Of the many things which the mainstream media in India is unable to discuss – and we have touched on most of them here, if not all – two stand out in the current scenario. Women’s issues and attacks on Muslims.
For both, can we conjecture that it is because forces within the media are unwilling to face the truth? No matter how much sound and fury were generated by the MeToo movement a few years ago, the media has not been able to clean up its own house. Over and over again, the story of exploitation, harassment and assault on women journalists continues. The perpetrators are usually powerful media men and therefore progress is slower than sludge climbing uphill.
And then there are the attacks on Muslims, which have increased alarmingly since Narendra Modi first became prime minister 10 years ago. Here we find the media’s role very disturbing. Several top channels run constant campaigns about how Hindus are in danger, which only serves to increase hatred against Muslims. Which is of course what they want, and what they do to stay in tune with the general RSS agenda.
This anti-Muslim slant has been relentless over the past 10 years and nothing has stopped them. The vicious rhetoric in TV studios and the sly dog-whistling by BJP politicians, including Modi, are perfectly in sync. The result is catastrophic. The lynching of Muslims which began in June 2014 with Mohsin Sheikh in Pune has been consistent. The reasons are also tied in with the Hindutva narrative – mainly to do with cow slaughter and the notion of travelling with beef right down to storing beef at home as with Mohammed Akhlak in 2015, the case which got the most publicity.
Nothing however has stopped the lynchers. Worse, in the past few weeks, the number of cases of attacks on Muslims and cases of rape have increased. Mainstream media and television coverage is calibrated to serve the rulers and men.
The courts have been slow to pick up on these murders. And soon the lynching dovetailed with the illegal destruction of Muslim homes on equally flimsy charges. The Supreme Court has initiated legal action now, years after the UP government began this inhuman and illegal form of “justice”.
Regardless of election results and BJP losses, some of these channels continue. What makes them do it? Why are News18 and Times Now, to name two of the worst, so hellbent on destroying India’s social fabric? It is hard to conjecture why two responsible companies should allow their TV anchors to behave in this manner. Nothing that you read in the Times of India correlates with the vicious Islamophobia and pro-BJP stance of Times Now. Why would an Ambani-owned channel like News18, which has business associations with Arab states, constantly attack Indian Muslims?
Is the degradation of the media complete, if it cannot wake up from its dangerous strategies even post-Modi’s limited 2024 victory? The fall of the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh was only presented as anti-Hindu, even though there are several other implications for India and even though many of what TV showed later turned out to be fake and misinformation. The same sort of misinformation is happening with Bengal, after the rape and murder of the doctor at RG Kar hospital. Here, the agenda is being set so that the BJP can benefit politically from the doctor’s death. The issue of women’s safety, which has riled the nation, has been sacrificed by our TV channels, in order to bring down Mamata Banerjee and prop up the local BJP.
The Assam chief minister who has been gunning for Muslims ever since he switched from the Congress to the BJP is not called out by the legacy media for his Islamophobia, just as the UP chief minister was practically lauded by the same media for his bulldozer injustice. Several TV anchors, if you remember, gleefully jumped into earthmovers to get firsthand experience of how it feels to destroy someone’s home.
With women’s issues, celebrated actor Mohanlal’s unchallenged “plea” that the Kerala film industry not be “destroyed” by women asking for justice and an end to sexual exploitation, demonstrates how low women fall in the list of priorities.
In such circumstances, perhaps it is impossible to even imagine that women within the media will get any justice at all. Either from harsh bigotry or suave predators.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.