What is reader interest and how does one best save it?
Take the case of a yoga teacher-cum-ayurvedic medicine business house. Baba Ramdev has been popular and unpopular in Uttarakhand for some years now. He shot to national fame during the India Against Corruption movement in 2011, when he joined hands with Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal, Prashant Bhushan, Kiran Bedi and others to take on the then UPA government over corruption charges regarding spectrum auctions, the Commonwealth Games, coal allocations, and renew demand for Lokpal courts.
He was also known at the time for running away from the police dressed a pink salwar kameez, disguised as a woman, and for being hospitalised after only a few days of fasting.
But it was after the Narendra Modi government came to power that Ramdev gained power and prosperity. And how. Patanjali products were everywhere. From ayurvedic potions and lotions to instant noodles and biscuits.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Patanjali claimed to have found the cure for the virus, which it widely advertised with some help from Union ministers from the BJP: Coronil was the answer, according to Patanjali, Ramdev, government ministers. False claims were made that the medication was WHO-approved, from which Baba Ramdev had to backtrack.
The sordid details are all here:
https://thewire.in/health/the-business-of-godmen-how-ramdev-was-protected-and-even-promoted-by-the-system
Over two years later, the long arm of the law has caught up with Patanjali, over its “misleading ads”. The Supreme Court has rejected Baba Ramdev’s apologies and warned of further action against Patanjali.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/misleading-ads-case-sc-rejects-patanjalis-apology-warns-them-to-be-ready-to-face-action/articleshow/109185292.cms
Let’s now get back to the question: how is the media to cover such a case?
Because of the times we live in, news channels have acted as out-of-court defence attorneys for Ramdev and Patanjali. As the company and its owner has wept in court, Ramdev has wept on screen, full of contrition and a bit of anger at the strictures of the court.
In that other world to which I sometimes refer, where journalism is practised as it usually is, Ramdev and his company would have gleefully been ripped apart. The media is vicious when you are down. But in India, it depends on which side of the political spectrum you fall. As a friend of the ruling BJP, there is only comfort and garam chai for you with jalebis on the side. Fraudulent claims, outright lies in the middle of a terrible pandemic, these are not important enough for the mainstream media to focus on. And yet, some of these media houses did revert to journalism for a while during the pandemic; perhaps the scale of suffering forced them to.
Answers to the question about reader interest are therefore manifold. If your prime audience is only interested in glorification of the BJP and its chief leader, then clearly, criticism of Ramdev is not going to happen. The Union Government has not fully distanced itself from Ramdev and his problems, so media houses take that as an instruction to support him. The glee of taking down a big personality – a media staple – is denied to them. The audiences that demand sensation, thrill and/or facts and the truth have to play second-fiddle to the prime audience who want adulation of power. The media is thus trapped in a cage of its own making.
We are now in the quietest election season ever. The media continues with the Modi circus, amplifying the Prime Minister’s statements without question. What price this very significant letter by the Constitutional Conduct Group to the Election Commission on its favouritism and the lack of a level playing field?
https://thewire.in/government/former-civil-servants-write-to-eci-on-lack-of-level-playing-field-before-polls
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal