An Instant World

I am honoured to be invited to deliver this evening’s Lecture in honour of Prabhash Joshi. He was a family friend and warm companion and an esteemed colleague in the Indian Express and beyond. We shared many professional and social values and I admired his dedication to the causes he held dear. Our bonds were cemented during the Emergency and remained so until the end, when he was campaigning against the rising menace of “paid news”.

Prabhash was close to JP and Ramnath Goenka, edited the Hindi version of “Everyman”, Aas Paas, from the Gandhi Peace Foundation during the Emergency and was later the founder-editor of Jansatta. His columns were widely read.

Modern media as we understand it was born not more than 300 years ago with the equivalent of the Reformation and Renaissance that unfolded globally. Change occurred with technological innovation which gained revolutionary momentum with the coming of the printing press, telegraph, the railway, steamship and cable, radio, film, TV, the integrated chip, computer, satellite, internet, cell phone, I-pod, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et al.

I was born in the radio age; entered journalism in the hot metal/rotary age when one had a 24-hour cycle of dak editions. I matured in the offset age with multiple editions and facsimile. And I retired in the early computer age. Now there is internet, “breaking news” and the social media which are all beyond my comprehension. We live in an instant, 24 x 7 interactive world. Nothing is the same. Disinformation and rumour compete with information.

The multi-media environment is different and changing. Managers and corporate owners rule. The media has for the most part become shallower in content and more tuned to sensation, entertainment and ratings. What we need to do in India today is to take stock, see where we are and where we should be headed. This cannot be done by a Fourth Press Commission as urged by some. The press cannot be seen in isolation but as part of the larger media scene.

At the end of World War-II, several influential figures in the US got together to set up the Hutchins Commission to review the state of the American press. The Commission emphasised social responsibility in the face of corporate manipulation and the need for fairness and balance. As the reigning post-war global power, the US media also had to take greater interest in international affairs. The Hutchins Report was widely cited even outside the United States.

Then in 1978, UNESCO appointed the MacBride Commission to look into global North-South relations between the information-rich news providers and global news agencies and the information-poor Third World to ensure another kind of political and social balance. This too had considerable influence.

Today, as described, the situation is entirely different. The Indian media has hugely multiplied and entered a totally new communication era with every man and women a citizen-journalist on social media. Everything is transmitted and analysed in real time. I would therefore strongly recommend the appointment of some of our wisest and best minds to reflect on how to harness the new media to new and constructive purpose. Such a Blue Ribbon Commission, preferably set up outside the Government, should consist of educationists, scientists, administrators, communicators, politicians, corporate leaders, social workers, labour leaders, cultural experts and women and must report to the nation. This could then form the basis for public debate and action on the way forward. There has to be a paradigm shift in thinking.

The media in India is currently in crisis and has suffered a severe loss of credibility. Managers have taken over from editors and gossip and sensation have supplanted news. Objectivity has suffered. If the print media is in trouble, sections of the electronic media have gone out of control. The Press Council is poorly structured and the electronic media has an even weaker and more limited self-regulating mechanism. The fast-multiplying social media is, however, uninhibited by any framework of control. It can be highly irresponsible, tendentious, faceless, self-serving and fragmenting and has often give currency to rumours and plants that have led to violence and turmoil.

In the media of today, the one who “breaks” the story, whatever its veracity, sets the stage. The rest follow as a pack, creating a subjective reality that may be far removed from the objective truth. Competition spurs unrestrained comment and gossip resulting in trial by the media and kangaroo courts. Institutional and individual reputations can be ruined in minutes with the trashing of due process. The new ethic renders persons and institutions guilty as “charged” by any unnamed busybody, until proven innocent.

Worse, news is easily politicised and parties and ideological groups enter the fray to build and play on manufactured sentiment. One can enumerate countless cases of this kind of reckless reporting, dubious sting operations and unsourced video-clips. Social media was responsible for triggering and fuelling the Kokrajhar and Muzaffarnagar riots. Gone are the days when the “Rashomon test” was applied and reporters were required to probe all facets of a story so that whatever was nearest the truth emerged and was reported as objectively as possible. See how the Arushi murder case and the more recent media arraignment of Justice Ganguly on grounds of sexual molestation of a law intern have been reported. The Judge was hounded and the “victim” has since refused to come forward and testify.

Embedded news was introduced by the US Government in coverage of the Iraq war. It was shamelessly aped by the mainline Indian media in its coverage of Anna Hazare’s “fast unto death” at the Ramlila ground a couple of years ago, and on occasion since. Nonetheless, it would be unfair to berate the press without acknowledging much good reporting and fair commentary.

Another ground for concern is the impatience of those in authority, including the corporate world through its power of advertising, to stifle freedom of expression. Book and film censorship have been staple, now even on such vague grounds as something being liable to “offend the sentiments” of unnamed sections of the population. M.F. Husain was brutally hounded into exile. Moral policing is rife and armed goons of political parties such as the Trinamool Congress and SSP and of the Left, BJP and even the Congress have wreaked havoc on their opponents, even getting away with murder. The law is unable to take its course on account of political partisanship, thus giving licence to coarse language and unruly behaviour. Unfortunately, the media all too often gives wide currency to such conduct and hosts debates and discussions that only inflame passions, divide society and elevate trivia to the level of high policy.

Despite the negative fallout of such trends, there appears to be a belief that democracies to do not regulate the media, for to do so would be to muzzle free expression. This is humbug. The US has a Federal Communications Commission that monitors standards and adjudicates complaints. The UK is re-moulding its Broadcast Complaints Commission while other countries have similar institutions. India is unique in having no statutory broadcast complaints authority. The complaints commission that was to be set up together with Prasar Bharati was set aside as a Broadcast Commission was proposed for the commercial channels. Since it would have created confusion if there were separate complaints bodies for Prasar Bharati and the commercial channels, the Prasar Bharati Complaints Commission was dropped while the broadcast commission was not enacted. In the result, there is no formal broadcast complaints authority. This is a grave lacuna.

The suggestion that there be one mega, omnibus media complaints commission for both the print and broadcast media is unviable. The two media are very different in character and a leviathan of the kind proposed would collapse under its own weight.

More damaging has been the indifference, even veiled hostility towards public service broadcasting.

The role of public service broadcasting has scarcely been understood in India. Nehru told the Constituent Assembly in 1948 that All-India Radio would be granted autonomy in due course, somewhat on the lines of the BBC. That never happened and though AIR was fairly independent in the early years, it was increasing seen as an official trumpet. One of its worst legacies was the creation of a stultified, Sanskritised Hindi as the official language of India under Dr Keskar, an early I&B Minister, that antagonised everybody. It promoted incomprehension rather than communication, quite ignoring the mandate of Article 351 that required the official language to borrow from all Indian languages, especially Urdu.

The Emergency saw the abolition of the AIR Code by Indira Gandhi and AIR was formally proclaimed an official handmaiden since the private media was considered anti-government and said to be in the hands of monopoly owners and the ‘jute press’. Alarmed by the Emergency experience, the Janata government set up a Committee to fashion an autonomous authority for broadcasting, This reported in 1978 only to be told by the then I&B Minister, L.K. Advani that it was mandated to advise on ‘autonomy’ but had recommended ‘independence’!

A Prasar Bharati Act was finally was passed in 1990 but was not notified for seven years until 1997 following the Supreme Court’s so-called airwaves judgement of 1995. Some further amendments followed in the wake of inter-party contestation, but the Corporation was firmly tied to the Government in terms of personnel, senior appointments, finance and personnel. It was a poor Act but, even so, a beginning. Alas, Prasar Bharati was never given a chance. What emerged and has remained is a highly governmental structure with bureaucrats and the I&B Ministry in control. This persists, with the bulk of the staff on deputation from government. A strong CEO has more recently had to confront the I&B Ministry and a stand-off prevails.

By its charter, a noble document, Prasar Bharati is required to cater to all sections of India’s extraordinarily diverse and plural society. The private channels, being commercial, have to earn their keep, largely from advertising, which is dependent on TRP or ratings. So what is broadcast is largely determined by what will fetch advertising support. Consequently, programmes have to cater to popular sport and entertainment and to the tastes of those who consume up-market merchandise and services.

By today’s yardstick, 30 per cent of the country lives below the poverty line while another 30 per cent hovers just above it. However, the harsh truth is that while every consumer is a citizen, not every citizen is a consumer which means that the aam admi, a dal-roti consumer, only gets the broadcast crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table whereas she needs information and knowledge for empowerment. What interest does the poor man have in hour after hour of such absolute trivia as the silly Priety Zinta-Ness Wadia wrangle, with shrill commentaries to boot?

Unfortunately Parliament, the media, the advertisers and the entertainment world have no use for Prasar Bharati, though it remains the best source of news, howsoever staidly reported. An inadvertent consequence of Prasar Bharati has been the eclipse of Radio by TV, a great loss to the nation. AIR has become a poor relative. Its external and monitoring services have virtually disappeared. Local broadcasting was long stymied and community radio discouraged. There has been little change. FM channels have multiplied as entertainment and local outlets with a limited news mandate.

As mentioned earlier, objectivity has fled for the most part and titivation, political bias and sensation have taken centre stage. What does one make of the so-called patriotic hysteria whipped up by some channels over Ved Prakash Vaidik’s interview with the proclaimed Pakistani terrorist, Hafiz Saeed, in Lahore last month? One does not have to agree with Vaidik’s politics and his closeness to Baba Ramdev to assess the event. As a journalist, he got a scoop by securing an interview with India’s most wanted adversary. There was nothing criminal about this and there is little that Hafeez Saeed or Pakistan have been able to exploit. It is another matter that the interview or conversation was poorly conducted, did not press crucial issues and yielded little substance. Thereafter, it was poorly exploited by Vaidik though a column is said to be imminent. Be that as it may, it is surely mistaken to rant against him as a traitor who should be incarcerated and hounded.

It is also strange that anchors and critics should ask whose “permission” Vaidik sought, why he failed to ask certain questions and whether he was an emissary of the Prime Minister. If journalists have to seek the permission of those in authority before they interview a personality, that will be the time to shut shop. Prabhakaran and Osama bin Laden were interviewed by American and Indian journalists while in hiding, while Peter Arnett of CNN remained in Baghdad to report “Desert Storm” from the inside, to the great embarrassment of the US government and the great benefit of the world.

In this case, the Government has clarified that Vaidik acted entirely on his own volition and that it had nothing to do with the meeting “directly, indirectly or even remotely”. The BJP certainly displayed double standards. It has in the past castigated as “seditious” contacts with and references to certain Hurriyat leaders in Kashmir by Aundhatti Roy and others.

What is also deplorable is that some reporters and channels garbled Vaidik’s remarks on Kashmir to make perfectly legitimate statements appear anti-national. No correction or apology followed. “Publish and be damned” seems to be the fashion.

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has no role to play. All its separate limbs like the Films Division, Directorate of Audio-Visual Publicity and so on could be autonomous boards, with daily information dissemination entrusted to individual ministries. The last I&B Minister, Manish Tiwari was wise enough to say that perhaps the time had come to abolish the Ministry. What is needed is a coherent national communications policy that is absent despite the national motto “Satyameve Jayate”. But this is simply not understood.

I am an old-fashioned communicator and know nothing about the new social media. But I worry about the Prime Minister’s call to all bureaucrats, ministers and the public to twitter and message him directly. This is populism and could create almighty confusion. The Aam Admi party tried governing by twitter and SMS. It was fun but did not work. The “people” surely are sovereign. But we must beware the fool multitude.

The media today is no more the Fourth Estate. It is the First Estate and feared but closely followed by the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. The communications revolution has vested it with tremendous power. This must be used responsibly; for the media is ultimately a trustee of the people’s right to know, truthfully and in time. It must match its power with responsibility and return to its fundamental mooring of mission, not merely commerce.