Ranjona Banerji: So who in the media is now crawling when asked to bend?

By Ranjona Banerji

There is a demand on all Indians to declare their patriotism according to the methods deemed correct by elements of the Hindutva rightwing, which is currently the ruling dispensation at the Centre. However, these demands are also being countered from various angles of civil society. Where does the media fit in here?

It was the BJP’s LK Advani who coined that most telling phrase about the media’s behaviour during the Emergency: when asked to bend, they crawled.

One could well argue that parts of the media are doing exactly the same thing now – except that instead of bowing to Indira Gandhi and the Congress, they are bowing to the BJP government at the Centre and to Narendra Modi as prime minister. Even worse, some of them are bowing to the demands of those fringe elements of the Hindutva family which now seem more centre stage than fringe.

Zee News is the channel which springs to mind here. Not only is it accused of “doctoring” the video which showed JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar shouting “anti-national” slogans, it has since accused a number of people who supported Kumar of being anti-national as well. That the Zee newsroom took the decision to change the video to make Kumar look guilty was revealed by a staffer.

Two targets of the Zee News’s vilification campaign have been JNU professor Nivedita Menon and scientist and poet Gauhar Raza. This is unconscionable and unacceptable. In both cases, Zee News has fabricated evidence and twisted what they said to create a dangerous hate-filled atmosphere around the issue of “nationalism” as determined by the BJP and its supporters like actor Anupam Kher. Avid TV viewers, who think they know how journalism works by watching TV, put this down to “TRPs”. However, as any journalist knows, what Zee News is doing is not journalism. Although the fact that Zee owner Subhash Chandra made the surprise move of appearing on his own channel to claim that he is not a BJP supporter may prove that some criticism has stuck, that could have been a PR-driven or legal move. The only way Zee News can prove that it practices journalism is if it stops manufacturing stuff and starts reporting.

The other two channels which are in the dock for showing the doctored video against Kumar are Times Now and NewsX. Times Now is of course India’s most nationalistic English news channel but has usually skirted on the correct side of journalistic practices if on the right side of the political spectrum. But on the JNU case, it veered straight into non-journalism territory by airing the doctored video and then pretending that it did not. NewsX on the other hand is a sort of “Mini Me” version of Times Now and follows whatever it does. If nothing else, it shows remarkable ability to wait until Times Now announces its evening debates and then putting together its own debate on the exact same subject. For the irony-free, I am being sarcastic.

On Thursday night, I noticed that Arnab Goswami had changed tack and instead attacked the BJP for its stand on Shaktiman the horse that was injured in a political rally held by the BJP in Dehradun. It seemed that Goswami will side with horses and women against any political dispensation. That is, I suppose, good to know. The next debate, which I did not have the courage to watch, was about the arrest of students in Rajasthan over rumours that they were eating beef. This also appeared to be aimed at the BJP and its obsession with beef. Perhaps this is some rare meeting of minds in Bennett Coleman’s unique federal structure

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. The views expressed here are personal.