Ranjona Banerji: The time when editors ran newsrooms is officially over!

​By Ranjona Banerji

Aniruddha Bahal, founder-editor of the investigative platform Cobrapost, is used to shaking up the Indian establishment. When he was with Tehelka, his most well-known sting operations were on Indian cricket and the military-politician-defence manufacturers’ nexus.

But Cobrapost’s latest sting directly affects us, the media. Headlined Operation 136, taken from India’s ranking on the World Press Freedom Index, and what this sting operation, done by reporter Pushp Sharma, clearly shows why we are so low. Almost all the people the reporter filmed, from across a series of media houses and platforms, agreed to take money from him to push his pro-Hindutva agenda, to run campaigns against Rahul Gandhi, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav and to promote “firebrand” Hindutva leaders like Mohan Bhagwat and Vinay Katiyar.

Exceptions were rare – like the one digital strategist with ScoopWhoop who said that this sort of political campaign was outside their ambit. The owners of the platform however were happy to jump aboard to take Sharma’s ideas further – or “Acharya ji” as he called himself. They discussed money, worked out how they could take black money from him and all agreed that pushing the Hindutva agenda was the way to go.

I have consistently argued in these columns that sting operations walk a very thin line between journalism and entrapment. In most cases, the person interviewed knows who you are and why you are talking to them. In sting operations, they do not and sometimes, as we saw with Tehelka’s cricket “expose”, people just like the sounds of their own voices when they are relaxed and casual, often saying things which do not amount to much.

However, as we have just seen with Channel 4’s expose on Cambridge Analytica, occasionally sting operations can reveal what conventional methods would not. And they can be explosive revelations which have huge repercussions.

What Cobrapost has done, in a sense, is revealed to us what we already know. That media owners and managers are either so greedy for money that they will do anything, including breaking any number of laws. And that the agenda of Hindutva, whether soft or hard, is actively being pushed across the media. Almost no one expressed surprise at the offer made by “Acharya ji”. Several people agreed that Hindutva had to be supported and many immediately offered ideas on what could be done.

There is scope here for the Election Commission to understand that if “paid news” is to be punished, it is not sufficient to focus on political parties alone. Media houses must be equally if not more culpable.

But the biggest problem exposed by Cobrapost is the complete irrelevance of the journalist in all these strategies. The time when editors ran newsroom​s​

is officially over. They have surrendered to “content strategists and analysts” and have been reduced to ciphers in what was once their domain. This surrender is not new, it is not this generation which has done it, but it is this generation which will bear the brunt.

There was plenty of anger on Twitter yesterday, from senior journalists. There was much speculation on whether TV news would cover this story. But obviously not. Some newspapers and news sites have picked it up and good for them. For the rest, well, is there any point even talking about shame?

https://www.cobrapost.com/blog/Operation-136:-Part-1/1009

https://www.cobrapost.com/pages/Reactions:%20Operation%20136/7

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/cobrapost-says-paid-news-widespread/article23357752.ece

https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/cobrapost-sting-media-silent-twitter-outraged

​Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are personal​