Commercialisation of the press

The remark has rubbed off on the press. It has got linked to industrial or other interests that many newspaper proprietors have. This thought might have rankled Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he said a few days ago, while inaugurating a Mumbai English daily in Delhi, that "the convergence of corporate interests and the control that market men have come to acquire on editorial policy can militate against pluralism and even the freedom of the press."

His fears are not unfounded. The media has been commercialised. Newspapers reflect more of industry's thinking than of people's afflictions. A wit says that news is what is written on the back of an advertisement. A couple of leading English dailies have even begun to sell their editorial space to a hick, provided he has the money to buy. The purpose is not so much to earn revenue as to throw down the gauntlet to the democratic political machine. What it can do is the challenge. There has not been even a whimper from professional bodies or the Press Council of India which was established to safeguard press freedom.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

I recall there was time when a "Business Must" (BM) chit coming along with a write-up on some commodity would be thrown into the wastepaper basket by the editorial desk. But it has become a must now. Journalists can ignore it at their peril. In fact, many of them have ingratiated themselves with the newspaper's business department so much that they eat from its hand. The publicity to a commodity apart, there are write-ups to promote it. Information is slanted to suit business interests. The disconcerting part is that unfavourable or negative stories are suppressed to placate business houses, a source of advertisement revenue.

It is not difficult to trace the time when the editorial side took a back seat. After the end of the emergency (1975-77) there was such an outlet of pent-up emotions and ideals bottled up due to censorship that newspapers themselves were taken aback by the freedom they could exercise. Whatever skeleton they could find in the government cupboard, they brought it out and wrote candidly about the crime and corruption committed during the emergency.

This is when the owners got the idea that if mere government fiat could make pressmen surrender, they (the owners) have a bigger whip to crack: the job. They took over the reins to tell journalists what to report and what to hide. Editors were asked to comment on a particular subject, especially concerning Indian politics, in the way the owners wanted. Indira Gandhi's return to power in 1980 signalled their hold. On the one hand, owner's fell upon one another to make up with her and on the other they "disciplined" journalists. She liked the scenario. She had herself suppressed the press.

It was during her regime that the owners introduced the contract system that restricted journalists' tenure to a particular period, to be renewed after two or three years. This was like a Damocles' sword hanging over the head of journalists. Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, had given the working journalists permanent appointments. Owners could not dismiss them under the law. Nehru thought that the security of job would enable them to resist pressure and to write objectively. It is another matter that most of them have made peace with the proprietors. Journalists generally write what the owners would like to read. Still worse, they anticipate their owners' interests and argue a point accordingly in their leaders and columns. The normally shut out the other point of view.

A handful of proprietors have gone out of their way to humiliate editors to "bring the journalists down to earth," as one of them puts it. "I made them sit on the floor and write addresses on invitation cards for a social function." When journalists caved in during the emergency because of comforts and perks, they have no gumption to stand up now. Owners have expected obedience, and they have turned to be right.

Ninety-nine per cent of Indian newspapers are today owned and edited by the same family. Leaving a few of them apart, others are run like any business. The son inherits it, passes it on to his son and so on. The owner's name appears as editor. The old, classical type of editor is vanishing. Journalists generally do what it takes to stay in the good books of owners. Their freedom is limited to the extent an owner gives them. This is how market men have come to acquire control on editorial policy, because owners' interests are in the money they make, not in the quality of newspapers they produce.

People who control the press in the country think that a newspaper is just like any other commodity. It should be nicely packaged. And their idea of "nice packaging" is to fill the pages with semi-nude colour pictures of models and actresses and trash. The shallow, unthinking attitude gets reflected even in the news stories and articles that are printed. Reporters do not always cross-check the information they get. They often write one-sided versions of events and about people who do not matter absolute non-entities. Often good stories are not followed up properly. Planted stories make the front page. Even factual information given in a newspaper is often incorrect.

Yet, the press, by and large, has acquitted itself well in the field of pluralism, one of the key elements the prime minister underlined in his speech. The press has risen to the occasion when secularism has been sought to be replaced by fundamentalism. Take the demolition of the Babri masjid and the Gujarat carnage. On both occasions the press took the BJP, the culprit, to task, and made it apologise.

The remedy that the prime minister has suggested to remove deficiencies in the press has been tried and found wanting. The Press Council has been a washout because it has become another court of law. The ombudsman appointed by a leading English daily found that the entire newspaper was not open to him. He could give his opinion only on the matters referred to him. It is time to look at the entire media, print and electronic. A Media Commission -- on the lines of the two press commissions since independence -- should be appointed to find out the relationship between owners and journalists, newspapers and TV networks, and radio and online media. Only then will the prime minister find out whose interests lie where.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.