Category: BLOGS

By Ranjona Banerji

The conversation continues to be about internet sites which provide a higher class of journalism than many mainstream newspapers. This is mainly because so far they run on investor money and not advertising or corporate pressures say the cynics and cynics are usually right. The focus for all journalists therefore has to be how to find a better mean between money and good journalism. The money is necessary, no point pretending that it is not and taking a Commie-leftie position on it. A state-sponsored media is no media at all (I leave aside for now all jokes about how many senior journalists and media houses have become de facto PR agencies for the current government).

Meanwhile, congratulations to Supriya Sharma of scroll.in for winning the prestigious Chameli Devi award for an Outstanding Woman journalist for 2014-15. Sharma is the first online journalist to win this award and has done some ground breaking work for scroll on election coverage, the “ghar wapsi” programme of Hindutva rightwing outfits and workers’ security. Scroll.in has been praised here and elsewhere for the excellent job it has done in promoting old-fashioned journalism based on hardcore reporting. The future is here.

http://scroll.in/article/713959/Scroll.in’s-Supriya-Sharma-wins-prestigious-Chameli-Devi-Jain-award

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The Indian Express stands out as a newspaper which has been doing great stories, sticking to news gathering and taking difficult positions. This is not new for the Express which has a long reputation of being effectively and consistently anti-establishment. But the recent months have seen the paper step up the ante when others have succumbed.

One understands that journalists based in Delhi are under tremendous pressure, almost as much as bureaucrats are. But is this enough reason for the sort of sycophancy and cowardice some of these journalists display? It is particularly disappointing to see middle level journalists – those ready to handle the reins – falling to the level of autograph hunters. How else would one describe this trend of taking “selfies” with politicians?

The poor Aam Aadmi Party must be wondering however why it can never get that level of “luurrrve” which Narendra Modi and Amit Shah of the BJP manage to garner. AAP, having built up expectations in the media and with the people of Delhi is under very close scrutiny from journalists. Modi, Shah and the BJP however have been given a comparatively longer rope.

The tragedy which these middle-level journalists have not understood yet is that eventually, the rope will win. And all those selfies may not be quite so useful then.

I decided when I started writing this that I would not either take on or mention Arnab Goswami of Times Now. But I do it now to agree with him – the cosy club of Delhi journalists is one which needs to be challenged and taken on by all those in the media who live and work in the rest of this vast and wonderful nation.

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Having started off by praising internet sites for the new blood and enthusiasm they have transfused into traditional journalism, I end with a complaint. Those websites which expect people to write for free and those journalists and columnists who succumb for the sake of publicity are doing a great disservice to the profession as a whole. They are the equivalent of scabs which are brought in by the management to break strikes and trade unions. I don’t mean to sound like a Commie-leftie so I’ll end like a good right winger instead: they are traitors to the profession. To loosely translate a good old desi phrase, they are kicking those who write for a living in the stomach.

By Ranjona Banerji

Last week, Twitter went into frenzy mode over the religion of journalist Mihir Sharma, who writes a popular column for Business Standard. Let me amend that sentence: the Indian right wing of Twitter was most agitated. Apparently, according to the tweets, Mihir Sharma, whose name indicates he is a Hindu, is actually a Christian called Simon Mathew. Your first thought on reading this should be, so what? And indeed, it would have been even a year ago.

But Sharma, you see, is often critical of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Narendra Modi-led government and that is reason enough to attack him. The logic, if you really don’t understand it, is clear: Mihir Sharma is hiding behind a Hindu name to criticise a pro-Hindutva government because he is actually a Christian minority. Or that is, no real and proper Hindu would criticise a pro-Hindutva government. If any do, then they are communists, liberals, naxalites, anti-nationals, secular and so on.

Dig a little deeper and all you find is a reaffirmation of the Hindutva creed – that all Indians who do not embrace their Hindu origins are traitors. Underlying that is the other idea that religion determines your loyalty. So an Indian Christian automatically pays allegiance to the Vatican and so on. The idea that all Christians are not Catholics or all Muslims are not Sunnis and so on is irrelevant to your argument.

The flip side is the reaction to Julio Ribeiro’s column in the Indian Express about his fears as a Christian as attacks on churches and Christian gatherings have gone up in the past few months in India. Ribeiro, one of India’s most respected police officers, was immediately dismissed as someone who was given to exaggeration and whose intent was to malign the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.

A tangential view of this defence is visible in the columns of Tavleen Singh, also in the Indian Express, where everyone else but the prime minister is to blame for the Central government’s shortcomings. Singh also called the reactions of Christian’s “hysterical” in her Sunday column.

But at the bottom of it all, lies this: as a journalist (or indeed as a citizen) you are free to call yourself what you want and criticise whoever and whatever you want. There is no rule and there cannot be a rule which says that you have to belong to X religion to comment on Y government. Who cares if Sharma is a Christian? Why should that invalidate his opinion? Similarly, journalist Rana Ayyub is attacked because she investigates and writes about atrocities committed on Muslims in India. Her name becomes reason enough to question her journalism.

There would be no need for this comment if the “hysterics” on Twitter about Mihir Sharma’s religion had been limited to those known as “trolls” and to BJP supporters. But when journalists themselves jump in, then you have a problem. As we do.

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One problem that thinking editors face is how to deal with “source” journalism used commonly by all reporters. Veteran journalist and author Katherine Boo suggests doing away with it altogether and using freedom of information acts instead. Here, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism makes it clear how dangerous “source” journalism can be. It tears apart a Rolling Stone report on rape through sharp forensic analysis.

A strict lesson in how journalism should not be practised: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/business/in-report-on-rolling-stone-a-case-study-in-failed-journalism.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=2

By Ranjona Banerji

A little storm whirled around in the world of Indian journalism when former chief of army staff and a junior minister in the NDA government at the Centre General (retired) VK Singh put out this tweet:
Friends what do you you expect from presstitutes. Last time Arnab thought there was ‘O’ in place of ‘E’ #TimesNowDisaster
– Vijay Kumar Singh (@Gen_VKSingh) April 7, 2015

This was compounded by former Supreme Court judge and current Press Council charman Markandey Katju who came up with this tweet:

The vast majority of mediapersons wld certainly fall in d category mentioned by@Gen_VKSingh , as my experience in Press Council taught me.
– Markandey Katju (@mkatju) April 9, 2015

One could argue successfully that there is nothing wrong with criticizing or disapproving of journalists and their behaviour. After all, I do it twice a week in these columns. But the choice of language used by a prominent member of society and backed by another is certainly open to question. The term “presstitutes” is not new but it is derogatory. It is also, in today’s climate, deeply insensitive to those who are now known as commercial sex workers. There is a long ongoing struggle to phase out the word “prostitute” because of its obvious connotations.

But when a former army chief and a former Supreme Court justice think they have made a clever joke then you understand the stranglehold of regressive patriarchy on our society.

Then there’s the question of journalists. The term “presstitutes” was used through the 2014 general elections specifically for journalists who did not support the BJP campaign or Narendra Modi’s candidature. These journalists are also called “paid Congi agents” – that is the Congress Party pays them to attack Modi and the BJP.

However there is a logical fallacy here. A presstitute by definition would do anything for money and would therefore switch allegiance without any problems. So here’s a further dilemma. Many journalists have switched allegiance to the BJP after Modi’s dramatic rise to prime ministership. Is Singh therefore addressing a support group within? Of course, the mistake is mine because the theory goes like this: All journalists who support parties other than the BJP are presstitutes and all journalists who support the BJP are patriots.

It is fascinating to see how many pro-BJP patriot journalists have jumped in to support VK Singh. Some of these have been journalists who have become PR people (er, what term is one supposed to use for them given what they now do for a living?). Others work for media groups which practise the worst forms of selling editorial space without informing the reader. Since these people do not quit their jobs, it makes you wonder whether they are practising some form of self-flagellation when they call journalists “presstitutes” or whether they are only pointing fingers at other people. I would suggest that working journalists who feel so strongly about abhorrent media practices invented by the people who pay them their salaries need to take a strong stand and pay the price for their principles by becoming jobless.

But you know and I know that these journalists are not just shameless but are also caught up in that old trap of left versus right and everyone versus the BJP. They see no irony in the fact that they are attacking people for doing exactly what they themselves do. So all journalists who criticize the BJP are abominable and yes sir, of course I will remake the page to fit in all those paid news, Medianet, private treaty stories.

And how is anyone supposed to respond when well-known journalists and columnists who spend all their time on TV and in print supporting the BJP then agree to become board members of large corporate and at the same time applaud the use of the term presstitutes?

http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/columnist-dasgupta-joins-l-t-board-115020901148_1.html

By Ranjona Banerji

The world of Twitter exploded when Indian tennis star Sania Mirza became world number one in the women’s doubles version of the game. She is the first Indian woman to scale those heights; Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi have both been number one in men’s doubles. Mirza and her partner, the uber-talented multiple Grand slam winner Martina Hingis, won three titles on the trot to claim the ranking.

So congratulations were in order, except for a few well-known internet dyspeptics who dislike Mirza because she’s female, a Muslim, married to a Pakistani or not a singles player. I have not been able to find similar bile directed at Paes or Bhupathi, who also did not reach number 1 ranking in singles either. Hence, my conjecture at the reasons for the hatred of Mirza.

But loons on social media aside, how did traditional media respond? Sunday, April 12, had also seen two Indian Premier League matches and two English Premier League matches. That is, cricket being played in India and football, being played in England with not a single Indian player in sight.

Here’s a roundup of some of the newspapers I looked at on Monday. The Times of India reduced Mirza to the middle of an inside page, after the IPL stories which get the first sports page. TOI though is notoriously skint when it comes to tennis stories. The Hindustan Times, which has much better tennis coverage usually, stuck Mirza on that annoying front page jacket but had a Manchester United player above the masthead on the, er, real front page. The story was relegated to the inside sports pages.

DNA and Asian Age carried the picture on page 1. Mumbai Mirror also had a front page mention. The Economic Times did not mention Mirza at all. I gather from tennis fans across India that major language papers were no different.

Anyone who works in a newspaper understands the pressures and pulls of a newsroom at deadline. But it is still intriguing, especially when we have become so collectively jingoistic about India, Indians and their achievements. Newspapers often waste space on some unknown person of Indian origin winning a municipal election in an obscure American town just because of the Indian connection. But Mirza clearly did not make the cut.

Ah well.

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The other big stories of the week were obviously the prime minister’s overseas trip, the declassified files on Subhas Chandra Bose’s family being under Intelligence Bureau surveillance and the Indian purchase of Rafale jets. I am ignoring the twitter squabble between some journalists and Modi fans over the shawl the prime minister has been wearing in Europe because it is so silly.

But if you ever want to get really confused, you could concentrate on the Nehru-spied-on-Bose’s-family and why-did-we-buy-the-jets stories. For those who are not obsessed with Indian contemporary history or India’s defence deals, these are veritable minefields which are impossible to traverse safely with mind and body intact. My point is, the media don’t help!

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What is more easily accessible is the online and now offline fight to protect “net neutrality” or that is, to stop mobile and internet service providers from allowing access to websites that pay them. And make you pay for the sites you want to go to.
Get into it!

By Ranjona Banerji

Given that the prime minister and chief newscatcher of India is away in foreign lands, Indian TV media found its dose of breathless excitement in the return of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi from… somewhere. He’s back after 56 days or 57 days or eight weeks or six weeks or the Indian Express told us this morning, 53 days. Many days obviously, but we are short on detail even there.  We don’t know where he went, we don’t know for how long and we just about vaguely know why: Introspection or some such political excuse. So much for all the Ws and Hs, once essential in the practice of nuts and bolts journalism.

What we got was a moving picture of a car window through which I at least could see nothing. In one newspaper this morning, there was a shadowy face worthy of a Dan Brown conspiracy theory but two very cute little doggies. The doggies were not named or identified so the reader is none the wiser on pointless trivia.

Some Congress party members burnt fire crackers in celebration and provided some anodyne sound bytes. Some BJP people sniggered. In short nothing unusual or newsworthy was on offer apart presumably from the fact of Gandhi’s return. With nothing to say, reporters egged on by anchors, speculated on what Gandhi was doing, could be doing, should be doing, might not be doing, would do if he was the reporter or the anchor or another person. We are indeed lucky they did not tell us he was eating breakfast, having a bath and so on. Or who knows, maybe any facts would have been more interesting than this piffle.

So there we are. Rahul Gandhi is back in India. Yawn.

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There is an intriguing difference between city coverage in newspapers in Delhi and Mumbai. Mumbai newspapers are obsessed with crime, civic issues (this covers just about everything), infrastructure development (whatever’s left) and the green narrative. Politics takes a backseat. Delhi newspapers are obsessed with politics and its colleges. I read a whole page on some childish little fight in St Stephens College that was neither spicy nor exciting nor even that interesting. Who woulda thunk that the Dalliwallahs were so big on education? All right, I apologise. Having spent most of my life in Mumbai, I do know that when Mumbaikars speak education, they’re talking money. Not: my principal is so mean.

And for an outsider, it seems like crime should be a big Delhi thing…

The Delhi obsession with St Stephens College is odd, though. Why?

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Prime Minister Modi is away of course but not forgotten. His tours of France, Germany and Canada have been covered extensively by all the new channels. If you think there has been any shortfall, blame it on the time difference. The Canadian media has also covered the visit, especially the uranium deal. Time Magazine has got US president Barack Obama to write a profile on Modi, surely a coup.

Indian newspapers however, have been more on the deals struck than the hoopla around the visit. I must here admit that I am sorely disappointed with the NRIs of Canada for not providing a song-and-dance show like their counterparts in the US and Australia.

Or maybe the evil media didn’t show it?

By Ranjona Banerji

The Prime Minister of India is apparently upset that the media targeted his minister VK Singh for his “presstitute” remark, while ignoring the good evacuation work that the former chief of army staff had done in Yemen.

In these media-obsessed times, where we are given more importance than we are worth, perhaps the PM’s comments are understandable. What I find intriguing is the number of working journalists who agree with Narendra Modi about the lack of attention paid to India’s exemplary role in evacuating people from the dangers in Yemen. If you work in a newspaper or a TV channel or a website, then you have a say in what goes into your paper or appears on your channel or on your website. To come on Twitter and start ranting about “the media” as one entity which ignored events in Yemen is childish and exposes your own irresponsibility. What were you doing? Does your job have no value or meaning? Can you not make your voice heard in your newsroom? In that case, what sort of a journalist are you? The best newsrooms after all are those in which there is healthy discussion and that is a euphemism for a fight!

And if your place of employment has taken a policy decision to ignore the sort of stories that you feel strongly about, take a stand. Protest or even better, quit: that way you will show the world the depth of your beliefs and your ideals.

But no, you have that loan, your child’s education, your weakness for shoes or whatever. So much easier to do a sloppy job at work and then come to social media to slam this entity called “the media”. Imagine how good a journalist you are when you pretend that there is such a thing as “the media” which thinks and acts as one. I use the word “sloppy” deliberately because if you are a job-worker then you have no business being a journalist. I find this category of journalist more repulsive than those who openly support a political party. At least they take a position openly in their professional life, whether you agree with them or not. But these say-nothing-at-work-and-rant-on-social-media journalists are nothing but snivelling cowards who pretend to have principles but only care about their pelf.

But given the state of media managements today and the general standard I see around me, I give thanks that I have been unemployed for five years now and counting. And thanks to this column, unemployable as well!

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Since I wrote about how no one knows what Rahul Gandhi did when he was away from public life for two months or what he did, this joke on Twitter after his speech at a rally and in Parliament seemed appropriate: apparently, he’d been learning to speak Hindi!

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Other political parties in India must be either tearing their metaphorical hair out or hugely relieved that the national media’s obsession with AAP means that this Delhi-based parties regularly wins newsprint space and airtime over even the prime minister of India. One of those bane and boon situations…

By Ranjona Banerji

The public suicide by a young farmer from Rajasthan at an AAP rally in Delhi this week exposed not just our political establishment but also members of the media. Watching events unfold on television it seemed inconceivable that this could happen with so many people present.

After the fact as well, TV attention shifted to a political blame game because no news is legitimate in India unless it has a political angle – barring Bollywood and cricket of course. So instead of the death of this one farmer, which capitulated the problems of all farmers to centre-stage, we were fed a constant loop of he-said-she-said finger-pointing by all India’s political parties.

Contrast this to the way the migrant crisis is being covered in Europe and you can an idea of how stories can be developed without competing quotes from political spokespersons.

Yes, I know. I’m talking to the wind.

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I can understand members of the public being angry with newspapers and TV channels and websites for not being admirers of the current government. I for instance rarely read journalists who I feel are going to be needlessly critical of the tennis great Roger Federer. It is a choice I make as a fan, not as a thinking journalist.

But journalists who get upset when the current government at the Centre and the prime minister are criticised? What is one supposed to make of them? I’m not even talking about those who are open card holders and well-known admirers of the BJP or its attendant organisations. Or even the journalists who joined AAP. I am talking about working journalists in various news organisations.

Of course, it could be the dangers of too much blabbing on social media that I see before me. Many journalists, especially young ones, feel that they deserve a voice. The blog-as-diary is no longer as popular as it once was. So enter Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps their frustrations are better expressed on other fora as well that I am unaware of. Sufficeth to say, they sound off enough on the social media platforms I visit.

I’m even willing to forgive the young, the rookies, those at the bottom of the newsroom food chain. But not journalists who have had a good 10 years of work experience or more. They should at least know how a newsroom if not a news organisation functions. And they ought to know that the primary function of the media is to in opposition. So if they felt full of indignant self-righteousness when they called out fellow journalists and senior columnists for being pro-Congress or pro the Nehru-Gandhi family, then surely those same high principles apply to those who are pro-BJP or pro-Narendra Modi?

Incidentally, these are the same sort of people who happily point fingers at mistakes and transgressions by other news organisations but are silent when it comes to similar problems by their own. And no one is error-free – if I really even have to point that out. As I have mentioned in earlier columns, this sort of behaviour is cowardice and unprofessionalism.

There is also some irony in such journalists calling whoever disagrees with their political views “paid agents” of the other party. I mean, if that shoe fits…

By Ranjona Banerji

The terrible earthquake that ravaged Nepal on Saturday brought out the worst and the best of Indian news television. On Saturday, since it happened in the morning and most channels get into weekend programming, it took time for the enormity of the event to sink in. We will never, it now seems clear, escape from the tyranny of the breathless ingénue TV reporter who gets into “Wow Awesome” mode. Can there be a sentence more offensive than “The breaking news we are now covering is an earthquake in Nepal”?

As is the norm these days, the internet and Twitter got the news first, so if there has to be one-upmanship in human tragedy, the credit goes to the Net and not to television. And of the channels on offer in India, CNN won hands down on Saturday. The coverage was sober and informative. And the best of all is their met section which explained as much as was known about the earthquake and the weather in the area as the day unfolded.

Soon after the earthquake struck, CNN-IBN had the chance to broadcast the met update for Nepal but chose instead to switch to a press conference given by a minister. In India, when a politician speaks, all attention has to go to him or her, regardless. The minister made some anodyne remarks about a fast unfolding situation that added nothing substantial to the news. How I long for the days when the junior most or most incompetent reporters were sent to press conferences…

While on CNN-IBN, it was painful to watch an anchor pointing to a map of Northern India on Monday evening and saying, “This area has had many many earthquakes” many many times. We got it the first time. We would have been better informed if the many many had been replaced by numbers. We would have been even happier if the Indian plate pushing under the Asian plate had been discussed many many times with many many details.

However, it was not CNN-IBN alone which faltered. NewsX, Headlines Today and Times Now launched into their usual competition of nationalistic triumphalism. Oh India is the greatest, India set the most aid, India sent the best aid and so on. One should get used to this but it remains disgraceful and distasteful.

By Monday, most Indian channels had sent reporters to Nepal and coverage had improved. Sadly, though, whether it is CNN or the BBC or any Indian channel, the “how did you feel when the world ended” question just cannot be replaced or rephrased. They have to ask it, no matter how stupid and senseless they sound. One BBC anchor even asked an eyewitness to describe how people around him reacted after the earthquake. You really desperately want them to reply, “Oh, the people looked around at their broken homes and lives and injured and dead family and friends and went off and ate cucumber sandwiches.”

Surely, surely, there is a better way of doing it?

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Incidentally, dear TV-wallahs, “PM chairs expert panel on aid for Nepal” qualifies as a news headline. It provides information. “PM tweets about Nepal earthquake” is not “breaking news”. It is not anything but your own desire to become a PR person being made public for the world to see.