Category: COLUMNS

By Ranjona Banerji

 

What seems to be the imminent collapse of Kingfisher is now looking to dominate the news. Newspapers are full of it – and not just on the business pages – and one can expect TV to follow soon. Ironically there was Vijay Mallya celebrating the “success” of India’s entry into Formula 1 just a few weeks ago; now he is described as “cash strapped”.

On top of that, we have Air India employees claiming they have not been paid for months, which means that the glory story of Indian’s aviation industry may be heading for some dark days ahead and should also move out of business pages and papers into the mainstream.

It would be fitting if our umpteen business channels would get their heads out of the stock market and examine a collapse like Kingfisher’s. We spend so much time congratulating ourselves for every teeny achievement by any random Indian anywhere. Surely we can expend a little effort to explain to readers and viewers why things have gone wrong?

 

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Given the amount of excitement the collapse of the News of the World generated earlier this year, the second questioning of James Murdoch by a group of British MPs should have got some more airtime, surely, from international channels. Especially since firebrand MP Tom Watson likened the young Murdoch to a mafia chief. Indian TV and newspapers both covered the questioning but the BBC remained obsessed with the Eurozone crisis and so on.

Interestingly it also took a long time for the BBC to acknowledge the riots which broke across the UK this summer. Is there some decision to keep home news quiet and just show prime minister David Cameron making a speech every now and then? Like Doordarshan of the old days?

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Edits in most newspapers focused on the first convictions in the Gujarat riot cases of 2002, pointing out that while this was a rare occurrence which must therefore be lauded, there was a lot to do before peace and harmony could be established in Gujarat. TV channels need to get their heads around some basics of journalism: first report the facts and then get obsessed with reactions. For almost 30 minutes the other day the ticker on Times Now told us that Zakia Jafrey was happy with the verdict without telling us what the verdict was. Jafrey’s response is not the primary news. Time to go back to school? Oh, sorry, I forgot, most young journalists today have come out of some journalism school or the other.

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Am curious to know whether anyone is going to tell us anything about the impending birth of the child of Aishwariya and Abhishek Bachchan. The fight between Amitabh Bachchan and the media is not new – it existed for most of his illustrious career and seemingly made no difference either to his fortunes or indeed to the film media’s. But to have a code of conduct over a celebrity event is surely too precious. Celebrities would not exist if it wasn’t for cooperation with the media. I guess Bachchan senior will send out tweet at the relevant moment and the whole world will know. The circus acts can follow later.

By Ranjona Banerji

 

Wednesday night provided some interesting debates on television. NDTV looked at whether Manu Sharma, convicted for killing model Jessica Lal, should have been given bail to attend a family wedding, especially since he violated his parole conditions the last time. Headlines Today and Newsx both examined cricket issues – why ticket sales were down and the consequences of match-fixing. Times Now looked at the granting of bail to the Malegaon accused and whether there was institutional bias against Muslims, also examined parole then moved on to Mamata Banerjee and her changing stand on the Maoists. My cable operator has decided that I do not need to view CNNIBN, so I am a bit handicapped here.

 

Is it heartening that the anchors behaved better than most of the guests? The tendency to shout, interrupt and refuse to allow others to speak is not just vastly annoying for viewers but also reflects quite badly on our standards of civilisation. For instance Mahesh Jethmalani did not even allow Kamini Jaiswal to speak on Times Now. Whatever their past animosity, a certain minimum level of decorum is expected here. Even Arnab Goswami seemed to have had enough. Interestingly, perhaps tired of being told that he does not do enough homework, he quoted chapter and verse of the parole laws to lawyers to make his point – and score a couple of brownie points.

 

I saw on Twitter that former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf had been shooting his mouth off in an interview on NDTV. I have never been able to understand the media’s fascination for this former general, who is so desperately searching for some space in the limelight, and as a result I did not bother to watch. Did I miss anything? Apparently that Dawood Ibrahim masterminded the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts a few years in advance as retribution for the 2002 Gujarat riots, according to Twitter. I always thought that the 93 blasts followed the post-Babri demolition riots but am sure that NDTV and Musharraf know better. Or perhaps all the people on Twitter got it wrong. The point is, why keep going back to Musharraf if you’re not going to ask him about Kargil and his role in bolstering ISI support for the Taliban?

 

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But on a similar note, is there any purpose served in getting Pakistani guests on a panel discussion on Indo-Pak relations and then allowing your guests to get into a slanging match? It makes for distasteful television for sure. It may make better sense to hold one-on-one interviews with relevant Pakistanis so that viewers can at least understand what is going on instead of having to watch people trading insults. Everything in life does not have to be a copy of Big Boss/ Big Brother.

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After all the flak which Markandey Katju has faced for his remarks about the media in India, he did earn some kudos for his views on the defamation case on Times Now. He made it quite clear that Rs 100 crore for a mistake was excessive. He also indicated that India has a long tradition of judicial restraint.

Perhaps it is time to build some bridges and a better relationship with the new chairperson of the Press Council of India?

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By Ranjona Banerji

 

The best TV news programme I watched all weekend was the BBC’s Panorama on the August riots which hit England, with particular emphasis on the city of Manchester. As you might remember, the riots started in London over what appeared to be a clash between the police and residents of a locality over the shooting of a black man. However, it soon became clear that race had little to do with the rage of the citizenry as anger spread from city to city and then manifested itself in arson, looting and attacks on the police.

Panorama concentrated on Manchester, how the police – who had spent officers to London as the capital was struggling – watched and waited. How many had little idea why the riots hit Manchester and how quickly they spread. How those who worked in the poorer areas – like Salford – were not surprised at the extent of the anger against the establishment.

The programme spoke to the police, to some rioters and tracked the process of how video footage helped in making arrests. The home minister was also interviewed.

However, there were no “general” experts who put forward any psycho-babble theories and nor did the reporter pontificate. Instead, here was an old-fashioned report, minus glitz and packaging. It made, perhaps obviously, for compelling viewing.

I’ve heard endless theories, as have we all, about how TV news in India is in its nascent stages, how TV is all about rating points and can never look further and how sensationalism is the only way competition can thrive. But I have never yet heard or seen any competent research which proves that Indian TV news viewers are all uniformly dumb. In which case, surely once in a while, TV can allow some good journalism to sneak through?

 

MxM partnered a film viewing and a seminar on paid news organised by Moneylife Foundation last Friday – paid news. Umesh Agarwal’s documentary Brokering News was a hard-hitting look at the scourge of our times – paid news. The film looked at the trend of media houses approaching politicians and political parties to sell them editorial space for positive coverage. The reader or viewer of course is not informed that the coverage has been paid for. This has become an across-the-spectrum practice during elections for four or five years.

It has long been known that smaller newspapers particularly in the regional languages use their reporters to get advertisements as well as get stories. Sometimes, the information gathered is used to blackmail politicians and businesspeople to increase the newspaper’s revenue. Brokering News tells the story of Rakesh Sharma who decided he could not be used like this any more his employer – Dainik Jagran – and is now fighting a lone battle against the newspaper. Sharma pointed out that other newspapers – he named Dainik Bhaskar and Hindustan among others – were also involved.

The film looked at corruption in the sports and entertainment sectors of journalism and ended with the Niira Radia tapes and its impact on the media. It was interesting to see Rajdeep Sardesai of CNNIBN, who was interview in the film, damning the practice of cosying up to PR people or subverting the cause of journalism and then copping out when it came to actually taking on the people exposed by the tapes. The biggest fish caught in the net were of course Barkha Dutt, Vir Sanghvi and Prabhu Chawla.

The film should be seen by every journalist. There was a bigger caveat I think to the media, which can sometimes become too complacent. The film played to a packed audience, with standing room only in a hall which seated about 300. For a documentary, that is remarkable. The media ought to take heed that the general public is not completely oblivious to its shortcomings. The warning signals are quite visible.

I think those of us who are not caught up in the seamy side need to come out and speak out, with more strength. The panellists – Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Ayaz Memon, Bhawana Somaiya, Umesh Agarwal – and moderator Sucheta Dalal examined and slammed paid news and acknowledged the degradation in the media. Now we need more.

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By Ranjona Banerji

By Ranjona Banerji

 

The big news for Friday’s newspapers and Thursday evening’s television will undoubtedly be the assault on Union minister Sharad Pawar in Delhi and whatever happens to Sachin Tendulkar in the match against the West Indies in Mumbai.

 

But the big news for Thursday was the announcement on Wednesday evening that Cyrus Mistry was to take over from Ratan Tata as chairman of the Tata group in December 2012. Although Mistry – son of Shapoor Pallonji of the giant construction company and a significant shareholder in Tata Sons – was on the shortlist, most of the talk had been of Ratan’s half-brother Noel, who runs Trent.

 

So plenty of scope for journalistic speculation, projection and detailing from Mistry’s choice of music to his preferred holiday destinations most of which has been fulfilled in the newspapers. The Economic Times also wins the award for Desperate Need for A Pun with the headline ‘Mystery Ends, Mistry Begins’.

 

Since Ratan Tata will only retire when he turns 75 in December 2012, there is enough time for our largely adulatory business media to tell us everything we never wanted to know about Mistry (or, if you prefer, No-more-a-mystery). Puns, as you can see, are endemic, chronic and largely incurable in journalism.

 

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But the biggest issue for the media is more media-related. The edit page of The Times of India carries a long and extremely well-argued lead article by N Ravi of the Hindu group called ‘Censors at the Gates’. The ludicrously large fine on Times Now for defamation has been dissected and dismissed, the dangers of allowing government regulation of the media has been delineated and the Press Council of India and its new chairman Markandey Katju summarily castigated.

Ravi says, “What is causing consternation among the media now is that to the expected chorus of complaints from parties in power facing media exposure of corruption have now been added the voices of the Vice-President of India Hamid Ansari and former Supreme Court judge and newly appointed chairman of the Press Council of India Markandey Katju. Self-regulation of the broadcast media has failed and there was a need for a state-sponsored body to regulate the media, both asserted at an event held ironically to mark the National Press Day…

“The debate on the media has somehow got tangled with the discussion on putting in place an ombudsman to tackle corruption among ministers and high public officials though they are two entirely different sets of issues.”

Ravi points out that much as the media dishes it out, should be able to take it. But he makes a distinction between being subject to the laws of the land and being subjected to unfair legal conditions or restrictions of any kind by the government.

So far so good. No media person can argue with Ravi. The difference however between being a journalist and owner of a media house emerges at the end of the article when Ravi discusses government trying to stifle the media through its wage board. Regardless of how good a newspaper The Hindu is, let us not forget that the standards of journalism are upheld by journalists and no by owners. Most of the degradation in the media today — paid news, private treaties and other forms of institutionalised corruption – are invented and carried out by owners and managers. The wage board ensures that newspaper owners pay their journalists and other workers. It is hard to understand the moaning and carping of newspaper owners that paying wage board rates will force newspapers to close down. The Times of India, for instance, several years ago switched to the contract system for journalists when the birth of broadcast news created a shortage of journalists and an escalation of salaries. A few that stuck to the permanent employee-wage board system got paid comparative pittances. Some in fact, at the tail end of their careers, found they were earning about the same as trainees.

It is also well-known that many language papers pay their reporters almost nothing and expect them to make a living through helping the owners through various channels of institutionalised blackmail. When I was with The Times of India in Ahmedabad in the early 2000s and Divya Bhaskar was launched, the other Gujarati papers were horrified that Bhaskar paid English-newspaper rates rather than the usual Rs 1000 a month for reporters.

The upshot is that wage board recommendations are minimal and most large English and some language papers pay well above them. The recommendations are tailored to the size of the newspaper – they are not uniform across all of them. I do not know of any industry where employees have to be willing to work happily for peanuts while the owners rake it in. Not surprisingly, the journalists are quite happy with the wage board because it means at least they get paid something. Journalists would be even happier if owners and managers did not dictate news to suit their advertisers, gave up Medianet and stopped the practice of paid news.

So how about a little more media ethics from owners and managers?

 

 

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By Ranjona Banerji

 

The arrest of journalist Jigna Vora in the J Dey murder case is quite horrifying, anyway you look at it. That a journalist can be accused of instigating the underworld to kill another brings us to a very sad pass. While rumours of Vora’s involvement have been doing the rounds for a couple of months, the actual arrest itself is a shocker.

 

It is pointless to speculate on guilt and innocence just yet and the media, which often takes arrests at face value initially and only asks questions later, has been very carefully following presumption of innocence route here. (If only it would do it at all times!)

 

One thing is clear though: editors need to be more aware of what their crime reporters are up to and how far they push them to get a story. In 25 years in journalism and most of them in Mumbai, I cannot remember any crime story which invoked more than salacious reader interest. The best result might be the two very good movies made by director Ram Gopal Verma – Satya and Company. The close relationship between some journalists and the underworld is hardly an industry secret. Oswald Pereira’s novel, ‘Beyond the Newsroom’ should be a must-read for all young and budding crime reporters.

The other problem here is the relationship between the police and reporters who often get carried away and see an arrest as surety of guilt – quite the opposite of the attitude in Vora’s case. It is another matter than so many accused get acquitted by the courts by lack of evidence. The media stands guilty on two counts here – one, for romanticising the underworld and two, for taking the police at face value.

Young reporters are not to blame so much as their mentors are. The romantic idea of this all-powerful underworld which runs Mumbai is just that and it is far from the reality in today’s world. The days when Vardarajan Mudaliar, Haji Mastan, Karim Lala and later the Naiks, Dawood Ibrahim and so on ran Mumbai are long gone. Prohibition was lifted decades ago, smuggling was no longer as lucrative after liberalisation and after the slum rehab schemes started, land-grabbing was taken over by the state and the police. And as drug usage is (thankfully?) not as high in India as it could have been, we are still a conduit rather than a market profitable enough for the powerful South American cartels to get directly involved in. The famous underworld was reduced to normal criminal activities. There is no Al Capone like figure any more.

But younger journalists, fed on the myths, get taken in. As editors themselves are getting younger, they get excited too. A little dip into history may not be a bad idea.

As for the Vora and Dey case, it is curious and sad.

 

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The slap received by Sharad Pawar led the media into some needless self-excoriation. Was it given too much importance? Did it blank out other important news? Should the media have followed the Katju directive and immediately focused on poverty and development issues instead? Blah blah blah.

The fact is, the slap was news. And that is the job of the media: to give you the news. Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves for being misunderstood, let us accept that we are the carriers of misery, sensation, death, depression and all the other strange, horrible and wonderful things that human beings do to each other and the world around us.

Why get so defensive about it?

 

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Talking of being defensive, Press Council chairman Markandey Katju’s piece trying to explain himself in today’s Times of India is quite amusing.

 

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