By Ranjona Banerji
The battle for the Indian news space has traditionally been politics versus everything else. Sometimes, in earlier, gentler times, cricket posed the biggest competition to politics. Occasionally Bollywood.
Today, we have politics-as-news being used to cover up news. Hence the complete obsession of our TV channel with the Bengal assembly elections. People who did not know the difference between Birbhum and Burdwan a month ago are now world experts in the intricacies of local needs and dissatisfaction. Although five states go to the polls from the end of March, Bengal is the biggest “news” because the BJP is trying to make its biggest push there.
And because BJP stalwarts and prominent BJP ministers, Central and state, have taken to campaigning in Bengal, all attention is focused there. Because “news” as understood by TV happens only where the BJP goes, particularly when it’s the threesome of Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Ajay Bisht aka Yogi Adityanath of UP. Rallies, speeches, and the rest of the election hoopla is fed back to us in an endless self-perpetuating loop. As long as these three and a few others remain in the public eye with large dollops of positive coverage, nothing else matters.
Meanwhile, what’s really happening beyond the BJP’s attempts to win one more state by fair means or foul?
Remember the virus? That’s still here. And all negative coverage is focused only on non-BJP ruled states. The vaccination drive is big on numbers because we’re a large country. But it’s slow, proportionate to our population. The experts say this. Try and find them dominating the news. You won’t. Because Modi promised “aasol poriborton” in Bengal. Which makes no sense in Bengali and sounds really bad in English. But, not only does Modi look like Tagore but he also speaks Bangla. Cue in a few TV anchors fainting in ecstasy at such genius!
How about the economy? Any vague recollections? Still struggling. Retail inflation is up. You and I know that. But we have a Union finance minister who judges rising prices by her own lifestyle. As others have pointed out, since so far we know that she doesn’t cook with onions, use LPG gas or diesel or petrol… Nirmala Sitharaman is okay, thanks! Yes, that economy. Joblessness, manufacturing down, that one.
The farmers? They’re still there on the roads. For over 100 days now. Several hundreds have died during these protests. Many are in jail. Cases have been filed against them recently for digging borewells and building shelters. By a government which dug massive trenches in public roads to stop farmers from exercising their democratic rights. Those farmers.
News is definitely what’s happening right here, right now. But news is also an ongoing story. And in any ordinary terms, the more it annoys the powers-that-be, the more of an ongoing story it is. Compare the coverage of the India Against Corruption movement of 2011 with today’s coverage of the farmers protests. Tiny crowds and a fast by an activist no one had heard of until then were boosted to enormous levels. Thousands of farmers on the roads were dialled down and the government position that these farmers were anti-national terrorists was promoted.
Of course, there’s China and its incursions. It seems apparent that the Government of India lied to the people of India on the whole issue. From the Prime Minister’s statement that “no one entered” India to the claims that China had pulled back, the few brave agencies who have gone into further investigation had disproved all government claims. Where is the blanket media coverage on that?
Here’s a test on how news is ignored as much as manufactured. And government publicity is carefully put out as news.
The Citizens’ Commission on Elections report on the 2019 elections has raised doubts about the fairness of the last general elections. It has said that the Election Commission failed to perform its duties.
This quote is from a report in The Wire:
“The report says that the Election Commission of India (ECI) has failed to perform its duties, while also flagging the exclusion of marginalised groups from voters’ lists, the opacity of electoral bonds and the power of big money in winning elections.
The report said since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, “grave doubts” have been raised around the fairness of the polls and wondered if India was becoming an “electoral autocracy”.”
https://thewire.in/rights/election-commission-bjp-polls-fairness-citizens-commission-on-elections-report
Try and imagine the implications for a democracy when such information is ignored only because the bulk of the media wants to be a government megaphone.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. Her views here are personal.