The year 2009 was a defining 12 months for Indian journalism in more than one sense. While the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) returned to power with an increased majority, it started to lose its sheen even during the Cabinet formation. In the elections to the legislative Assemblies of Haryana and Maharashtra that took place in the autumn of 2009, the charges of paid news, till then a mere rumour, were confirmed. The global economic meltdown that started with the sub-prime crisis in the United States had a wider implication and, for the first time, it touched upon the fortunes of media companies in India. The preceding two decades had seen an unprecedented growth of the Indian media. Even when the legacy media in the West were going through a crisis and constant job redundancies, it looked like the Indian media had bucked the trend. But, paid news was the first manifestation of the crisis that was brewing within the Indian media.
In the same year, Salman Rushdie’ s lecture at Capri’s Le Conversazioni literary festival in June gave a pointer to the understanding of this malaise. Literature has an inherent power to pose the right questions, and nudge us to seek answers to some of the vexatious questions. Though Rushdie’s talk covered a range, from Fellini, boarding school, Pynchon, Shakespeare, literary games with Christopher Hitchens, Dante, Montaigne, Conrad, Newton, De Quincey and Proust, it was his mediations about the tragedies of Shakespeare that caught my imagination.
Why no self-regulation?According to Rushdie, Shakespeare asks the readers, very close to the beginning of the work of his great tragedies, to answer a nearly unanswerable question. He wrote: “For example, why does King Lear not heed to Cordelia? She is his favourite daughter, and she has the courage to speak plainly to him and tell him unvarnished truths. If they have been close, this can’t be the first time she has spoken bluntly. He must surely know his own daughter and her ways. Why, then, does he banish her and believe Goneril and Regan’s lie? Or again, why does Othello believe Iago and turn against his beloved Desdemona? He isn’t shown the supposedly incriminating handkerchief, but murders his wife just because Iago tells him that the evidence exists. There are many different possible answers to these questions.” (Granta, 109, Winter 2009).
The questions before the media: why did most of the media outlets, barring a few exceptions like The Hindu , ignore the paid news phenomenon and its effect on the media ecology itself? Why did the Press Council of India (PCI) decide not to publish, let alone take action, on its own two-member subcommittee report of paid news? While there is some justification in rejecting the idea of external regulation, what prevents the rest of the media from creating an in-house system for self-regulation? The Hindu established its office of the Readers’ Editor in 2006, three years before the paid news scandal broke out. What prevents the media industry from adopting and assimilating good practices? What are the impulses that promote some practices that are not desirable among the media houses?
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and K. Sreenivas Reddy, members of the subcommittee, were surprised when they first heard that the Press Council had decided to defer the publication of their report and refer it to a larger group of council members to decide its form, as some of the influential members felt that the report in its original form “would destroy the publishers’ credibility and hurt their long term interest.” The subsequent reports revealed that of 24 members of the full 30-member Press Council of India (PCI), who attended the July 30, 2010 meeting, nine (including the chairman) were in favour of the report being annexed to the “final” report, 12 opposed it and three remained non-committal. Is this a mature sign of solidarity? Or is it a form of cartelisation of the Press Council membership to stymie any course correction? The damning report saw the light of day due to some committed persons invoking the provisions of the Right to Information Act and getting it to the public sphere.
While the PCI failed to act on one of the failures of the Indian media, hope was rested on the Election Commission (EC) to address this issue. But, the EC’s judgment in the case of the former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan, brings out the limitation of relying on the rules of the EC to address an ethical question confronting the media. Mr. Chavan was found guilty by the EC only with reference to non-disclosure of his election expenditure. It failed to tackle head-on the question of paid news.
Blurring the lineThe other regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), had expressed its concern that many media groups were entering into agreements, called ‘Private Treaties’, with companies which are listed or coming out with a public offer, for stake in the company, and in return providing media coverage through advertisements, news reports, editorials, etc. It came up with a set of recommendations that warrants better transparency and disclosure norms, which has been accepted by the PCI. But, in reality, the relationship between the quality of the coverage and the private treaty is so intertwined that we need much more robust forms of disclosures to stem the rot.
It is vital for media organisations to draw the line between the financial state of their industry and the requirements of journalism. The current crisis in the revenue models and the failure of digital platforms to generate adequate income is used as an excuse for blurring the crucial line. Trust is the biggest asset. If the media loses it, we may need a Shakespeare to write a new tragedy for our era.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
