By Ranjona Banerji
If you hear a plaintive cry which goes “why am I mocked for praising something good which the government does”, you can rest assured that this is the common city propagandist camera bird. This species used to be relatively rare, but in recent times has become prolific. In fact, this strain or subspecies has overtaken the larger family of journalists, whether print or TV.
This variety is excellent at sidestepping reality, focusing on one particular rotten fruit, and then looking for the best in that. Something rotten is teeming with life, you eat blue cheese you hypocrite, raw fruits are bad for digestion, or any bit of arcane illogic that they are fed though the chips embedded in their brains.
The problem of course is that the whole species is supposed to feast only on the wrongdoing of society. And especially, those parts of society which are in charge. There are other species which exist for praise or who will praise anything as long as they are paid to do it. Unfortunately, not only has there been extensive intermingling, but the lines have all become diffuse and confused.
Okay, enough with this analogy.
You know what I’m talking about. Especially you in the corner, pretending that you have not been a propagandist of a divisive ideology for the past 10 years. You, playing the victim card for your praise of a regime which has a “done a good thing” even while destroying the foundations of a nation’s freedoms, hard fought for.
As the year ends, it is traditional to try and recap events, highlights and lowlights both to give us a sense of perspective and a way into the future. Of course, we also know that these seasonal rituals are sometimes just routine with no special significance. As we move towards a general election year, we know that we will see more common city propagandists and less journalists around us. We will see how events are perverted and inverted, so that the ruling regime gets the benefit, no matter how egregious their errors.
The fact that our “journalist” friends decided to ignore the whole problem with sexual assault allegations against the main office-bearer of the Wrestling Federation of India because he is a BJP member, decided to play down the suffering of women wrestlers who dared to complain was bad enough. But that they decided to praise the sports ministry for suspending the Wrestling Federation of India as if this made up for all earlier sins show once more how deep the rot in journalism-as-it-is-practised runs.
The sports ministry was forced to suspend the WFI because of procedural transgressions. The media cynically projected this as some BJP salve to the wrestlers. The BJP has capitalised on this media lie. The facts remain that the accused MP Brij Bhushan Singh has lost nothing. He brazenly got a crony to take his place in WFI, which led to two Indian Olympic medallists to react with enormous anguish.
There is nothing to “praise” either the Narendra Modi government nor the BJP here.
This just one small example of how nothing will change until we change from within. Some members of the public are very kind to the Indian media and have decided that it is money alone which has made us behave like this.
But we know that the rot runs much deeper. That invasive pests are everywhere. And right now, the common propagandist rules the roost.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Her views here are personal