Category: COLUMNS

By Ranjona Banerji

 

This election has definitely gone on for far too long. The tedium and desperation is evident in political campaigns and in the media. And the horror is that we are still not done. Results will be announced on May 16 so this farcical circus has over two weeks to make matters worse. As political parties are getting more strident and making melodramas over minutiae, they are also throwing good manners and caution to the winds. And as people like Azam Khan discovered, while earlier you could say awful things to your close followers and no one would get to know, very little is secret any more. But rather than exercising some discretion, politicians seem to have decided that all out attacks are their only recourse.

 

For the media, this means that they have to play up every little thing that happens or anyone says if only to keep this election juggernaut rolling news-wise. Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN, Barkha Dutt of NDTV and Rahul Kanwal of Headlines Today and other TV worthies have hit the roads, picking up campaign heat and dust. Arnab Goswami of Times Now has stayed in the studio – the Newshour now extended to weekends – to badger his guests.

 

Vikram Chandra of NDTV conducted his Big Fight last Sunday in a Punjab village, with everyone sitting on charpoys. Picturesque as this was, there was clearly no connection between the audience and the contestants – Gul Panag of AAP, Pinky Anand of the BJP and local candidates. The debate was in English, the audience spoke in Punjabi – as much as I could understand anyway. Whatever the purpose of this sylvan setting was, it only highlighted the tremendous communication gaps we still have in India.

 

As for the Newshour, I caught one this weekend on the subject of some change in land laws perhaps to suit Robert Vadra and perhaps to suit land sharks and developers in general. The issue was so specific that the debate had no punch. Goswami seemed to be on the backfoot on details and when confronted with details, he took the moral high ground of “propriety”. Once it was amusing, all this “nation wants to know” posturing. Now it has become sad and funny.

 

**

 

The direction which the media is taking is also under discussion, especially television. NDTV for instance has long been slammed for being pro-Congress. Now it appears to turning pro-BJP according to some. This means it joins the list of all other English TV channels, according to gossip in the pro-Congress camps. However, the pro-BJP camps still find that TV channels are not as nice to them as they should be. So is this the pot calling the kettle black or needless conspiracy theorising or that we all see only what we want to see?

 

I don’t really have the answers. But it does seem to me that media houses will now ensure that they stay on the right side of whoever they think is likely to come to power. There is the inherent anti-establishment aspect of the media and the which-side-the-bread-is-buttered aspect of the media and the conflict is evident.

 

**

 

Meanwhile, for a really superb critique of the media, American and Indian, you cannot spend a better eight minutes of your life than watching John Oliver’s take on media coverage of the Indian elections. Truly unmatchable!

 

http://news.scroll.in/article/663108/US-comedy-show-host-John-Oliver-takes-a-dig-at-Arnab-%28and-berates-the-US-media-for-ignoring-the-Indian-polls%29

 

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

A few months ago Rahul Gandhi was interviewed by Arnab Goswami of Times Now. It was a tough interview and the editor-in-chief pulled no punches. Gandhi dimpled and fumbled and different people drew different conclusions from the exercise. Since then, we have had a glut of interviews of Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial hopeful of the Bharatiya Janata Party, in both print and on television.

 

However, no one has asked Modi tough questions or watched him fumble and then ask some tougher questions. In fact, he dimpled away, deflected most questions to a diatribe against the Congress and continued with his acronym-filled and alliterative solutions to all India’s problems. On TV, his interviewers simpered and gazed with adoration – I include Madhu Kishwar, Rajat Sharma and the Aaj Tak people here – I balk at calling them “journalists”. Tuesday’s Times of India also carries a massive interview with Modi with nary a searching question or any follow up questions based on his answers… which leads one to several not so salutary assumptions.

 

Meanwhile, Arnab Goswami, arguably the most influential person on English television, decided to interview Raj Thackeray once again, although most political watchers will tell you that Raj Thackeray’s role in this election is likely to be less important than it was the last time around.

 

It would have been perfect for Goswami to interview Modi this election. We might have got the measure of Goswami’s skill as an interview and perhaps found a middle ground between the raging tiger who spoke to Gandhi and the kitty-cat who spoke to Thackeray. Alas. The nation did not get to know.

 

That leaves Karan Thapar still holding the toughest interviewer award.

 

**

 

I had an interesting discussion on Twitter on how the English media in India thinks too much of itself and is contemptuous of the language media. I have no doubt that there are some English language journalists who are snobbish about either their chosen language or their vehicles. However such English language journalists whoever they are, are idiots if they did not respect their colleagues, regardless of which language they worked in.

 

I have some observations on the subject, having worked with newspaper groups with publications in various languages – English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Urdu to name only some. The very reach of language media in India is what is keeping the newspaper industry alive and it is tremendous. No one can deny that. Those of us who have had some experience of being carried in both English and language publications have been overwhelmed by the reaction from readers of other languages compared to the trickle you get from English readers in India.

 

There are many big names in language journalism across India. In Maharashtra, for instance, the most respected editors are those who headed language publications. Ironically, many of them are hated by Marathi journalists and lauded by English language journalists. Language publications have also stepped out of their domains and now own English language papers. Some groups always had publications in various languages as do many TV houses.

 

Unfortunately, many owners of language publications did not respect their own journalists and not only paid them very badly – compared to English – but also did not upgrade their newspapers or magazines thereby also cheating the reader. Journalists were often used as marketing people and to do the owners’ dirty work. Many young, enthusiastic, idealistic journalists were appalled at the sort of work they were expected to do.

 

Some of that has changed and journalists in language publications are paid better and the publications themselves now look and feel better. They have also changed their business models and professionalised their marketing and sales efforts. Often these changes were because of association with the English media. Sadly, however, the infection of “paid news”, where managements sell editorial space to political parties or corporates is now rampant in all media, regardless of language.

 

It is also true that language journalists do have a chip on their shoulder because they feel looked down upon by some of those snobbish English language journalists. This now is a human feeling which it is very hard to fix. I can venture to suggest to both those categories that what they are both exhibiting are enormous inferiority complexes. The real world where the rest of us live is quite another place.

 

**

 

How does television subscription and supply work in India? It seems unfathomable. We have multiple options it seems as customers but we are still subject to the tyranny of channels and service providers. Many customers fail at the first hurdle – which is the call centre of course.

 

The most recent problem that is coming up for tennis fans is transmission of the French Open. Tata Sky HD subscribers will find that they will not be able to watch the second Grand Slam of the year on television because they do not Neo Sports and Neo Prime.

 

I have sent several tweets to both Tata Sky and Neo but have got no response.  Luckily for me, I am not a fancy Tata Sky customer but rely instead on my local cable operator who offers just about every channel there is!

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

A roaring lion with Rahul Gandhi, a coy kitty-cat with Raj Thackeray and a mouse with Narendra Modi: the varying interview techniques of India’s most watched TV news anchor, Arnab Goswami. Modi, who was first a bit interview-shy these elections has lately been speaking to everybody. So by what logic Times Now billed this as an “exclusive” interview boggles the mind. This interview in fact went the way of most such interviews with Modi.

 

Question 1: What are your views on populist measures for the poor?

Answer 1: The moon is made of green cheese.

Question 2: Okay. Who do you think is going to win the IPL?

 

Or perhaps we are being unfair. Perhaps in this interview, both Modi and Goswami were playing the dignified statesmen of their own professions. However, it must be said that Modi’s deflections of all Goswami’s potentially difficult questions were brilliant. And Goswami was unable to pin him down on any of those although he did ask the initial questions. Not on divisive statements on caste and religion, not on Maya Kodnani, not on Gujarat’s development. Modi used Times Now as an election platform and all credit to him. If Times Now acted as a willing platform, well, if so it behaved no differently from all the other TV channels which have interviewed Modi this season.

 

Interestingly, there was no full transcript of the interview in The Times of India’s Mumbai edition as there had been with Rahul Gandhi. Or perhaps it was a matter of time and printing deadlines. Although a few days ago, there was an interview of Modi in TOI by its own correspondents which was disjointed enough to sound like an email interview, where you cannot go back to the interviewee and follow up.

 

**

 

Having watched a bit of television through the day on Thursday and tracked social media at night, I genuinely thought the world had come to an end in Varanasi in conflicts between the Election Commission and the Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party and so on. The morning’s newspapers were then a sore disappointment: they had a bit about this story but also about Other Things! How can Other Things be of remote importance? How can this great election drama be dismissed with some throwaway sentences like: “and then some BJP activists clashed with some AAP activists”? Talk about killing the excitement!

 

**

 

I did another India Hangout with Govind Ethiraj on how the discourse in these elections has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous, together with Ayaz Memon and Dilip Cherian. This is becoming a workable alternative to the panel fights on primetime news television.

 

**

 

Meanwhile, the future of primetime panel discussions on India might just become like this and perhaps the lesson to TV studios is… less plywood?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2tzx9sd6vc&feature=youtu.be

 

**

 

What is evident is that this election has definitely gone on for too long and this is evident not just in the political discourse but in the petering out of media imagination. There are only so many ways in which you can cover elections and we are running out of them.

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

The general elections of 2014 have been a measure of the media as much as our politicians, our polity and our social norms. For some, we have reached a new dawn where electioneering has been contemporised and globalised and the media and social media via the internet have played a massive role. For others, we have breached a new low where discourse has been shoddy and gimmickry has been substituted for solid political understanding.

 

If you live in the isotherms of the internet then “traditional” or “mainstream” media in India is not the fourth estate of democracy but a fifth column which has twisted facts and misrepresented people to fulfil its nefarious anti-national paymasters. The problem of course is that everyone makes this accusation at some point from all sides of the political spectrum. This means that the mainstream media has effectively alienated all people at some time or the other. In other words, perhaps, it has done its job?

 

This is not a defence of the media, however. It is true that various media organisations seem to have made political shifts depending on which way the wind seems to be blowing. Wild and unsubstantiated allegations on Twitter and Facebook aside (which seems to view the media as one massive conglomerate, not several competing organisations) within the media itself there is much talk of money being paid to ensure opinion poll results, massive corporate interference, people losing jobs if they do not toe the line and so on. Also, the predications are of changes at the top with prominent television faces being swapped about – all to happen on May 17, the day after the election results are announced.

 

So how did the media behave this election? The one word answer: tired. The first voting day was April 7, the last voting day May 12 and the results will be declared on May 16. That’s five weeks. But campaigning started well before that. So we have had relentless election-related news from the end of last year. The country has run out of steam, forget the media.

 

Television takes the brunt of the tedium if only because it is the first frontier. It fights for attention, it breaks news, it makes up breaking news and its breathless excitement is often just some reporter looking to make his or her mark on a transient medium. Newspapers have tried to give us blanket coverage but there have been some serious lapses. It took everyone a long time to focus on Mayawati and the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh for instance. The dogged insistence on local coverage for various editions of national newspapers meant that readers remained ignorant of what was happening elsewhere in the country even though this was a national election.

 

And then there are opinion polls. At the end of the day, important as they are, they are now looking like a journalistic cop out. Hand the job over to someone else and let them come out with the answers. The exit polls commissioned by news channels and reported in today’s newspapers may all give the BJP-led NDA a clear majority but their numbers are so far apart that the end result is confusion. Why this lack of confidence in the once well-respected journalistic “nose”?

 

**

 

I suppose at the end of it all, we need to discuss who to watch on May 16… A popular choice is NDTV’s Prannoy Roy since he first introduced India to the necromantic art of psephology. Then there’s Arnab Goswami and Times Now which has established itself as the control room of these elections. And there are the rest, struggling to catch up.

 

Personally, I will stick to Rajya Sabha TV because it fits with my blood pressure requirements and perhaps some Hindi news channels which I find, despite their reputation in the snobbish English media, are more watchable. See you on the day.

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

And the winner is… yes, yes I know the winner is Narendra Modi but as far as election results coverage is concerned, it has to be Arnab Goswami! No really. There was drama, there was excitement, there was a studio audience which participated… like a well-rehearsed play they all gasped and groaned at the same time. Goswami had his pithy insights – the Congress is a “pocket borough” party, it is stuck in the “cocoon of delusion”. This was full-fledged watchability.

 

Rajya Sabha TV, my usual fallback at times like this, was sober and rational. The guests were sober and rational. The only excitement came early in the day when the BJP’s Tarun Vijay took exception to journalist Jyoti Malhotra talking about how some media houses had supported Modi’s campaign. Vijay, a journalist of some sort himself, took exception to this and said it was unfair to say that sweet cuddly journalists could be bought by anybody. However, it soon turned out that Vijay’s love only went as far as pro-BJP journalists and did not extend to all of them. The rest were, er, “news traders”. Jyoti Malhotra and Vinod Sharma of Hindustan Times objected and we were almost in the Times Now studio…

 

Of course not. Times Now is in another category.

 

But first, we visit NDTV because Prannoy Roy is India’s first election analyst darling. Boring, I would say. Blah blah blah  they went, we were right, you were right, weren’t we right. No actually, only that Chanakya chap was right it seems.

 

CNN-IBN had a formidable line up, including Ramachandra Guha and P Sainath. But it was not exciting.

 

Rahul Kanwal and Rahul Shivshankar (yes, they are two different people) on Headlines Today and NewsX did their imitation Arnab Goswami acts but really, what’s the point.

 

The nation wants to know what the nation wants to know: who’s next on the menu for Times Now?

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

There is an almost absurd breast-beating happening in one section of the media in India and an equally ridiculous whiny chest-thumping in the other ever since Narendra Modi was elected to become Prime Minister of India. At the end of the day, this was just an election. Yes, perhaps a very significant and joyous election from Modi and the BJP’s point of view and a devastatingly miserable election from the Congress’s point of view, but still, just an election.

 

Contrary to how it might appear to some in the media, goddesses and gods did not descend from Indra’s palace to throw flowers on Modi on May 16 and neither did Beelzebub scratch his way up from the underworld to hand him a horns, hoofs and a tail. Awful as this may sound, Modi is one more prime minister in a long list of prime ministers.

 

Indeed, it is from here on that the media has to get really serious about its role in a democracy. We are in a situation where the opposition has been cut to bits and no democracy can function without an opposition. The Congress has 44 seats. The other biggest parties are the AIADMK, the TMC and the BJD and there is no guarantee that any of them will play the Opposition’s role. The AAP, of whom many had much hope, is still learning the ropes as far as realpolitik is concerned.

 

TV sadly is still behaving like a cheerleader. It is apparently the nature of the beast – it cannot escape its moment by moment hysteria and take a wider view. Like that TV camera which shows you 100 people and makes it sound like 100,000 so is TV journalists approach to news. Whether this will ever change or not, my crystal ball will not tell me, but right now it seems unlikely.

 

However, as we saw with the India Against Corruption movement and then the Aam Aadmi Party, media did a full 180 turn from chief supporters to chief antagonists. Even now, Headlines Today and its editor Rahul Kanwal seem to have some kind of personal grudge against Arvind Kejriwal and his party. Even as Kanwal is now Chief Rah-Rah Boy for Narendra Modi – from his tweets to his broadcasts.

 

Newspapers have yet to climb down from the election bandwagon and are full of little stories about how many dhoklas are going to be eaten in the new PMO. How over the top this is I cannot say but I do not recall stories about how much chhole bhatura was eaten in the last PMO or the amount of bisi bhele huli anna consumed during Deve Gowda’s term as PM. In between these charming bits of trivia we have an endless stream of advice for the new PM and his team. Do this first, do that first, make this one that minister, speak this way to that world leader… any small acquaintance with the way Narendra Modi functions however should tell them that the new PM is not great on taking advice from all and sundry.

 

Between the advisory and the cheerleader mode (or the miserable martyr) roles, there has to be space for the main role as veteran journalist Pritish Nandy pointed out in a pertinent piece for Mumbai Mirror, which is that of a watchdog. This dispensation has swept into power on a magic carpet of promises to the Indian people. In between the “N and an A and an M” songs of the new media, we need to keep that eagle eye on what the government does and how it does it.

 

It is however heartening to note that most of the media realises that this election is as much about a gigantic failure of the Congress and its allies as it is about a rousing victory for Modi and the BJP!

 

**

 

Meanwhile, it is still a wait and watch game as far as changes within the media are concerned as a fallout of this election. And also, whether all those in the media who supported Modi so assiduously will be rewarded…

 

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

Yesterday’s news is tomorrow’s sev puri wrapping is an old newspaper adage in India. But one supposes it’s in the rightness of things to go back to the newspapers on May 17, the day after the Bharatiya Janata Party and Narendra Modi created a “historical moment in history” to quote India’s greatest TV news anchor Arnab Goswami.

 

The Times of India’s Mumbai edition had a Samsung 5 ad on its front page, which is also in the rightness of things. Never let a “historical moment in history” overtake a “who’s going to pay the bills” consideration. Inside, the paper was sober with “India places its faith in Moditva”, with no dramatic font changes except to run the headline across the page which is only natural.

 

The Hindustan Times went a little over the top with its “Hunkar Tally” headline and the orange glow on a gigantic face of Narendra Modi. Also a bit tabloidish with no stories, only blurbs.

 

Mid-Day had a cartoon of Modi in a Mr Universe pose exaggerating his 56-inch chest and the headline: “India MODIfied.”

 

Mumbai Mirror went the graphic-cartoon route with Modi perched on a lotus, in a splendid reference to a kitsch calendar with the headline, “God of all he surveys”.

 

The Telegraph ran the letters M-O-D-I down the left of the page with each letter telling readers a little story about elections results.

 

The Indian Express had a stern lecture to Modi with a front page edit.

 

DNA went with “Lotus Position”.

 

The Economic Times revisited DK Barooah’s quote about Indira Gandhi, with “India is Modi. Modi is India”.

 

I did not manage to catch The Hindu and the process to sign in to their e-paper is too tedious.

 

Interestingly, of these papers, only Mumbai Mirror, Indian Express and Economic Times carried front page ads.

 

**

 

After a massive media event like the announcing of election results, newspapers get a bit lost. There is little chance that those who were interested in the results read the papers at all on May 16, since TV anchors were blaring away from 7 am. It is intriguing that a best-selling author like Chetan Bhagat agreed to write an edit page piece for TOI that day or indeed that TOI asked him to.

 

The next day, there is likely to be massive news fatigue, especially with such a dramatic result. Hindustan Times obviously tried to surf along the day’s hysteria with its front page. Most other newspapers used the “people come to us to interpret the news” formula.

 

**

 

The big test for the media of course comes now. Many journalists and media groups turned themselves into cheerleaders for Narendra Modi during the campaign – even though there are enough accusations that the “media” is all paid for by the Congress. From what these elections have shown, the Congress is in no position to pay anybody. And from all accounts, the party could not even pick the right advertising agency (Dentsu) to present its case to the voters of India, no matter how much money it has.

 

Journalist, poet, filmmaker, Pritish Nandy had said on Twitter on May 16, “At some stage, the media will climb off the bandwagon to amplify the voice of a reasonable Opposition.” On May 17 he tweeted, “Right now there is not much difference between NaMo supporters and a supplicant media celebrating his victory”. On May 19, he said, “Some unsolicited advice: Media needn’t go overboard celebrating the Modi victory. Its job is still that of a watchdog. Go do it.”

 

Nandy’s observations are spot on. The media has to get down to work. In fact, the new government practically has no political opposition. Only the fourth estate remains…

 

This is from the Hindu’s Reader’s Editor, AS Paneerselvan on the road ahead for the media. Unmissable: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/Readers-Editor/a-challenge-to-media/article6022916.ece

 

**

 

This is the apparently “open letter” season in the media. Everyone is writing open letters to politicians, telling them what they should or should not do. Of the lot, Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s letter to Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister to be, is the most moving: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/an-open-letter-to-narendra-modi/article6022900.ece