People's Democracy

DUJ Seminar Flays Paid News in an Age of Inequality

By Special Correspondent

MEDIA experts, working journalists, editors and students of journalism, along with a good number of writers, artists, deans and professors, received with applause a straight call for ending the pernicious practice of the paid news syndrome, as it is replacing journalism by trivia while blacking out the rural India and the real India of the masses. It was an about three hour discourse amidst pin drop silence.

A gathering with a difference was there at the Speakers Hall at the Constitution Club on Friday, September 24, to hear P Sainath, the rural affairs editor of The Hindu, now in his 30th year of journalism, charge that there was a “structural compulsion to lie” in the media and that the paid news syndrome was a severe blot on our civilisation, in an age of grim inequalities.

Chaired by renowned historian Professor Romila Thapar, the meeting was organised by Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) in coordination with the Popular Education and Action Centre and the Delhi Media Centre for Research and Publications Trust. The meeting was laced with a spirit of discourse, a firing line of twenty questions from a bunch of journalists that included Mr Paranjoy Guha Thakurta who spotlighted the issue in the Press Council, leaders of the Indian Journalists Union, social activists and a rush of journalists, teachers and media students. The venue was overflowing on the occasion.

ANTI-MONOPOLY

LAW NEEDED

With news media groups becoming corporate players in their own right, they need to be held to the same standards as any other corporate entity. So said P Sainath, rural affairs editor of The Hindu, who wrote a series of articles on the paid news phenomenon for his newspaper. The first step in fighting the paid news syndrome is to bring in an anti-monopoly legislation that would prevent monopoly companies from making investments in media business and media companies from investing in monopoly concerns.

To make his point that paid news — which is news paid for in cash or kind by interested parties — is essentially a fallout of unethical business practices, Sainath said while citingd a series of statistics in his lecture entitled “A Structural Compulsion to Lie.”

Indian media companies, today, have invested in at least 200 different sectors, including aviation, hotels, cement, shipping, steel, education, automobiles, textiles, education, cricket, information technology and real estate --- to name just a few.

For example, one of India's largest newspaper groups has 240 “private treaties” with various corporate houses. As a guarantee for advertisements and against negative coverage, newspapers pick up a 7 to 10 per cent stake in every company with which they sign such a treaty.

All of this leaves the journalists in these newspapers unable to honestly write about India Inc. “There is a structural compulsion to lie in a media so invested in stock markets and corporates themselves,” said Mr Sainath. “They simply cannot afford to tell the truth.”

The renowned journalist also recalled how, at the height of the economic recession in 2009, the editorial desks of at least two major English newspapers were given a strict fatwa against any use of the “R” word. It could be called a “slowdown,” but not a “recession,” simply because the economic future of these media groups depended on the market taking up, with an increase in the value of the shares they had purchased through private treaties.

In the course of his presentation, Sainath also charged that the Press Council had led the nation down by its failure to publish the report of the sub-committee guided by Mr Paranjoy and by releasing a truncated version of the report. He pointed out that the Press Council was suppressing the report despite every major political party in parliament demanding that it should be tabled in the house. The government too appeared to be in favour of such a step, but the matter had been left hanging as there were doubts about the exact legal position of the Press Council which is an autonomous body. The Press Council itself was not saying that it was killing the report. Its plea was that it was archiving it, which meant that anyone who wished to see the report must approach the Press Council every time they wanted to do so, Sainath added.  

Sainath pointed out that with politics becoming ever more enmeshed with business interests, it was inevitable that the corporatisation of news would soon extend to the electoral space as well.  This is a dangerous trend, he added.

TRIVIA RULE

THE MEDIA

Lamenting the declining values in the country since globalisation, Professor Romila Thapar regretted that the media had virtually become a jamboree of vested interests that had little concern for the masses. She also expressed her concern at the attempts to whip up communal frenzy in the media and the day to day decline in public discourse, with the media highlighting trivia only. She added that even mainstream media has been missing out on covering the major issues of our times — growing hunger, an agrarian crisis, mass displacement, and the high inequality – a point well highlighted by Mr Sainath. 

Professor Romila Thapar who chaired the entire session for over three hours, observed bitingly it seems we have two India’s --- one shining India and the other Gharib Bharat, one bristling with joy and the other screaming in gruesome poverty and dying in misery. The government should now stop to look at poverty as a statistical problem and treat it as a humane problem to be tackled on a war footing, she said amidst claps by the audience.

In a brief comment, Delhi Union of Journalists general secretary S K Pande pointed out that with the paid news syndrome the people’s right to right information was being eroded by the proprietors’ right to flood the market with business news and with more and more smut.  Reasoned discourse was being flushed out for the sake of an imaginary world of dreams, far removed from the reality. “There are two faces of the media, one visible and the other not so visible, one of has more grab, more journalists and proprietors while in the other we see the grossly exploited journalists, victims of contracts of bondage without any security of service.  He called for democratisation of the media, a wide-spectrum Media Council and a Media Commission of experts to look into all aspects of the media in the era of globalisation. He also called for an alternative information order in order to combat the present world of trivia in the name of journalism.

DUJ president Ms Sujata Madhok, in her vote of thanks, said this was the beginning of a series of programmes to be organised by the Delhi Union of Journalists to spotlight current issues, and indicated about some of the proposed programmes. She pointed out that P Sainath was part of a discussion group “Baatcheet” in the DUJ almost 30 years ago and had then called for a New Information Order. Social activist from the Popular Education and Action Centre, Anil Chaudhari, a contemporary student of P Sainath, recalled some old moments and memories.  Media researcher Ms Durga Raghunath, who had been a student of Sainath, pointed out various facets of Sainath’s journey in the hurly-burly of rural reporting and highlighted some of his achievements.