By Ranjona Banerji
Cambridge Analytica, perhaps late but that is better than never as the saying goes, is now news. In India, of course, some of the Cambridge Analytica news is BJP versus the Congress. But that is because now par for the course. It is important for all newsrooms however to get out that of box – which they were neatly stuffed into by Union minister for Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad. For two days, TV viewers have been regaled with Prasad waving newspaper reports to claim that the Congress Party was about to hire Cambridge Analytica. Other media outlets carried proof from the company’s website that the BJP had already used Cambridge Analytica and so the circus continued.
However​, on Thursday (March 22) evening, Wion claimed credit for carrying the Cambridge Analytic story first of all the Indian news channels. That is as may be. But the story was broken by these explosive investigations done by Channel 4, over four months, into how Cambridge Analytica manipulated voters to make Donald Trump the President of the USA.
https://www.channel4.com/news/exposed-undercover-secrets-of-donald-trump-data-firm-cambridge-analytica
The Channel 4 stories included Russia’s and Facebook’s role in Trump’s victory.
There are several stories to be taken further from this. Manipulation of elections by targeting specific people from data gained by their online presence, stealing people’s online data without their knowledge, using these psychological profiles to dismiss or spread false and damaging misinformation about political rivals, the role of big business or foreign countries in fiddling with elections, the safety of online data and the possibilities of misuse. These are only the cliched tip of the iceberg.
Rather than reporting on the surface — the allegations of BJP versus Congress — we need deeper work from the media in India. Arguments in the Supreme Court on Aadhaar currently on deal in part with this exact issue – how safe is our data? The problem is not just Facebook, it is everything. Ravi Shankar Prasad threatening Mark Zuckerberg with India’s “stringent†IT laws is nothing but a joke and needs to be thoroughly exposed by the media. That is by far the most childish response by a responsible government by what has emerged.
That Cambridge Analytica has Indian connections is now known. The son of KC Tyagi of the Janata Dal (United), a partner of the NDA government, worked with Cambridge Analytica’s Indian arm. The Indian website has put down as its achievements the BJP’s win in 2014’s Lok Sabha elections (deleted after this story broke). NDTV has spoken to another employee who said Cambridge Analytica wanted to infiltrate the Congress Party to defeat it from within.
These are some of the allegations we need to look at. Is democracy being threatened by such manipulation? Pratap Bhanu Mehta has a perspective here:
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/cambridge-analytica-facebook-data-breach-5106303/
How dangerous is this manipulation? How much have we surrendered already? How much policing is possible? Do we have the laws to deal with this sort of data gathering? We already know that we are targeted by corporations, from the number of spam phone calls that we get. No matter how hard TRAI tries, these calls never stop. How compromised are we by online sharing? Consider every app on your smart phone. Every personal detail you share on Whatsapp.
What we need are informed and aware journalism that can keep readers and viewers in the loop and even ahead of the loop on this one. We need the media to step aside from the circus and delve into the danger.
Possible?
​Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are personal​