Category: COLUMNS

By Ranjona Banerji

Being out of India for a short while brings home how perceptions of the media and how the media actually operates are not that different anywhere. The same arguments over trivialisation, the same expectations of the news as you want to see it not what the news agency, channel, newspaper wants to show you can be heard. But as much, the trivialisation is real and the choices are not always understandable.

The localisation of news for instance is still an ongoing argument. As someone who has used it successfully in various publications, I can vouch for its importance. However, there has to be a constant exercise of judgment. Here in the UK where I am, the Christmas season is always a slow one news-wise since most people are on holiday and the general mood leans towards cheer rather than misery.

So if you cannot escape the relentless presence of ISIS and what that means for the future of the world, you can perhaps not focus on events in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Turkey, Lebanon and Nigeria as much. But can you get away with that? If there is another event, could you justify playing it down because it’s Christmas closer to home?

But the dilemma does not have to be as dire as that. For instance, there has been severe flooding in parts of Scotland and the North of England for the past two weeks. This is local news in one sense but in another, it is part of the whole climate change, extreme weather story that affects the whole planet. The problems and explanations for the wide-scale flooding seem remarkably like what we in India heard during and after the recent floods in Tamil Nadu. That is, development on lake beds and river over-flow areas leaving surging waters nowhere else to go.

As it happens, the official and emergency responses were faster here than in India but not all residents thought so as one might expect. Human sympathy and help were as high as in Chennai and I have not yet heard stories about the cheats who tried to make a buck out of someone else’s misery but perhaps one only has to wait. Parts of the southern United States have also seen extreme rain and flooding and some of the pictures out of Texas have been worse than Chennai.

So should a news channel focus mainly on flooding, on Christmas fun and spending or on Iraq rebel forces being moved out of ISIS areas through Turkey so that they can go back and fight ISIS? Or as a very local channel here in East Yorkshire did, ignore the flooding and home in on some very local municipal issue and ignore the rest of the county?

If it was me, I would have stuck to the flooding and crime: One resident of a senior care home has killed another, I see in snippets. Guns in old age facilities: now that’s a story that shocks, horrifies and amazed everyone.

Now how’s that for a perfect Christmas cheer story?

On which note, I let you get back to Arvind Kejriwal and Arun Jaitley, which doesn’t appear to have changed since I left India 10 days ago!

By Ranjona Banerji

Following the Pathankot attack on social media, with no access to Indian television news, was a bizarre experience. For one thing, Twitter now seems to be the Government of India’s official means of communication. Information arrives there first as ministers and government officers tweet away. However, it is unclear whether something as serious as an attack on Air Force Base should have government agencies tweeting about it.

Secondly, it is now obvious, as far as this government is concerned, who in the media has access to whom in the government and whom the government uses to disseminate the information it wants out there. As senior journalist Saikat Datta pointed out on Twitter this week, “handout journalists” had been releasing information that Indian security operations in Pathankot were a success even while the assault was still on.

You may argue that these sycophant journalists cannot be wholly blamed since the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh himself tweeted that the attack had been foiled two days before it was over. In fact, even as I write this, combing operations are on.

What was also evident on Twitter is that journalists who favoured the government were at a loss about what to tweet about. The apparent confusion over what was happening in Pathankot was bad enough. Mixed messages were coming out of government agencies and sources. And to make matters worse for the BJP loyalists is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not to be seen. Far from taking charge of an escalating situation, he was giving a speech about the importance of yoga. He tweeted extensively over the three days of the attack. However, aside from a couple of tweets about the “enemies of humanity” and the pride we feel in our Armed Forces, most of his attention was on science, yoga, cities and various saints and seers.

What is a loyalist journalist to do under such circumstances? The prime minister and the government were being roasted on Twitter. So our friends of the BJP fell back on two of our usual suspects. One lot started with attacking Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on increasing crime rates in his state. The other targeted Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his government’s plan to restrict cars on the roads in an attempt to deal with the national capital’s severe pollution problems.

The Nitish Kumar ploy was a non-starter. No one was remotely interested. The Kejriwal attack worked better if only because so many vocal and loyalist journalists live in Delhi. However, the odd-even number-plate restriction had been discussed down to the bare bones when it was first announced and besides, there were some reports that it was working.

The elephant in the room however remains: Pathankot. It was the biggest news for three days and will undoubtedly continue to be so. There is context – the proximity of the attack to a friendly supposedly unscheduled ‘happy birthday’ meeting beween Modi and Nawaz Sharif. There is the larger issue of resuming talks. There are the outrageous claims made by BJP president Amit Shah that no Pakistani terrorist would dare to enter India if Modi was prime minister. There are the usual problems of intelligence miscommunication, of a fumbling government and the Punjab administration saying it cannot cope with cross-border assaults. And there is the fact of the attack itself, the deaths, the apparent lack of equipment and so on.

It is almost impossible to imagine what sort of a journalist would even think that tweeting about Bihar’s crime statistics was remotely relevant at a time like this. It needs to be pointed out that these are not junior reporters and sub-editors. These are people in senior positions in mainline establishments. Even funnier were the subsequent attempts at the mildest possible criticism of the PMO’s tweets about yoga during an ongoing attack on an Indian Air Force base. If you have ever seen a cat tentatively trying to dip its paws in the water and then retreating, you would know how amusing it can be.

Unfortunately, this is the sort of journalist who is now most powerful in India. Go figure.

By Ranjona Banerji

The fallout of the Pathankot attack appears to remain at the top of the news cycle in India which is hardly surprising. Although I have written last week about our sycophantic media, unable by instruction or inclination to show the BJP and the Central government in bad light, one has to salute courageous publications like The Telegraph, Calcutta for instance. Not only has it called the entire operation “Pathanblot”,(http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160106/jsp/frontpage/story_62434.jsp#.Vo5IXfl97IU) , the newspaper has also written a very strong editorial arguing against the “martyr” status given to every fallen soldier. This is a common practice by India’s most well-known TV anchors who have absolutely no concept of the meaning of the word “martyr”, inasmuch as they understand concepts at all.

In the hyper-nationalistic atmosphere that prevails in India now, where words like sedition and treason are thrown around very lightly, you have to admire a newspaper which can question the actions of a slain officer during a terrorist attack. Yet, the concerns raised here are pertinent and need to addressed urgently. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160107/jsp/opinion/story_62467.jsp#.Vo5JVvl97IU

The website thequint.com also carried a letter by Lt General HS Panag (retired) to Major General Pradyot Mallick (retired) on the Pathankot attack. It is a scathing analysis of what happened at the Air Force Base in Punjab.

http://www.thequint.com/opinion/2016/01/06/the-pathankot-attack-was-a-disgrace-for-us

There is some hope for the media if at least some media houses, old and new, are willing to look for facts rather than toe some party line. The last two years have shown the most abysmal standards in Indian journalism for all that everyone who is not pro-BJP is sought to be presented as a Congress stooge. The evidence at the moments points in quite another direction.

What India needs very urgently is TV programmes which analyse the way news is presented. I write this sitting here in the UK where there are any number of shows, serious and funny, which examine newspapers and television news. Personally, the shows which mock the news are top of the list. Of course, Jon Stewart’s Daily Show in the US, now fronted by South African comedian Trevor Noah, set the standard. And John Oliver is also superb – if you have not watched his take on Indian television news, Narendra Modi in America and how the American media ignored the Indian general elections, you should do so at once.

The All India Bakchod has taken on the news on Youtube and now on television. And there’s always The Week That Wasn’t. But neither of them is as strong, as confrontational and as in-your-face as they need to be. India has a tendency to get stuck in morass of over-baked notions of self-respect and we need to be taken down frequently. Journalists are no exception and some are far too full of themselves.

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Having said that, the illness of concentrating on the trivial and fluttering past the substantial is a worldwide media disease. The often mindless and meaningless potterings of the latest pop star are far more important than any world even unless you count US presidential hopeful Donald Trump, who may qualify as both.

By Ranjona Banerji

Two things strike you immediately about the way journalism is perceived in the UK: everyone complains about the media all the time and yet no one appears to read mainstream newspapers.

That sounds like a contentious and dichotomous statement. But there is little doubt now that the old-style newspaper is now an old world product. Instead, you have that other creature: the free newspaper which is now a regular if not a mainstay. The free newspaper sometimes could be the Evening Standard, which is read by commuters on the Underground who are not addicted to Candy Crush or staring vacantly into space.

And there is the neighbourhood paper which has local ads and local news which could be as diverse as a baby born on Christmas Day at a nearby hospital, a theatre personality with a gambling addiction and odd goings on at a local prison. These papers require a lot of hard work and ought not to be sneered at. How many reporters with a mainstream newspaper would climb up to the roof of a building to interview a prisoner who had escaped to the roof of the prison?

However, the influence of the media remains. Obviously the internet and television are the main sources of news but sooner rather than later the internet is going to be the clear winner. Every media house which is investing in mobile app technology is looking at the cash register going ka-ching and I cannot see TV keeping pace unless it runs down the same road.

It is also true that the UK at least benefits from not having nonstop hysterical and any number of 24-hour news channels. Plus, although people here do not stop making fun of the media for exaggerating issues and asking silly questions, can you imagine how anyone else in the world would react if they were subjected to our prime-time “debates”? Perhaps we should have a time-sharing scheme with international news channels and export some of our savers of the nation so that they can go save the world? How peaceful life would be even if it put me out of a job…

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Meanwhile back in India as far as I can see, we are still seesawing between Pathankot, Malda and Arvind Kejriwal. Even the fact that Malini Parthasarathy resigned as editor of The Hindu in one more Kasturi family carousel ride could not keep the media engaged. Off everyone went on to the other roller-coaster ride: “you covered this but did not cover that, this news item is more important than that and you are an anti-national.”

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The internet and international media is in a tizzy over actress Jennifer Lawrence’s treatment of a reporter at a post-Golden Globes press conference. The video doing the rounds shows the actress, who had just won an award, mocking a reporter for looking at his phone while asking her a question. It does seem clear that English was not the reporter’s first language and that is why he was possibly looking at his phone.  Although there was some support for Lawrence on the internet, most people seem to find her needless nasty. The video does show some of the nonsense which reporters who deal with famous people have to put up with.

Interesting, the Golden Globes are given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Go figure.

Mashable has rounded up the story:

http://mashable.com/2016/01/11/jennifer-lawrence-globes-reporter/?utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-main-link#BnrJUe4W_gqr

By Ranjona Banerji

The world around tennis appears to be in turmoil over match-fixing allegations. Or is it? The BBC and Buzzfeed broke a story on January 18 on “secret files” about match-fixing at the top levels of international tennis. Offenders include Grand Slam winners and players in the top 50 of the rankings of the game.

The story is especially explosive since the first Grand Slam tournament of the year, the Australian Open, has just begun in Melbourne on Monday, January 18. The story is serious but the revelations are not new. These “secret files” refer to the scandal that came to public light a decade ago. The most notable allegation then was against Nikolai Davydenko, then number 4 in the ATP rankings, who was suspected of “tanking” or throwing a match in 2007. The match was highlighted because online betting company Betfair found “irregular activity” on the match as suspended all bets, reporting the matter to the ATP. Davydenko, since retired, was suspended pending investigation but as cricket investigators have found, proving match-fixing is notoriously difficult. According to the BCC and Buzzfeed story, at least eight players flagged by the Tennis Integrity Unit, set up after the match-fixing scandal, are due to play in Australia this fortnight.

Interestingly, a respected tennis writer on CNN wondered if the timing of the story was its main significance – to get maximum readership mileage out of the Australian Open, when viewership increases substantially over that of diehard, year-round tennis fans. Since the reports names no new names and most of the investigations are against low-ranked players – most not even in the top 100 of the ATP rankings, the story remains more speculative than constructive.

This is where the media runs into legal and ethical brick walls. Without names and without big names, there is no story. But if you do not mention the story at all, you are doing the public and the game a disservice. In fact, what the media needs to show is greater vigilance so that tennis can hold itself to a high standard. But there is an intrinsic problem here. Most sports reporting tends to be personality driven and increasingly, with hero worship thrown in. Under the circumstances, objectivity becomes a rare commodity. Some tennis writers prefer to limit themselves to analyses of the games themselves and playing styles. This leaves larger issues in tennis untouched. This problem can be seen in just about every sport. Does it bear repeating that almost no regular cricket correspondent appeared to have any clues about the extent of the 2000 match-fixing scandal that almost broke the game, in spite of (or because of?) close proximity?

There are in fact several problems that affect tennis but few of them get enough coverage. Journalists – and the tennis authorities – shy away from reporting extensively on drug use or violations of tennis rules by players. The fact that top players – especially in the ATP tour – are often fined for breaking time rules or coaching violations are papered over. Journalists appear to have almost forgotten how a much-respected umpire is not permitted to chair a certain player’s games because of personal differences. That players like Richard Gasquet, Marin Cilic and Victor Troiki were suspended for drug use is almost forgotten but a player lower down the pecking order like Wayne Odesnik is much reviled. By contrast, one rather rare loss of control by Serena Williams with a linesperson during the US Open is still referred to.

Clearly tennis authorities are too much in awe of their players to take stringent public action against them. Some burden therefore falls on the media. But, in this story, the allegations perhaps do fall short. We need more details and more investigation, not less, if tennis is to keep its reputation intact.

By Ranjona Banerji

Once more into the breach: That is how the Indian media deals with news breaks. From flip-flopping over the Pathankot attack and a number of senior editors and journalists trying to protect the government from accusations of inefficiency and worse, we now have journalists trying to be fair on Dalit issues. Forgive me if I sound cynical. It is only because I have seen too much anti-Dalit and anti lower caste prejudice from upper caste journalists in newsrooms, especially in recent times. This is nothing but a massive tragedy because if journalists do not stand up for the underprivileged, then who will?

So now we have a situation where a research scholar at Hyderabad University, Rohith Vemula, commits suicide under some very unfortunate if not almost criminal circumstances. India discovers that he was part of a group called the Ambedkar Students’ Association, which is considered “radical” by members of the BJP’s student wing the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. Vemula and four other students were suspended by the university over a fight with the ABVP. Vemula’s stipend was withheld for months, leaving him and his family desperate.

What made the case worse was that a BJP minister wrote to the HRD ministry to inform them of the ASA’s apparent assault on the ABVP and that these students were “anti-national”. Further, the HRD ministry consequently sent a number of letters to the university until these five Dalit students were suspended. The BJP, as is its wont these days, took too long to respond and several journalists decided to concentrate on the fact that the Congress vice-president rushed to Hyderabad rather than discrimination against Dalit students in higher educational institutions in India or government interference in support of a political party’s student body, which perhaps were the bigger stories.

This is not the first time that we have seen upper caste anger against Dalits at institutes of higher education in India. IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Roorkee, Hyderabad University – these are only some examples of discrimination and prejudice against Dalits. It is a story that ought to be looked at thoroughly and not through the prism of upper caste angst as is evident in websites like Swarajya, for instance where takes the position that these Dalit students, by demanding their rights and holding “uncomfortable” positions, are somehow the problem. By Indian law, caste discrimination is illegal: should journalists be aware of this?

On the evening of Thursday January 21, NDTV and India Today TV focussed on this issue. Times Now and NewsX were engrossed on a probable scam in Bihar and CNN-IBN looked at students’ suicides at Kota coaching centres. However to be fair, the media as a whole has made Rohith Vemula a household name and only a few of the usual suspects have been left scrambling to protect the BJP government at the Centre.

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Bhupendra Chaubey of CNN-IBN, who has lately stewarded the channel back to a more professional mode since its ownership turmoil, found himself the butt of jokes on social media and had to face the rage of Bollywood. While interviewing Bollywood actress Sunny Leone, he focused for too long on her past as a porn star, to the extent that he was offensive and misogynistic. His questions included asking her if her presence in front of him would morally corrupt him. He also suggested that actors like Aamir Khan would never act with her. Leone was dignified throughout, which only added to her charm.

As it happened, Aamir Khan tweeted he would be happy to act with Leone. Firstpost.com put up this defence of Chaubey, which was a superb move considering that they are sister concerns.

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/in-defence-of-bhupendra-chaubey-outrage-about-the-sunny-leone-interview-is-misplaced-2592884.html

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The death of Dr Aroon Tikekar this week marks a sad day for Indian journalism. He belonged to that old school of erudite, informed and free-thinking journalists who cared more for their convictions than for corporate success. He will be sorely missed in all his capacities but especially as a thinker and a mentor. I feel privileged that he considered me a friend.