Category: RANJONA BANERJI

By Ranjona Banerji

 

The big media sensation in India these days is definitely Narendra Modi. Ever since he was made the chairman of the BJP’s election committee – seen as heir presumptive of his party – if the Gujarat chief minister so much as sneezes, it’s time for a political debate on TV and a dissection of the symbolism of a sneeze on opinion-based websites.

 

Modi himself – or his publicity machinery – adds fuel to the fire. One day, he is supposed to have almost single-handedly rescued 15,000 Gujaratis from the floods of Uttarakhand, soon after he claims to have felt as bad as a person sitting in a car which runs over the son (or daughter) of a dog – an elliptical reference to the victims of the Gujarat riots. This interview to Reuters spread like wildfire across social media and what is now called mainstream media (acronymed to MSM which does sound like some disease you don’t particularly want). The words used by Modi were translated as “puppy” and the merry-go-round started again.

 

Two things are clear from this. One, Modi’s publicity machine is trying too hard. And, two, the media’s focused attention is a double-edged sword, as Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and the organisers of the anti-corruption movement found out to their horror. Modi now cannot take a step without someone watching, someone tearing it apart and someone else explaining what he meant in excruciating detail.

 

Tied to the Modi-in-the-media story is that of the intelligence agencies, people killed in fake encounters and the Gujarat government. The death of Mumbai teenager Ishrat Jahan in 2004 has now overshadowed that of her companions and also exposed a divide in India’s various investigative and intelligence agencies. The media, rather than look at the issues involved objectively, has sided with one or the other investigative agency.

 

The problem here is a little different from the “for or against” Modi camps in the media. For years, editors have allowed reporters working on intelligence and police beats to become mouthpieces for those agencies. The logic is that you pick up on inside stories and the senior edit team works out the kinks caused by bias. But life and a newsroom never work that way and the result is that print journals and to some extent news channels just become conduits for intelligence agency politics. Print prides itself on having more filters than TV but as the various headlines, allegations, fights and quite frankly bogus information masquerading as news has shown recently, the filters have been playing hookie.

 

I must make my own bias clear here: I lived in Gujarat before and during the 2002 riots. There is little doubt in my mind about state government complicity, whether active or passive. However, that does not mean that everything that happens in Gujarat has to be vilified. It cannot be a “for us or against us” case for the media at least. Modi is a chief minister with a sordid past. But he’s just a chief minister of one state. He is not a superhuman being sent either to destroy or redeem us. Myth-making is a long organic process. It is unlikely that a media with chronic short-term memory loss can be successful at it.

 

**

 

In the rest of the world, news has had a sort of similar focus. The US has been concerned with the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin last year. Zimmerman shot the teenager assuming him to be hostile while on his rounds as part of a neighbourhood watch scheme. Martin, 17, has no weapon on him and his two biggest crimes appeared to be wearing a hoodie and being black.

 

As the US grapples with the consequences of this verdict, Britain where I am now, is waiting for the arrival of the “royal baby”. The “due date” (last Saturday) has come and gone and the breathless media has to concentrate on this event. Babies as we all know can be tremendously uncooperative in such matters. But the stories must continue. A special reclining chair for daddy in the hospital suite, also champagne and luxury toiletries, father William playing polo, mummy Kate “putting her feet up” at her parents, the sun shining, no clouds, step-mother letting slip the new due date might be this weekend and other such trivialities occupy the national press.

 

Who says the media is different anywhere else?

 

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator based in Mumbai. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. She can be reached via Twitter at @ranjona. The views here are her own

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

Do people invite Shaina NC to their shows only to take issue with her or ignore her or humiliate her? I am no fan of this member of the Bharatiya Janata Party but I cannot understand why she is invited as a guest to studio discussions only for her views to be pooh-poohed. It is true that her views are usually extremely silly – in which case, why ask her to share them unless you want to expose her? There are many other foolish people in all parties who regularly express their equally daft views without being treated with similar contempt.

 

On Arnab Goswami’s show last week, Shaina NC tried the impossible task of trying to defend RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s India versus Bharat remarks regarding rape. There were other Sangh Parivar worthies like Subramaniam Swamy and GVL Narasimha Rao on the show who also did their bit but Shaina NC got the most flak. There were times when she looked on the verge of tears. On the Best of the Big Fight on NDTV, Shaina NC got the same treatment from Vikram Chandra and other guests like Madhu Kishwar for her somewhat confused remarks about how India was a fully spiritual nation (as in no sex please). Please note that this was seen as a “best” bit.

 

The other question of course is: why does Shaina NC want to get treated like this? There is a theory is that she is the most personable face that the BJP has, which is why she is sent out to defend the cause. There is another sexist theory that she has a pleasant face. And a somewhat nasty theory is that she is one of the more stylish members of the BJP, especially since she belongs to India and not Bharat (by Mohan Bhagwat’s definitions, not mine). Plus there’s a cynical theory that her father Nana Chudasama was hedging his bets by making one daughter join the BJP. Whatever the reason, it is unfortunate that she is such a sucker for punishment.

 

I can safely say this much: Shaina NC is not the sort of person edit pages of newspapers would or should invite to write opinion pieces.

 

**

 

Have to say that I was most disappointed with Prasoon Joshi’s appearance on CNBC’s Storyboard show with Anuradha Sengupta. For someone who has used his advertising experience to craft himself as a sort of Renaissance man, one would have expected some better responses on a show about how the media can become more gender sensitive. There was Joshi at protest venues after the Delhi gangrape reading out emotional and meaningful poems. And there he was on CNBC saying well, advertisers are marketers after all and we just try to sell products.

 

The “too bad if you don’t like it” attitude was attempted to be ameliorated by some anodyne remarks about how gender sensitivity as important but it was mere tokenism at best. Unfortunately, there was no Arnab Goswami to call him out. However, the hypocrisy was exposed one way or another.

 

I suppose the problem comes from wearing too many hats and sometimes you forget when you’re a sensitive poet and when you’re a hard-hearted purveyor of rubbish.

 

**

 

The Indian media has stuck to the rape story and the treatment of women in India for over three weeks now, showing incredible tenacity. India TV, often not the most credible but always entertaining, had a brilliant sting operation last week which exposed how women in India are harassed for the simple crime of just standing by the road.
The media has of course been helped by sheer idiocy of remarks spewed forth by politicians and so-called spiritual and societal leaders.

 

**

 

A pat on the back to the media for sticking to the law and not revealing the rape victim’s name, even though the father has apparently given it to the UK Mirror. The Hindu had a front page note from editor Siddharth Vardarajan explaining just how the law worked as far as India is concerned

 

The news agency ANI has apparently taken action against a stringer for taking remarks by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat about a woman’s place being in the kitchen out of context. Bhagwat was it seems explaining how marriage worked in the western system unlike in India where it is a spiritual union. Sadly, a woman’s place remains in the kitchen here as well, judging from how our worthies feel about women in public places!

 

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are his own

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

The sheer childishness of Indian television news hits you like a gale force wind when you switch on after a break. This phenomenon is compounded by the fact that my newspaper vendor appears to be sulking with me! I have been surfing through all the news channels at our disposal and am hard-pressed to find one that I can stick with.

 

The most amusing I could find was – nothing new here – Times Now. The little headlines for their poll on the next general elections (Jayalalitha juggernaut, Jagan blockbuster debut and so on) are reminiscent of the work of newspaper subs from the 1980s who have had to come up with a barrage of headlines while working on a special issue close to deadline. Anything goes. Of course, what was fun in the 1980s is just some fuddy-duddy stuff in 2013.

 

The time warp that Indian TV is lost in however just relates to the written matter. No Wren and Martin or any other grammar books may be in evidence but the writing is arcane. But when it comes to the representation of news, then the sheer inanity of what is on offer is pure 21^st century India. Skims the surface, minus depth and just careens from one hysterical breathless breaking bit of nothing to another.

 

How about a comparison with the British TV coverage of the birth of the royal baby? They took a fairly trivial if engaging event and attempted to give it gravitas, sometimes with hilarious consequences. We take grave events and then try to make them as trivial as possible. It is an art which is quite commendable, if you look at it minus bias.

 

The very strange personal squabble between two (great?) economists Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati is a good example. Usually, such worthies would have quarrelled in some inaccessible scholarly journal in suitably erudite jargon (one hopes…). Instead, they took each other on in the mainstream media and even more incredibly in the broadcast media. So you had Bhagwati saying that he had done everything first long before Sen, then you had Sen saying he was hurt by the personal attacks people made on him. This spilled over in their newspaper writings and interviews. The result was that their scholarly stars dimmed and their economic theories remained opaque. It is a worthy knack of the media to take intelligent academics and make them sound like gibbering fools.

 

**

 

Trying to understand the news through the social media is even funnier than television, it has to be admitted. Social media operates between derision and outrage which means that all events get skewed and it is impossible to make sense of anything. Yet, for all that, social media is an excellent aggregator of news and you can browse through a vast variety of articles and opinions from across the world which may not have otherwise come your way.

 

**

 

The fight in the media as far as the next Indian general elections are concerned has been between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi. But one might suggest that the Indian electorate is given to complexity in its reactions and this simple two-horse race might just be a chimera that entertains but amounts to little more than a distraction from more substantial issues. (If I was a 21^st century person, I would have used the erroneous substantive here and got away with it! Alas…)

 

**

 

Is it just me or do other people reach for the remote when news channels try to give us “positive” news? I knew it. Just me.

 

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator based in Mumbai. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. She can be reached via Twitter at @ranjona. The views here are her own

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

The Outlook Group has had to shut down three magazines, all of which were foreign franchises – People, Marie Claire and Geo. Any profit-making organisation is well within its rights to close down a business which is doing badly. But media houses seem to be severely short of any kind of human relations with their employees. Inevitably, employees are told at the last minute and shunted out immediately. We have seen it recently with Mid-Day closing down centres in Delhi and Bangalore and with NDTV Profit in Mumbai. The callousness can usually be attributed to managements or the corporate side of the journalism business.

 

In the case of the three Outlook Group magazines, most editorial employees apparently found through a tweet by a writer not connected to the group. It also appears that the management sections of the magazines had been given prior warning. There is something disquieting – apart from distressing for those concerned – in the cavalier way in which media managements treat editorial staff. This trend has remained unchanged even though Admin and Personnel departments now have fancy names like “Human resources”. As anyone who has interacted with them will vouch for, there is little that is human about them.

 

A labour court in Bandra has stayed the termination of services of 17 editorial staff of People magazine. The writer who revealed the closures on Twitter has written an article for newslaundry.com explaining her case and the attitude of the management. http://www.newslaundry.com/2013/07/a-bleak-outlook/ In this, Rajyasree Sen raises some pertinent points. One which stands out is the silence on the matter by Krishna Prasad, editor of the group’s flagship magazine, Outlook. Prasad has a very successful blog called churumuri, which often comments on media matters. It has been harsh – and rightly so – on the sacking of senior editorial staff of Forbes magazine. Sen questions churumuri’s silence when it comes to Outlook’s treatment of its staff in his blog: http://churumuri.wordpress.com/. I could not find any references to this issue on churumuri either.

 

The problem however is obvious and it is also why journalists rarely come together in unity for causes any more. There are innumerable clichés I could use but they all boil down to one thing: money. No one is going a rock a boat that they’re perched on. As long as the salary lands in your bank account every month, it is better to remain silent about management behaviour and transgressions. I do not know how much clout editors have with their owners and senior managers any more. Earlier, there were some signs of support, of editors fighting for their staff or showing solidarity. Now solidarity within the profession seems to be in short supply. More than three years outside a newspaper organisation has taught me this much: journalism is now a cut-throat dog-eat-dog business. Perhaps if any of us were the editor of Outlook (!), we would also be silent on this matter no matter how much venom we poured on other media groups for their misbehaviour! But the corollary is that if you cannot bite the hand that feeds you, can you be considered fair when you criticise other media groups?

 

**

 

The Times of India sometimes manages to surprise even hardened cynics. Because of a little storm on Twitter, India’s largest read English newspaper has been exposed for carrying the most unprintable bilge on its website. Under its lifestyle section, masquerading as gender relations, the website has been carrying a series of articles about how to have sex, positions women like and so on.

 

They appeared to have been written by the same person and are not only badly written and in bad taste but also have little journalistic reason for being there. It is like a monkey trying to imitate the Cosmopolitan style of 57 ways to suck your man’s toes and so on. If you found the Cosmo articles silly, you cannot imagine how the TOI website versions would upset you. I have to use the past tense because the articles have been removed from the website after the criticism. It makes you wonder if there had been no editorial control so far on what this young person had been writing. I am loath to name him or her but the name is doing the rounds on the social media. It is also evident that whoever wrote these appeared not just to be misogynistic (women do not bathe often and are smelly are two popular themes) but also not very experienced in sexual matters.

 

This comment on the TOI website by Huffington Post encapsulates the disgust and scorn that has been apparent on social media for the last couple of days: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/07/30/times-of-india-women-facts_n_3677378.html? utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false&utm_content=buffer266a7&utm_source= buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

 

Without being moralistic about it, why should a reputed newspaper’s website have to resort this kind of bordering-on-bad-porn writing? The articles had no corroborations or quotes or access to surveys. They were not funny or even sexy. The writer appeared to have no qualifications to hold forth on the ‘5 sex positions that women die for’. It was like someone senior said, “Let’s have some writing on sex” and someone junior was put on the job.

 

I have been told that most newspapers have similar kinds of “stories” on their websites. True?

 

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator based in Mumbai. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. She can be reached via Twitter at @ranjona. The views here are her own

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

I wouldn’t want to be in Durga Shakti Nagpal’s shoes right now. The IAS officer from Uttar Pradesh is being held up as a beacon of bravery and honesty by the media and by political parties trying to get mileage out of just about anything. Television seeks to sensationalize because it feels that’s what it needs to stay relevant. And print gasps along behind, trying to catch up.

 

The more the media calls Nagpal “the brave officer” and “an honest officer”, the more frightened the brave and honest officer should feel. Whenever you are set up too high, those that set you up will ensure that your fall is as dramatic and certainly more painful.

 

The curious thing is, that the reason why Nagpal is being projected as brave and honest is somewhat obscured. Was it because she took on illegal sand miners? Was it because she demolished a wall of a mosque? Or was the mosque an excuse to prevent her interference in sand minding? Did the villagers object to her demolishing the wall of the mosque to did they ask her to wait until after Ramzan? Was there an intelligence report about the tensions in the village and the chance of a communal flare-up or not? Was she brave and honest or just arrogant?

 

There are no clear answers to any of these questions. There are conflicting reports in different media. And there is nothing from the IAS officer herself. There is speculation about how her parents named her most aptly after a goddess in warrior form and strength particularly female strength in the Hindu context. There are campaigns to protect brave and honest officers from evil politicians. There are opinion pieces on how the bureaucracy is stymied by political interference.

 

The turnaround when it comes will reverse all these questions. We will find out how the bureaucracy is an evil money-grubbing enterprise, Machiavellian in its spirit as it hoodwinks the people and politicians. Brave and honest will cease to mean anything (if they mean anything now) and become jokey references about dishonest people. TV will quickly move on to something else because this story will have lost its traction.

 

The media is what the media is. But there are some notable points. The first is that this campaign seems to have started without sufficient background work. How are we to form a reasonable opinion on what happened without adequate facts? And secondly, why start a campaign that is so open-ended and ridiculous. Tweets and online polls – let’s push the issue – might get the charge sheets against Nagpal dropped. But how will all this make any substantial difference to the way bureaucrats and politicians run this country?

 

The attention around the India Against Corruption movement and the ignoring thereafter and the rise and fall of Anna Hazare must send shivers down Nagpal’s spine. Perhaps that is why she has been silent. And no intrepid (brave and honest?) reporter has managed so far to convey her take on the matter so far.

 

If I was her, I would run as far and as fast as I could!

 

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator based in Mumbai. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. She can be reached via Twitter at @ranjona. The views here are her own

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

Any dinner party conversation in a particular part of India somehow veers towards the difficulty of watching TV news. Where it was once a compulsion for English-speaking India to cancel all engagements to watch the nightly “debate” on TV, people now discuss the methods they have for staying away. Some people say they have stopped watching TV altogether and rediscovered books. Others have just switched to entertainment channels. Some stare into space and have a little peaceful navel-gazing. And perhaps some people have even revived that archaic practice of talking to each other between 8.30 and 10.30 pm.

 

Regardless of whether the ratings show this or not, our yelling matches are reaching an end. Their entertainment value is now showing diminished returns and they have little marginal utility. Besides, everyone knows what the usual participants are going to say. The line of argument as far as each channel is concerned is also predictable. Headlines Today and Times Now will be hysterically jingoistic and in a state of quivering outrage. News X will try to be rational but will be hampered by its low star power and the difficulty in deciphering its anchors. NDTV will take a slightly different less hysterical line but will not always succeed. And CNN-IBN will sit on the fence, tending this way and that depending on the issue.

 

Lok Sabha TV and Rajya Sabha TV both remain civilised and more intelligent but it is unlikely that they make much difference yet. At least until the scourge of tamasha has been scrubbed out of our minds.

 

From a personal point of view, I have avoided primetime news for two months now and my doctor is really happy with my drop in blood pressure. Ill-informed anchors, half-baked stories from reporters, politicians who have their voices set at maximum volume, the same experts telling us about everything from which chocolate biscuit is better to whether we should go to war with Pakistan – how stupid do they think we are? I take that back. We know how stupid we are.

 

**

 

And bring a bunch of old journalists together and you know the story. As tears fall into glasses of Old Monk, they weep about things were better in their days and wish they had a little money to start a newspaper which was not so corporatised, not so rubbish-driven, had more imagination, had more perspective and had greater understanding of news.

 

This is a pipe dream. Or should it be so. Perhaps it shows an even greater lack of imagination that journalists cannot indeed come up with alternatives to what passes for news today. The internet provides an ideal platform and needs to be exploited. What? What are you waiting for? Don’t stand there staring at me!

 

**

 

BBC News carried a well-choreographed discussion on cyber-bullying on their World Have Your Say segment this week. The peg was the suicide of a British teenager who had been attacked on ask.fm. The teenagers in the show – from all over the world – provided interesting perspectives of what passes for “fun” in the adolescent mind. The anchor was intrigued but not condescending. No one had tantrums or talked over the other or screamed when there was disagreement. Incredible. Maybe it was a show from another planet?

 

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator based in Mumbai. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. She can be reached via Twitter at @ranjona. The views here are her own

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

Has marking Independence Day become a ritualistic exercise for today’s media? Both newspapers and news television showed a remarkable reliance on clichés. Long ago, Sunday Mid-Day’s logo used to be “Expect the Unexpected”. Now with the media in India, it’s more like “expect the expected”. A shout out to Forbes magazine however for its essays on the concept of freedom: Variations on a theme with some intelligent thought.

 

Meanwhile, Independence Day in the media was consumed by discussion of the speeches of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. This shows how little depth we are now happy with in the media.

 

Interesting that the deaths of 18 sailors in the fires of the submarine INS Sindhurakshak inspired much less love for “martyrs” than the deaths of five soldiers along the LOC. Was this just media fatigue at maintaining high-pitched jingoism or was it because the sailors were not killed by enemy fire? The Times of India now suggests – in what seems slightly irresponsible journalism – that the fires may not have been accidents or caused by human error. If the “enemy” waltzed once more into Mumbai harbour by the sea and blew up a submarine, then we have far bigger problems on our hands than the pre-election shenanigans of Modi. And we want more than the slivers of suggestions in the TOI story.

 

As a side note, the use of the word “martyrs” for all armed forces personnel who die is possibly a mis-translation of the word “shaheed”. Both may be similar but they are not the same.

 

**

 

The government is planning to take up the menace of paid news by making amendments to the Press and Registration of Books Act. This is a serious issue which cannot be ignored by the media. There is nothing worse than government interference in the running of the media because it impinges directly on the freedom of expression. However, if the media does not combat paid news, then someone else will do it and that someone else will invariably be the government. Some thought required here but has thought become too expensive a commodity for the media to rely on? http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-08-15/india/41412682_1_paid-news-electronic-media-amendments

 

**

 

CNN-IBN has apparently laid off some 200 people with a total of 500 to go, according to rumours. The TV18 group has already had a little public relations problem with the sacking of senior people in Forbes. NDTV has been “downsizing” and the Outlook Group closed down three magazines which meant at least 100 people out of jobs. Outlook first treated its staff very badly, then some staff went to the labour court and then magically everyone reached an “amicable” solution.

 

Immediate prospects in the media look bleak as everywhere jobs are frozen and managements are looking at cutting costs. DNA however now has a new editor, CP Surendran and many are looking hopefully in that direction. It remains to be seen whether this newspaper, once second in Mumbai and once able to give market leader Times of India a run for its money, can get back into the race.

 

**

 

I have to confess that I have cut back seriously on my TV time and for three months have not watched those ridiculous prime time “debates”. But I do check in on news channels through the day just to find out what’s happening. I would be interested to know from readers which news channels they trust the most and which they instinctively turn to (both may not be the same).

 

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator based in Mumbai. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. She can be reached via Twitter at @ranjona. The views here are her own

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari has taken a leaf from Markandey Katju’s book. He thinks that journalists should be given some kind of “licence” before they can work. Katju, in his early days as Press Council chairman, had felt that journalists needed some minimum qualification.

 

All this concern about how and why journalists function! Should we be touched? Laugh it off? Or get really worried that the government is trying, in whatever way it can, to inveigle its way into press matters? Freedom of expression has always irked those in power and while they pay lip service to the tenets of the Constitution what they would really like is to control the press. There are obvious ways – like withholding government ads (see how many ads there are in newspapers today, August 20, about Rajiv Gandhi to see what I mean). And there are more subtle ways like these sly little suggestions on how journalists need to be controlled and cordoned.

 

Do we need to have a licence to work? We already have some bizarre system of “accredited” journalists, which allows you some government freebies and perks. Is it strange that most of the names on the list are fixers and operators? Should journalists get freebies and perks from the government? I have a radical view on this: journalists should not even accept awards from the government and that includes all the Padmas. We as a tribe must maintain that distance from authority as well as from our sources. (All right, all right, I can hear the loud and raucous laughter you know. But this is a “high horse” moment.)

 

In fact, there is no need to explain to the government how and why the media works the way it does. There are enough laws in this country to deal with transgressions. The media however needs to constantly assess how and why it works. This laughter is getting too loud. Moving on.

 

**

 

Tiwari however did make one cogent suggestion: that TRAI keep in mind how it impacts the media and business models when it makes its rules – like limited advertisement time. He was referring to massive layoffs at TV18 where more than 500 people are on the hacking list according to various sources. Some have already lost their jobs and as usual, they are people at the bottom of the food chain. I have always thought that sacking CEOs and a couple of senior management honchos would be more effective…

 

**

 

The loss of jobs in the media has only created little whirlpools of gossip and mires of misery. The “media” itself has been silent: as a senior colleague pointed out, contrast this silence to the raucous outcries of injustice when Jet Airways was on a sacking spree. In the past few months, I count over 100 from NDTV, 100 from the Outlook Group and now a supposed 550 from TV18. These are a lot of people made jobless and with dismal prospects because managements get infected very fast by the downsizing bug.

 

What is worse is that the sackings (I refuse to give these actions legitimacy by calling them “downsizing” or even worse, “right-sizing”) have little to do with incompetence. They have to do with bad management which led these companies into unprofitable territory. Told ya, sack the CEOs first.

 

**

 

The Times of India’s edit page carries an intriguing opinion piece by Srijana Mitra Das which suggests that all the general carping about chaos and cacophony on Indian news channels reflects an outdated school of thought. “Shrill TV is not Indian media adopting loud, pushy Americana over polished Britannica – it is ordinary India reshaping its democratic space, demanding answers after 66 patient years, making an OB van the opposite of a red beacon car.”

 

Without getting into the specifics of TV discussions on American, British, Russian, French or German TV, there is one suggestion that I would like to make. Ordinary India might just reflect on the fact that if everyone shouts at the same time, no one can hear the nuggets of wisdom falling from their eager lips. That’s all.

 

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator based in Mumbai. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. She can be reached via Twitter at @ranjona. The views here are her own

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

The morning on Twitter after the gangrape of a young photojournalist in Mumbai was an unnerving experience. Suddenly, the discussion was about how the media does not report rapes that happen in slums, about the class of the people raped and raping and how people react only when people of their class are raped.

 

This is a stomach-churning sort of justification of rape and such reactions (the area was deserted, it was late in the evening, when women in slums are raped no one cares) are symptomatic of why rape is seen as a legitimate threat on social media. Sadly, some of these reactions were coming from journalists – showing, together with everything else, a lack of sympathy for a member of the community.

 

Pop sociology is the scourge of journalists and of course of anyone who has access to a public platform. Which is fine as far as it goes. We are all entitled to our own opinions. But in Ye Olde Worlde, journalists had to clock in more than 365 days in the profession before they became final arbiters on just about anything. Now, of course, you turn on the TV and you are bombarded with the “new shrill India” – according to The Times of India’s worthy edit page – exercising its right to be heard.

 

I am not sure however that being new and shrill is a justifiable excuse for lack of professionalism at least as far as the Indian media is concerned. Somewhere, editors have taken the backseat in a frenzied campaign to let youth have its say. No need to denigrate youth but no need to follow all its opinions and pronouncements either, minus discretion and better judgment.

 

The fact that TV journalists get shrill and unprofessional in their coverage of such events does not help. On Times Now, the anchor wanted to know the class of the accused — a needless interjection at this stage. The Lower Parel area of Mumbai is introduced as a corporate hub – again making subliminal societal suggestions extraneous to the case, especially at this early stage. TV anchoring is all about editorializing before the facts are known or processed. That is of course part of the reason why watching TV news can be so exasperating. And dare I say it again, being bad for blood pressure.

 

**

 

The miserable side of all this is that despite all the largely excellent coverage of the Delhi gangrape of December 16 and the public upsurge of anger in the way women are mistreated in our society, nothing has changed. Our police, investigative and political responses are as incompetent and asinine. The Delhi case is limping along in the courts. And the cynic suggests that this Mumbai case will go the same way.

 

Regardless of how people and people in the media get excited by the impact of their work, there is only so much that the media can do. Society and the system have to do their part as well to make a substantial difference.

 

And there’s the rub.

 

**

 

In other news, the apparent collapse of the Indian economy has had varying reactions from different media outlets and big ticket commentators. A person with limited knowledge of money matters would be left impossibly confused if she read a variety of reports and comments. The rupee falling is good, is bad, is terrible, is wonderful, X is a genius, X has no idea about anything, listen to Y, Y is a fool…

 

At the end of it, the media tracker is as confused as the economy. Mission accomplished?

 

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator based in Mumbai. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. She can be reached via Twitter at @ranjona. The views here are her own

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

“The Media” has been getting into a bit of trouble with the Mumbai gangrape case, for a variety of reasons. The silliest first: critics who assume that “The Media” is a single entity which thinks and moves as one gigantic slug. In fact, “The Media” is a bunch of separate publications, TV channels and now websites, all of whom are in competition with each other. “The Media” does not in fact attend the same meeting every day or week or month or year to discuss strategy and coordination. All the elements in “The Media” hold meetings everyday to try and trump each other.

 

Then there is anger that “The Media” does not give publicity to, expose, investigate crimes against people of classes which are below their average newsroom class and never goes to remote hinterland areas. This is partially true but easily understood. Each individual publication and news channel caters to a particular readership in a particular language. Newsgathering will largely be restricted to that constituency. Sounds terrible? But somewhere there will be some media covering another constituency. That you have not heard of it is hardly “The Media’s” fault. Having said that, there is always scope for increasing coverage of the “other India” in both English language news publications and news channels.

 

But I also know this: most people will read about film actor Om Puri’s marital troubles in today’s newspapers than anything at all on the edit page for instance. Usually a media outlet has to be at least as shallow as its readership or viewership.

 

Then there are the serious problems with rape coverage. I am surprised at the transgressions made by The Times of India’s Mumbai edition here. Kalpana Sharma has gone into them in detail for The Hoot (http://www.thehoot.org/web/TOI-s-foot-in-mouth-rape-coverage/6990-1-1-25-true.html) and it is hard to improve upon that.

 

It is true that calling a person who has been raped a survivor and not a victim reeks a bit of tokenism when you can’t get anything else right (including a sanctimonious front page declaration). Also, why senior journalists needed to invade so much of a victim’s privacy seems strange. Why inform people in the victim’s building? Why name the magazine where she worked?* Details of the extent of her injuries may have eventually become public knowledge, however. Where investigative journalism ends and intrusion begins is a tough call and both “The Media” and its critics need to be aware of this.

 

However, TOI is not the only publication to blame. Rape is a difficult subject to cover and on the run, mistakes are made. Better communication between editors and reporters, good debriefing systems and a desk that is aware of the laws are vital here. Yes, I know that is asking for the moon.

 

**

 

What can be done within the media, since the victim/survivor and her accompanying colleague were part of the fraternity? It is ridiculous in the extreme to even entertain Maharashtra home minister RR Patil’s suggestion of police protection for working women journalists. If the police had worked harder at tracking/picking up anti-social elements in the Shakti Mills area, may be this crime may not have happened.

 

Besides, the life of a working journalist is too unpredictable to make police protection practicable. Also, everyone needs help from the police, not just journalists. A media which constantly exposes the loss to effective policing because of VIP security can hardly appropriate some of that security for itself.

 

Can or will media houses become more aware of the problems faced by their employees? It would be a shame if this “protection” idea led to a curtailment of assignments to women journalists who are still fighting hard to get equal status. We need more women, not less and we need less kneejerk reactions.

 

* MxMIndia is also to blame for this. We did name the publication that the photojournalist interned at in our comment on Friday. We figured later that it wasn’t the right thing to do, and deleted the reference. Our apologies. – Editor.

 

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator based in Mumbai. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. She can be reached via Twitter at @ranjona. The views here are her own