Familiar tropes dog us incessantly. When a media is so dysfunctional, it is hard to even critique media functions.
Thus, when the BJP’s best and finest attack journalist Nikhil Wagle on the streets of Pune, smash his car and try to pull him out of it, well, is the mainstream media going to cover the attack and berate the BJP?
You can hear me laughing, right?
You have a case filed against Nikhil Wagle for making “anti-Modi” remarks.
Media houses like India Today concentrate on the video of the attack by “alleged BJP workers” – I quote the website. The attack itself is scary, as this video shows.
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/video/watch-bjp-workers-vandalise-journalist-nikhil-wagles-car-in-pune-2499993-2024-02-
Other mainstream media outlets concentrate on how the Opposition has called the condition of Pune a “goonda raj”, thus shooting from someone else’s shoulder as usual.
And all the journalists’ bodies who are not supported by the legacy media condemn the attack.
https://www.newsclick.in/journalist-bodies-condemn-attack-nikhil-wagle-urge-maharashtra-government-take-action
This is business as usual. Wagle has been attacked, mainly by the Shiv Sena (the original, begun by Bal Thackeray) and the BJP several times. But this has not stopped him. He bucks the trend of capitulation and pays the price.
In this interview, Wagle’s son Parth MN, a fine journalist himself, speaks to Meena Kotwal (another fine journalist) of The Mooknayak about the various attacks on his Father.
These are some of the demands by journalists’ bodies of the BJP governments at the Centre and in the state of Maharashtra where the attack took place: “an environment where differing opinions, especially in politics, are respected”, “decisive action against the perpetrators”, “violence against journalists will not be tolerated”.
They sound righteous and legitimate.
However, I hear in them – I was going to write “childish innocence” but I now correct myself to “adult naivete”. Not to mention a certain tiredness. Those who believe in journalism as speaking truth to power have said this consistently for the past 10 years, but no one has listened. And frankly, no one within the BJP universe cares.
These much-repeated words will make no difference as long as all those who claim to practice journalism but in fact work as BJP propagandists continue with their despicable travesty of journalism. And this means about 80 per cent of television, which remains far more powerful than print and digital. As long as TV people promote the cult of Narendra Modi, as long as they demonise religious minorities, as long as they ignore the suffering of millions and celebrate the illegal use of bulldozers against the innocent, the BJP and its governments will do nothing about respecting different opinions and punishing its own people. And let us not forget newspapers, especially those based in North India, who skirt along the edges of journalism without venturing too far within for fear of retribution.
Even now, as India’s farmers begin another series of protests over their demands for minimum support prices, we have India’s big TV media faces attacking the farmers as they did last time two years ago. The usual language is used to debunk the protests: chaos, traffic jams, farmers are rich and so on. The default position is that anyone who counters or questions Modi and his policies or lack of policies must be a traitor.
That some of us still have faith in the principles of democracy being followed by this government is testament to the human capacity for faith.
As for me, I see the co-opted media as the first line of defence by the BJP/RSS against the crumbling edifice of journalism as it should be…
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.