By Ranjona Banerji
On December 13, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, spent the day at a temple expansion function in Varanasi. His exploits of the day, from praying to eating to waving, were covered extensively by Indian TV channels.
What part of the prime minister’s constitutional duties include temple expansion schemes? What part of his duties include spending all day and a good part of the evening at such schemes? If he was not there as prime minister but as a member of the BJP, what part of the expense was borne by the party and what part by us the citizens of India, through the coffers of the government of India?
The Indian media, in a normal world, would ask these questions. But our world has long abandoned normality. For instance, in 2008 Shivraj Patil lost his job as Union Home Minister because he changed his clothes three times on the day Delhi was rocked by serial blasts. Modi changed his clothes four times on December 13, and very sadly, as the temple extravaganza was on TV, at least two policemen were killed and several others injured when suspected terrorists opened fire at a bus stop in Srinagar.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/jammu-kashmir-bus-attack-police-injured-militants-live-updates-7670799/
The media sometimes has very high standards and sometimes it stoops very low indeed.
As senior journalist Smruti Koppikar pointed out in her column for Newsclick.in, the media has quickly forgotten the 14 people killed by the army in Nagaland and focused its attention on the helicopter crash that killed the Chief of Defence Staff and 12 others. Even in a democracy, some people are more equal than others.
https://www.newsclick.in/from-coonoor-nagaland-two-funerals-worthy-unworthy-victims
The people of Nagaland however have not forgotten and nor is it likely that they have missed how quickly the focus shifted away from them and on to glorification of the very forces which “mistakenly” murdered their fathers, husbands, sons, friends, family members.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-59634192
Also on December 13, the people of Ladakh who had once hailed the abrogation of Article 370 and the trifurcation of Jammu & Kashmir, called an all-day bandh to demand a restoration of their representative status and their constitutional safeguards.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/jammu-kashmir-bus-attack-police-injured-militants-live-updates-7670799/
Many journalists and commentators were wowed by Modi’s all-day publicity blitz because it demonstrated his hold over the media and the Hindu majoritarian narrative. How could any opposition party ever come close to such genius, they asked but did not add the necessary adjective: manipulative.
However, it is also incumbent on the media to question why we have allowed ourselves to be easily manipulated. I hear pat explanations around me, especially from people who have heard part of the story of how the media operates and a few catchphrases like “TRPs”. But anyone who has worked in the media for a few years, knows that it is more than that and more complicated. There are wheels within wheels, systems within systems.
What we have now is a breakdown of those systems and an apparently all-crushing wheel bearing down on every essence of a “free spirit”. It’s got to do with more than money and rating points. It is corruption on a massive scale.
Nothing in the nation around one suggests universal satisfaction with the quality of life. And yet members of the media, some very prominent, carry on with this hero worship of Modi and make a virtue out of chicanery. In effect, they tell the people they do not care: thus, the victims of army bullets in Nagaland are easily forgotten. And tell the opposition that the only way to succeed is to be more devious than the devious bunch in power.
The questions which must be raised are left to citizens to ask and then leave themselves open to political trolls and sometimes even police action.
And the few journalists who venture too far from the script?
https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/101221/india-has-highest-number-of-journalists-murdered-for-their-work-cpj-r.html
Hardly surprising then that the speeches by the two journalists who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year got scant space and attention in the Indian media!
This is Maria Ressa: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2021/ressa/lecture/
And this is Dmitry Muratov:
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2021/muratov/lecture/
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia every Tuesday and Friday. Her views here are personal