By Ranjona Banerji
Just as our patriotic news channels (and here I mean Times Now) recovered from whether Rahul Gandhi watched a film or not – MXM editor in chief Pradyuman Maheshwari has written plenty about that in Mediaah, so I shall not venture there again – when they were hit with a terrible blow. All right, I am being unfair, we were all hit with a terrible blow. The verdict in the much-awaited 2G spectrum scam, which seven years ago disrupted Indian politics, was delivered: all 17 accused were acquitted.
The judge OP Saini was scathing in his remarks. The CBI he said became increasingly diffident as time went by and all those “public-spirited†people who had plenty of opinions otherwise, did not bother to show up in his court to depose. Lack of admissible evidence, said the judge. Damning as that is on the CBI, it is also damning on us, the media.
The 2G spectrum case had plenty of elements which needed scrutiny and indeed which were scrutinised early on, in 2011-2012. It is true that the CAG figure of a loss to the national exchequer of Rs 1.76 lakh crore was so enormous that it pushed us straight into belief – belief that enormous corruption had been unveiled by the nation’s chief accountant. The UPA government at the time was excoriated for trying to suggest that this figure was not tenable. In a sense, this is when they lost the next election.
The India Against Corruption movement came out of this. The Niira Radia tapes, revealed to us by Outlook and Open magazines, pointed to even more cause for suspicion – that telecom majors were lobbying to make A Raja the telecom minister in the 2009 Cabinet. Prominent journalists were approached by PR person extraordinaire, Niira Radia to help in fixing Cabinet apppointments; some lost their jobs. There were discrepancies in dates for applying for the spectrum, there seemed to be some suspicious fiddling of licence procedures.
And yet, seven years later, the nation’s premier investigative agency could come up with nothing?
In the words of former colleague Jaideep Hardikar on Twitter, “2G case also indicates that the so-called national press in New Delhi did a shoddy reporting job by not following the court proceedings or looking at the official records filed or submitted from time to time. It is a telling indictment of our falling reporting standards too.â€
I could not put it better myself. If there had been consistent reporting on court proceedings, perhaps the verdict would not have been such a surprise. Instead, almost everyone was left gob-smacked. Judge OP Saini’s remarks deserve to be repeated: “For the last seven years, on all working days, summer vacation included, I religiously sat in the open court from 10 am to 5 pm, waiting for someone with legally admissible evidence in his possession but all in vain. Everyone was going by rumour and gossip.â€
Sadly, we have got so caught up in hit-and-run journalism that we now have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. That such an important case was not covered rigorously, that we – and this includes all of us – did not even bother to ask what was happening, is a sad reflection on the sort of journalism that has become the norm.
No wonder what film Rahul Gandhi watched after the Gujarat results is now seen as a legitimate topic of primetime “debateâ€.
The shame is on all of us,
**
Veteran journalist Prem Panicker in his blog has done a tremendous job outlining everything that is wrong with television journalism in India. Lack of understanding of how to get clarifications on sources, irresponsible sensationalism, a clear tilt towards the ruling party at the Centre in the way the story is approached. The issue is an allegation by a BJP member that a man was killed because of his Sangh Parivar affiliations, which the new channel took at face value.
The channel in question is India Today TV and the journalist is Shiv Aroor. But in fact, it could be anybody in today’s version of journalism. Panicker has broken down this too well for me to paraphrase him, so best read it here:
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are her own.