By Ranjona Banerji
That the right-wing uses the media to spread hatred and propaganda is not new. But the extent of the collusion continues to horrify. There is more evidence of the reach of this hatred in an investigation by Reporters Collective carried by Al Jazeera. Once more Facebook is involved and in India, it is promotion of the BJP funded by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance.
Journalists Kumar Sambhav and Nayantara Ranganathan discover how the BJP used the media, through a Reliance-funded Facebook page called NEWJ. Fake memes were put in the 2019 election that BJP candidate Pragya Thakur had been acquitted of all charges in the Malegaon blasts case.
As the Cambridge Analytica case showed, Facebook is heavily used to spread misinformation and fake news especially by the right-wing, whether to get Donald Trump elected as US President or push through the Brexit vote in the UK. However, it’s not just algorithms and “systems” which can be blamed. There is complete human collaboration to ensure that the message of hatred for the party of choice is pushed through.
As the AJEnglish report found out: “A Facebook page called NEWJ paid for both the advertisements, as per Facebook’s Ad Library, a graphical interface to browse advertisements placed across Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company. NEWJ, the acronym for New Emerging World of Journalism Limited, is a subsidiary of Jio Platforms Ltd, India’s largest telecom and internet conglomerate which is owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/3/14/how-a-reliance-funded-company-boosts-bjps-campaigns-on-facebook
The Reliance Group has not only pushed the BJP’s Pragya Thakur, who is still under investigation on terrorism charges, but also pushed fake news about Congress’s Rahul Gandhi. Underlying this is also religion. Thakur has been accused to bombing a mosque. A speech by Gandhi was manipulated to show that he supported Islamist terrorists. As it is, the Ambani-owned CNN News18 carries rabid anti-Islam pro-Hindutva shows and programmes. This investigation reveals the extent of the rot.
The Reporters Collective investigation also shows how Facebook’s algorithm offered the BJP much cheaper advertising rates than other political parties. This allowed the BJP to spread its messages further:
“Facebook’s algorithm offers cheaper advertisement deals to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over other political parties, according to an analysis of advertisement spending spread across 22 months and 10 elections. In nine of the 10 elections, including the national parliamentary elections of 2019 that BJP won, the party was charged a lower rate for advertisements than its opponents.
The favourable pricing allows the BJP, Facebook’s largest political client in India, to reach more voters for less money, giving it a leg up in the election campaigns.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/3/16/facebook-charged-bjp-lower-rates-for-india-polls-ads-than-others
The investigation also looked at the murky world of “ghost advertisers” which allows parties like the BJP to get away with its hate-spreading agenda by hiding behind proxies. The question for India to ask is why India’s biggest company, Reliance, should be part of this agenda, as these reports reveal.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/3/15/inside-facebook-and-bjps-world-of-ghost-advertisers
The other question which has been asked innumerable times but to which we in the media have no answer is why the media in India has been so compromised by the BJP. Before I get any number of answers from all the usual know-it-alls within and without the media, I have to make to clear that none of those answers provided are satisfactory. The media is not an NGO, money is important: we all know that, it’s now new and we all have to get paid salaries. It insults the mind that these are provided as excuses. The current extent of the degradation is so disastrous that there is no explanation which can cover that.
The only hope we have is these independent organisations. For how long…
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.