and Democracy, John Wiley & Sons

Mill, Stuart John, 1859, On Liberty, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb, UK: Penguin, 1985.

Poe, T., Marshall, 2011, Homo loquens: Humanity in the Age of Speech, in A History of Communications: Media and Society from the evolution of the Speech to the Internet, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Thomas, N, Pradip, 1993, Broadcasting and State in India: towards relevant alternatives,International Communication Gazette; 51; 19, Sage Publications.

Thounaojam, Swar, 2012, A Preface to Racial Discourse in India: North-east and Mainland, VOL XLVII NO 32, Economic and Political Weekly.

(The writer is a research scholar in the Department of Mass Communication, Sikkim University.)