Tag: freaking news

By Ranjona Banerji

Not surprisingly, the news has been filled with the Sheena Bora murder case. The accusations, allegations and investigation details as they have emerged have been weird, bizarre, unbelievable and diabolical. They also involve influential people and that gives the story extra oomph.

But it is in cases like this that the media often gets the most flak. The Aarushi Talwar-Hemraj murder case was a watershed moment for the media. While there were congratulations for the re-focus on the Jessica Lal murder, the media went to town with implied motives in the Aarushi-Hemraj double murder, encouraged by police and later CBI speculation about sexual orgies, incest and several other sexual relationships. The sanctity of forensic evidence also went for a toss as TV cameras showed the whole world and its uncle clambering over the crime scene.

Have we learnt anything since then? Apparently, yes. The police for one thing have been more circumspect about releasing both information and crackpot theories. Rakesh Maria, Mumbai’s media-savvy and well-seasoned police commissioner is personally handling the case. And most of the wacky unbelievable stuff being has been coming from the family itself.

Let us also not forget that Peter Mukerjea, the current husband of the murder accused Indrani Mukerjea, was once the head of Star India and perceived to be very close to Rupert Murdoch. He was at the time one of the most powerful men in India. He and Indrani were also very high profile. When they started 9X together, it was a massive media event. Pradeep Guha, ex-Bennett Coleman, ex-Zee, was also going to be part of it. The news channel NewsX was to be headed by a star team led by Vir Sanghvi. The subsequent collapse of 9X was equally controversial and caused tremors through the media. All the more reason for the media to focus on the case.

But the facts alone are enough. So far we have a woman accused of murdering a sister who is actually her daughter. Her current husband denies all knowledge of everything. The couple’s driver said his boss and one of her former husbands (not the father of the victim) were co-conspirators in Sheena’s murder. The “lady accused”, as Maria calls her, also had a son who she presented to the world as a brother. He makes all manner of accusations against his mother including that they were abandoned by her. The victim and her stepfather/brother-in-law’s son from an earlier marriage were in a relationship. Her sister/mother disapproved. This caused all manner of friction. The father of the abandoned brother and sister has not yet spoken out. This one paragraph ought to be enough to explain just how compelling and incredible the story is.

The media from that perspective has no option but to follow this story. As usual some newspapers will be better and some will be worse than others. Some news channels will go into overdrive. But so far, most channels have had the same news. There has been some speculative reporting but how can there not be? However as usual, the panel discussions or debates or tamashas have been most questionable mainly because this is where gossip and uninformed judgment masquerade as profundity. The funniest of all was on Barkha Dutt’s show on NDTV when various high profile women and has-beens sat in judgment over Indrani Mukerjea with nary a thought of their own pasts. So be it. The story is juicy enough.

On another “discussion”, a guest pointed out that the media had to cover the story because how else will people know? Indeed. A stellar thought that one wishes media critics would ponder on!

There will be the usual carping about how the media did not carry this or that. However, it is also true that if the media did not cover this story there would as many counter allegations.

As it happened, I also read about and saw on TV, in the same evil biased media, stories on the Patel rally in Gujarat, the subsequent violence, the army being called out. Also on the data of growth by religious community in India. Narendra Modi’s anodyne comments on violence. On the status of the One Rank One Pension protests. Rahul Gandhi wandering about here and there. The launch of the GSAT-6. Usain Bolt’s remarkable 200m dash to gold at the World Championships in Beijing. Should I bore you with any more news that has been available to us aside from the Sheena Bora murder?

As usual, the same people who complain about what the media did not cover use links from media sources to prove their point.

Please turn the page with an exasperated huff or change the channel if it annoys you that much. But I for one am going to keep watching this unbelievable murder case unfold: my vicarious self has beaten my self-righteous, sanctimonious, incessantly grumbling high moral horsie self in this case!

By Ranjona Banerji

The old order changeth blah blah blah. And sometimes is it more than that? Is it Reliance establishing its firm imprint on Network 18? Rahul Joshi, editorial director of Economic Times, is set to take over as CEO of news and group editor-in-chief. Joshi has been editorial director of ET since 2006.

Furthermore, after the recent fracas at firstpost.com when an article critical of Union finance minister Arun Jaitley by the website’s very popular columnist R Jagannathan, also editor-in-chief of firstpost.com and Forbes India, was taken down, there are some changes here too. Lakshmi Choudhry had resigned as executive editor after the Jaitley critique was removed from the website. Now BV Rao has been appointed editor and Ajay Singh as executive editor to “assist” Jagannathan, whatever that means. Rao has been working with Reliance as news and communications director.

The wording is interesting here. Surely, any person junior to the editor would “assist” the editor by the very nature of hierarchy or position. Indeed, this applies to any organisation. So why specify it? Are more changes afoot? Certainly people have long expected a more hands on approach from Reliance at Network 18 and looks like they are getting it. Rahul Joshi however is a very welcome surprise, given his experience.

Stories doing the rounds say that the editorial staff at firstpost is very worried – naturally – after the Jaitley comment was removed. Caravan reports that the website has been given a list of top three leaders who cannot be criticised. Anyway you spin that it means a death knell for free comment. It will be fascinating to see what changes if any Joshi will make in both editorial policy and management control.

Business Standard has gone a step further, saying these moves represent Mukesh Ambani’s total takeover of Network 18. As everyone knew, Network 18 will create content for his Jio project. Also Jagannathan is expected to retire in a few months when he turns 60 and this will presumably allow Rao full control of firstpost and Forbes.

Already, firstpost.com’s first mover advantage is under threat from the clutch of news and views websites which have been launched since. Scroll, The wire, DailyO, Huffpo, Quint, Quartz, Catch News and forgive me if I have left anyone out, all offer a variety of information and opinions, often superior to print journalism or to rival it anyway. Rediff.com, the true first mover, continues to have a presence. So if firstpost is going to become an open government or management or party mouthpiece, then it has its work cut out for it. Because of course, there is another whole universe already in operation there from Niti Central to Swarajya and many more.

Interestingly though the news channels seem to continuing without that “star” (or wannabe star) presence that seems to be a must in Indian TV news. Perhaps those will be the next changes before us?

This looks like fast-moving and fast-growing story with all the attendant drama of an Ambani takeover, even if it has arrived a bit later than many expected.

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/why-firstpost-being-asked-refrain-criticising-three-top-leaders-bjp

http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/mukesh-ambani-moves-to-integrate-newsrooms-with-jio-115082000282_1.html

By Ranjona Banerji

It may be unfair to blame either Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former chief of Army staff and current minister in the Modi government, General VK Singh for this kind of behaviour. But, by calling journalists “newstraders” and presstitutes”, they opened the door as it were for their supporters to get even more vicious and abusive with individual members of the media than they were before, if that is possible.

All journalists have to fend off, ignore or respond in some manner to a torrent of abuse which targets them on social media and in the comments sections on websites. Often, it is easy to laugh it off or fulminate to yourself. But there are times when abuse crosses not just lines of decency but also of legality.

For supporters of the BJP, the larger Sangh Parivar and Narendra Modi (these categories overlap but are not necessarily the same), the Indian media is involved in a massive conspiracy against them. And the entire Indian media is on the payroll of the Congress Party and the descendants of Jawaharlal Nehru who are part of the Congress Party.

On August 8, 2015, senior journalist Neeta Kolhatkar (disclaimer, she is a friend and we have worked together in a newspaper), wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek piece on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and his new “fit” look. She also added her own political insight co-relating Rahul Gandhi’s appearance with the changes which the beleaguered Congress Party needs to make.

One can agree or disagree with Neeta. And there are enough civilised ways of doing that. But what did the blogger who calls himself “Chaiwallah” and posts on the blog-site Dynasty Crooks do? He writes a long post headlined “Presstitute Neeta Kolhatkar is orgasming for real”. He refers to the Indian media as “Mameluk media”, referencing the Arabic word for slave so please do not miss the sly implication that this media is also pro-Muslim.

The rest of the piece is full of sexual references and is too full of schoolboy prurience to be repeated here.

But this is the sort of writing that Chaiwallah specialises in:

Not surprisingly, he is inspired by MediaCrooks run by Ravinar, one of the most abusive gentlemen out there.

Neeta is her normal sanguine self about this having been a journalist for a long time, but she has filed a complaint with the cyber cell about the blog. Which is just about all she can do. Freedom of expression and the way the internet runs mean that such abuse cannot be stopped. But it can be exposed and seen for what it is: An attempt to stop all dissent and suppress all disagreement to your political position by using cheap and frankly uncivilised means. Is it worth repeating once again that writers like this also claim to uphold the best of Indian tradition or will the irony fail them as it always does?

And is it also worth repeating that there are enough articles by journalists and commentators, not just bloggers, out there telling us how great Prime Minister Modi was and will be? Many of those experts in fact promised the nation all kinds of goodies that the PM would bequeath upon us. Sadly, almost none of those promises have been made. It would be easy to assume that the lack of action on the ground by the Centre has made the government’s fans edgier and therefore angrier with the criticism. They were vicious and abusive before but the victory and comments by BJP leaders seem only to have emboldened them.

Is it also worth repeated that women are especially targeted and usually with explicitly sexual references? This is what makes people assume that such bloggers are men. Whatever their gender though they are expressly and sadly without imagination, wit and even intelligence as they cannot move beyond basic insults to do with intercourse and body parts.

This is Neeta’s response to the blog:

“I am not shocked by the fact that there are such anonymous trolls on the prowl all the time. I am livid to say the least that these sorts have done no homework before making brazen allegations against me. Especially by insinuating I am paid in exchange for the focus of my writing. In my entire life, I have lived off nothing but only the salary paid to me, (which was Rs 700 at the beginning of my career). I am NOT bribeable and will not be in this entire lifetime. Worse still, they have called me names. It just shows the power that the pen has. My writing has irked them and made them stoop so low. But nothing can deter me. However, these hypocrites need to be exposed, they are only targeting women. It is disconcerting that the current socio-political environment is allowing such menacing behaviour against us citizens.”

Could not have put it better myself.

By Ranjona Banerji

On social media, there is no middle ground. You are either a patriot or an anti-national. More and more journalists in India are joining, it seems, the anti-national brigade. Some commentators too. Many of these had been flag-waving, slogan-shouting, bandwagon-charioteers for the new government in power at the Centre before it became the new government in power at the Centre. Now there are turncoats everywhere you turn.

Luckily, given the immense fear of a social media backlash, we still have several top notch news anchors who are ultra-patriots and given their nightly hysterics on TV, they can singlehandedly take on every Pakistani terrorist with their bare hands if need be. Forget terrorists, the whole Pakistan army, ISI, everything. Listening to them talk about war and terrorism, you wonder why they aren’t all chief of army staff. Maybe we can have a lottery system where one star news anchor heads the Indian Armed Forces every week? Or to be fair, since all are not equal, we can send them off to other para-military services as well.

Every news channel nurtures at least one of them. This ensures that no anti-national tag can ever be attached to them. The winners however for the UPA (Ultra Patriot Accolade, don’t get your saffron knickers in a twist now) are Times Now (the great man himself) and India Today TV (the other two).

Print journalism and to some extent web journalism continues to be anti-national. The government and its policies are questioned and investigations are conducted into claims by every government agency, even those deemed by UPA winners to be beyond reproach. It is incumbent upon all Ultra Patriots to call every person who has ever died a “martyr”, thus adding bad English to their other remarkable journalistic achievements.

It is a very intriguing way of practising journalism or perhaps it is a direct lift of the “Fox News” way. But there are deeper questions at work, not just for patriots but also for journalists. If India is attacked, is a journalist allowed to ask difficult questions? We are not in a state of war at the moment after all, where conditions may apply. Is inefficiency for instance to be condoned in the name of patriotism? Even if you disagree with the extreme position taken by Julian Assange (come on, UPA winners, who he?), is there not a middle ground?

It appears however that fear of social media reactions is frightening journalists into forgetting their primary purpose and that is really frightening.

**

How about our commentators? All those articles headlined, “Five things Modi will do, should do” have dried up. For a while they became, “Five things Modi must do” but when it was clear that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not listening, those also stopped. Then it became, “Five things Modi would have done if these other evil people within the BJP would let him”. And right now, it’s “Modi has to change his methods of functioning”.

It was an article of the last sort by veteran journalist R Jagannathan which got removed from firstpost.com as we had discussed last time. And now respected columnist Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who led the anti-UPA march of columnists before the election, writes a critical piece against Prime Minister Modi in his much-admired column for Indian Express.

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/loud-but-silent/

**

However, those who are pro-Narendra Modi must read this piece in Swarajya, a web magazine started in the spirit apparently of C Rajagopalachari and Minoo Masani, but that runs wholly in the glorification of the prime minister. It will warm the cockles of your heart and make up for the high number of turning worms. This piece outdoes the love that Mani Shanker Aiyar demonstrated for Rajiv Gandhi in his book, Goodnight Sweet Prince. That until now had been my gold standard for “lurrve”. Swarajya beats Aiyar hollow!

http://swarajyamag.com/politics/the-maker/

By Ranjona Banerji

The Hoot, India’s premier media watchdog, carried an item this week hinting of problems at firstpost.com, the news and views website which in effect did to the web space just a few years ago what rediff.com had done decades ago – became people’s first choice for quick news and analysis.

Since its inception though firstpost.com has gone through both editorial and management changes, the most significant being the sale of its owner Network 18 to Reliance. There were expectations from then on that the website would become management-controlled but not too many indications for the average reader.

Now we have the first one. An article by R Jagannathan, who has been largely in favour of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, was removed from the website. Jagannathan is a very prolific writer with a very quick response time. He is also head of all print and web editions of Network 18. The ostensible reason for this killing of his article seems to be a criticism of Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, questioning whether the PM should keep him on as FM. This is the tweet that announced the article:

Land Bill stuck in the Parliament: PM Modi may have to rethink Jaitley as FM, writes @TheJaggi http://t.co/mi1hU6xs2a pic.twitter.com/RGYqJHinaV

— Firstpost (@firstpost) July 21, 2015

And this is what happens when you click on the link:

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/land-bill-stuck-in-the-parliament-pm-modi-may-have-to-rethink-jaitley-as-fm-2351720.html

To do such a thing to such a senior person and veteran journalist is unacceptable. It is also indicative of a management which determines how much criticism is permissible and make it impossible for any journalist to function. And if this is the way someone who is largely sympathetic to the government, then you have a very difficult situation on your hands.

Now although firstpost.com has had a definite rightwing slant from almost the beginning, it did encourage and carry a number of different viewpoints. One of those counter voices was that of Lakshmi Chaudhry, a fine writer with a humane perspective. Recently, she was made executive editor. Now according to The Hoot she has submitted her resignation citing management interference.

This is The Hoot:

http://www.thehoot.org/

http://rjagannathan.in/2015/08/03/the-modi-governments-achilles-heel/

Anyone who has any little knowledge of the last time Reliance ran newspapers in the 1990s would have known that this was inevitable. The group bought the Sunday Observer, started the Business and Political Observer and after a small pretence towards journalism turned them both into Only Vimal PR rags and ran two products, one excellent and one potentially excellent, into the ground, with company man Tony Jesudasan in charge and Pritish Nandy and his team out of the door.

There are some former journalists who are part of some sort of overseeing team at Reliance. It is still not clear whether they are part of this fiddling with firstpost.com or not. There are rumours that there are now pressures on Jagannathan to quit. The editorial staff, according to The Hoot, is very disturbed.

One could argue that there is overt and insidious management influence in every newsroom and it is the job of the editors to deal with it. You could also argue about the question of degree – that managements, corporations, government, politicians, bureaucrats and so on wield some influence within newsrooms and some have now become accepted practice.

But these are not arguments so much as copouts. No matter what your political slant, if you are to remain remotely credible as a news organisation, criticism is imperative. If you block that, then you have in effect sounded the death knell.

**

There has been plenty of online criticism about The Times of India’s decision to devote more first page space to bomb blast accused Yakub Memon’s hanging than to former president APJ Abdul Kalam’s funeral. I myself wondered at that.

But how about the contrarian view? For one thing, it is the editor’s decision to decide on what to focus on. The New York Times for instance famously refused to lead with Princess Diana’s death unlike just about every other newspaper in the world.

On careful consideration of the TOI’s decision, you might argue that Kalam’s death was extensively covered when it happened. The funeral therefore did get the front page but only a small portion of it. And that for what started life as a Bombay newspaper, Memon’s hanging was the end of the line for a series of events which completely shattered Bombay: in which case there is some logic at work here.

I have no inside knowledge here. But I am willing to be logical and not hysterical about it.

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia.com. The views expressed here are her own.

By Ranjona Banerji

What is the primary duty of a journalist? To ask uncomfortable, difficult, impossible, exasperating questions of course. We have to be able to examine the role of those who are in power, and those who wield both authority and influence. How far should a journalist go? This is often an individual or a newsroom choice. And it is not as easy choice.

Some journalists decide to take the line of least resistance. They play it safe by regurgitating what they are fed by press releases and officialdom. Others believe that it is alright to play along with those in charge provided they get an inside view – like “embedded” journalists during recent wars and conflicts. Many (or hopefully most) decide to skirt along the danger mark. They dip their toes into territories that are verboten and run the risk of legal notices or other actions against them.

Some resort to “tabloid” style journalism where they probe into the lives of people, often ordinary people for no reason at all except that they can. The phone-hacking scandal in the UK, involving the News of the World and the Sun are best examples of this. The newsrooms felt it was correct to hack into the cell phones of glamour and entertainment celebrities, the royal family as well of a teenage girl who was missing, later found murdered. This was direct interference in a police investigation and because the newsroom deleted messages, the police and the family assumed the girl was alive since the phone was active. It later turned out that she had been dead – murdered – all along.

This sordid episode perhaps comes under criminal interference. However the other side of the same coin is the sort of journalism practised by Julian Assange and Wikileaks. By believing that nothing is sacrosanct if the public is kept in the dark or fooled, Assange shamed all those journalists who genuflect to the official line. He paid the price and is a hounded man. One of his sources is Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, a young soldier who has been sentenced to 35 years for releasing classified files to Wikileaks. The greater public good was seen as more important than government rules.

The reason for this long diatribe is that when it came to the death penalty of Yakub Memon, convicted for his role in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, journalists in India showed us this entire range of journalistic choices, barring those of the News of the World and Wikileaks. We had embedded journalists, official journalists, questioning journalists and play-it-safe journalists.

And then we had several displays of the worst kind of journalists. Those who decided to embed themselves with officialdom and use patriotism as a basis to attack those who exercised the right to question. I reiterate once more that I am not talking about members of the general public or even to bloggers who think they are journalists. I am referring to people who should have known better and people who refused to do their homework. The only heartening factor in this is that many of the young journalists were in questioning mode while their seniors resorted to calling their peers traitors and so on.

Anyone who has worked as editor has had to contend with this sort of a journalist. Those who parrot the police line, those who will never question politicians they know for fear of losing sources, those who will give undue publicity to certain police officers or bureaucrats to further their own ends, whether professional or personal. We all know them.

I would repeat here celebrated American journalist Katherine Boo’s rejection of source-based journalism in favour of right to information based research. It is worth thinking about for some of our brethren.

I must also raise a toast to my fellow journalists who did not live and work through the riots and bomb blasts in Bombay in the 1990s and still decide that they are experts on the matter. I would accept their expertise if they had dedicated their careers to studying those events. Better stop before I start laughing.

By Ranjona Banerji

Two films that I saw recently highlighted the role of the media in our lives, but in very different ways. Jon Favreau’s Chef demonstrated how social media, particularly sites like Youtube and Twitter can make or break us or at any rate, bestow both fame and popularity in ways that someone unfamiliar with this phenomenon cannot fathom.

But David Fincher’s Gone Girl shows us the ugly side of mainstream media, of how journalists run with the pack and like a pack, ignoring facts and playing up the drama. The media, although not integral to the gripping main plot, was always there at the edges and in the subtext. The hysterical TV anchor who decided on guilt and demanded blood regardless of the state of the police investigation, the nonstop presence of screaming reporters and running photographers, the jam of OB vans and long wires – we see them or people like them on our TVs every day.

However, Hollywood is hyperbole. And the media is a convenient whipping boy. As a journalist I am not denying the media’s right to be where it wants to be and cover what it wants to cover. But I am decrying the media’s tendency to abandon good sense when a little bit of thought or discussion might serve you better than leaping into the mindless chasm of “they’re doing it so I must follow”.

When terrorists, suspected to be from Pakistan, attacked a bus and then a police station in Dinanagar, close to Gurdaspur in Punjab early on Monday morning, news channels decided that they would not report on India’s police procedures or have live coverage of the shootout between terrorists and the Indian forces which lasted for hours or reveal operational details. Well and good. This was because TV news received a lot of flak for the way it covered the Mumbai terror attacks on November 2008, giving away vital information to the handlers of the terrorists.

I decided to follow updates on Twitter rather than put on the TV on Monday morning, to spare myself any more cardiac infarctions than TV news normally causes. By the evening, it was business as usual though. Instead of giving the viewer details of what had happened, how many casualties, how many terrorists, we had high-decibel jingoism, facts at variance with each other, repetition of information between anchor and reporter and no clear picture. How many dead? 3? 5? 10? How many terrorists? 3 or 4? 5 or 6? Different channels had different numbers. How difficult is it to say, “We are awaiting clarifications from the authorities but we can confirm that there are casualties?”

An interview with an eyewitness, who was shot in the shoulder, as the scroll below informed us, had the reporter asking the man the same questions again and again. Why not just edit what is extraneous or unnecessary? The questions included where he had been injured, more than once. More importantly, he had nothing substantial to add to what was already known at the time. It was as if the channel wanted to prove to the viewer that its staff had actually gone to the hospital. Well, thanks.

After an attack like this, the viewer might expect to hear from terrorism experts or defence and geopolitical analysts or retired police and army officers who have dealt with such attacks to throw light on what had happened or offer their ideas on the whys and wherefores. Can we do something as simple as that? Of course not, when there is a simpler option at hand. Dial someone from the BJP, someone from the Congress and set up a pointless battle on nothing on your TV screens.

There are intelligence failures and there are intelligence failures.

By Ranjona Banerji

There is a commonly held belief that Indians as a society are permanently craving for heroes, heroines, idols. Therefore, we make role models of just about anybody and then damn and excoriate them when they don’t live up to our expectations. One can understand sports stars, film stars and even politicians. But this old adage must be true because we have also made the most ridiculous heroes and villains out of our star television anchors.

With due respect to everyone, it is not possible to fully understand how a newsroom functions unless you have worked in one, as a journalist. No matter how closely you follow the media and how many journalist friends you have, you cannot know. This is not because journalism is some magical unknowable quantity or newsrooms are like Hogwarts protected by Dementors. It’s because unless you are one, you don’t know how a chartered accountant’s office works or a science lab works and so on.
But of course, when it comes to journalism, everyone’s an expert. And television, by bringing journalists into your homes, by carrying “citizen journalist” shows and by reporters and anchors mentioning “sources” all the time, has made many members of the public feel that they are part of the process.

I read a rather sweet if desperate blog the other day by a young man who was very upset that he had been “blocked” on Twitter by Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai. He was also upset with Arnab Goswami though I am not aware that he has a Twitter account or if he is active on Twitter. These there TV anchors are known together as “BAR” by the way, by those who are obsessed with them and usually hate them. However the blogger pointed out that he had “blocked” these people first because he didn’t care about their opinions or disapproved of them. But he was clearly upset that they had “blocked” him. So upset in fact that he wrote paragraph after paragraph on how he didn’t care.

One of the conclusions you can reach here is of a strange obsession with the doings of the media by people who do not fully understand the doings of the media. Talk to a young student who wants to be a journalist and you will find that it is all determined by what he or she has seen on television. Grunt work is not on the agenda because the assumption is that there is no grunt work at all. It’s all glamour and creating public opinion. I met a young journalism student a while ago who reacted with horror when I said that early on in my career I opted to be a sub-editor rather than a reporter. She asked, astounded, “You had the chance to be a journalist and you decided to be a sub-editor?”

I had no choice but to react with miserable silence.

But as usual, I am amused at the terrible anger that “BAR” and other TV anchors generate – most of course for falling on the wrong side of the angered person’s political spectrum. The actual work that goes on even in a TV newsroom remains hidden and that is why you, as a media person, have to sift through the views of both admirers and detractors. I often get lectures from people on what the media should or should not do from people who are well-meaning but ignorant.

And as usual, what amuses me is when people within the media feign ignorance and point fingers for all sorts of transgressions at people who work in other newsrooms but are so delightfully silent on their own faults. Now those are the ones who need to feel the hatred directed at “BAR”, in my book…

Meanwhile, I suggest people look for heroes outside our noble and ignoble profession.

By Ranjona Banerji

Is social media important when it comes to newsgathering? Are journalists using social media to bypass traditional means of newsgathering? Is this laziness? Or is it keeping track of an essential new medium?

The answer most likely is yes to all the questions. It is impossible to ignore social media but it is encouraging too many journalists, young and old, to take shortcuts and the easy way out. This does not have to do with the social class or the educational levels of a society. It has to do with the lazy belief that social media represents such a large swathe of society that it has to take front and centre compared to all groups.

Strangely, all of us who are very active on social media know very well that this importance is not fully justified. To quote that much quoted line from TS Eliot, we all prepare a face to meet the faces that we meet and never more so than on social media. Few people are ever themselves. The focus is often on anonymous internet trolls for their abuse or their hidden and/or open agendas. But internet trolls might well be the most honest creatures out there. They reveal more about themselves than most of us who use open forums like Twitter to share information or links or opinions.

Either way, the masks people wear make can make social media a false god at the altar of truth. This is what journalists have to be wary of as they collect information and opinions. Sadly, there is no better way of finding out how people think than by talking to them face to face.

Of course, Twitter is not the villain in all this. Years ago, we came across the breed of telephone journalists and their dial-a-quote respondents. This lot never left office to do their stories. Some rather foolish editors – unfortunately many of them were promoted mediocre sub-editors or management stooges or both – felt that reporters were wasting time on the field and needed to be seen (by them) in the office. The landline telephone was pushed forward as the best newsgathering device. I have seen this policy being implemented to the great detriment of the newspaper I worked in then and have heard enough horror stories about similar policies in papers across the world. In most such cases, some MBA had done some kind of a study and decided that it profits a newspaper or journal more if a reporter does all his or her work in office. You do not have to be a genius to see the extreme folly of such an idea: just a proper journalist.

Imagine the fun you can have with a mobile phone. Produce byline after byline just by going through social media, never meeting anyone. Most of this criticism is aimed at the print media. TV dances to a different drummer and 24-hour news television cannot survive if all reporters are forced to sit in their offices.

It is hardly surprising in India at least that websites like scroll.in and the now thewire.in gained readers just by sending people out to do stories. Few newspapers still follow that path. And yet one of the best stories I read this Sunday was in the Indian Express headlined “Dabang Didi”, about a woman who had turned into a sort of Robin Hood vigilante for her area. She refused to play victim after she was raped. Not exactly possible via Twitter.

***

The anatomy of an internet troll remains an amusing subject though. Bestselling author Chetan Bhagat wrote a column about why pro-BJP trolls abuse some women on Twitter. This caused hysteria amongst Bhagat’s supporters and detractors. And led to a discussion on Nidhi Razdan’s Left Right and Centre on NDTV.

However, as was evident from the TV show and the reactions on social media, the troll is less dangerous and but far more pervasive and a fitter survivor than the fairy-tale creature after which it is named.

I have a simple solution to them: mock or block.

By Ranjona Banerji

The Madhya Pradesh examination and recruitment scam remains the top media story this week. It has overshadowed almost everything else and even made the international media. This is hardly surprising, regardless of how upset people get when their favourite political party is targeted.

Arnab Goswami of Times Now for instance is now a ripe target for BJP supporters for going hammer and tongs at both Lalit Modi and now the “Vyapam” scam. The interesting allegation being made is that TV news stopped discussing Lalit Modi the minute the Gandhis of the Congress were mentioned. Short-term memory loss is very useful when you make suggestions like this. Because then you can forget how angry Congress supporters were when Goswami reduced Rahul Gandhi to a gibbering mess in a pre-general election TV interview while being far less aggressive with Narendra Modi.

Also, in Modi’s first six months as prime minister, every TV channel lovingly followed him around the world, tracked every finger wag, eulogised every comment, bless-youed every sneeze and called him everything from a rock star to a pioneer who has changed the course of Indian history like no one else before him. No complaints were made by the BJP and its supporters then even if the Congress and other parties were frothing at the mouth.

This is a sad reality of life if you live it by the media. It can turn on you for not fulfilling you promises or potential as it did with the India Against Corruption and its metamorphosis into the Aam Aadmi Party. Or it can wait for you to trip up as it has done with the BJP. As it happens, the national media and especially television got to the Vyapam scam very late. It was only after Aajtak journalist Akshay Singh’s sudden death while investigating the scam that TV cameras and star anchors landed in Bhopal. Before that it was the local media and to some extent the print media which was highlighting the story.

It is therefore very unfair to blame the media for doing its job, in this case. Imagine if the national media had ignored this scam completely. Even without the scary inexplicable death toll when it comes to witnesses and accused, the exam and recruitment manipulations themselves are frightening.

It is not internet trolls that I am talking about here. It is well-known columnists, veteran journalists most of them, who actually believe that Sonia Gandhi and the Congress party control the media. If that was true, then Goswami would have been the purring pussy cat he was with Raj Thackeray with Rahul Gandhi too. Besides, from a cynical point of view, what does the Congress have to offer the media, powerless as it is?

Taking media gossip and making it part of your informed commentary is a bit, well, tacky.

**

Although I have liberally attacked them in the past in these columns, must congratulate Star Sports India for its coverage of the ongoing Wimbledon tournament. Two channels on the two main courts (four if you count the HD channels as well), enough information on what was happening elsewhere and even a little bit of Indian doubles action.
Well done!

**

Reading through all the various articles on the Greek crisis, realised sadly that those of us who do not regularly read the business pages or the pink papers are at a severe understanding deficit when it comes to management and economic jargon. I forgo the oft-repeated comment from Casca in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar except to say that most of it was in a foreign language…

By Ranjona Banerji

The poor media. Damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. For the past two weeks, the media – particularly television – has been slammed on social media for ignoring the deaths of witnesses and accused in an examination and recruitment case in Madhya Pradesh. The implication was clear – because Madhya Pradesh was a BJP-ruled state with the much-respected Shivraj Chouhan as chief minister, some sections of the media were handling the story with those clichéd kid gloves.

However, the death of Aaj Tak reporter Akshay Singh has galvanised the entire media into action. Most of English TV’s bigwigs landed in Bhopal to cover the story and “grill” the government on the deaths of more than 40 people connected to the “Vyapam” scam. There are two aspects to the story and the cynical might be reminded that while the scam itself is under investigation, the fact that so many people around it and involved in it have died is intriguing, if not a cause for concern.

I have no doubt that very soon the defence of the BJP will begin within the media especially from neutral columnists who are emphatically pro-BJP. They will see a giant conspiracy to defame the ruling party and the prime minister Narendra Modi. Others will speculate on how all the scams and wrongdoings seem to emanate from people within the BJP who are direct competition to Modi. Others will of course see the immense power of the Congress and Sonia Gandhi – with only 44 seats in the Lok Sabha and failing influence everywhere else – which controls the media when it has almost nothing to offer it in return.

This last thought process is already evident amongst respected columnists and prime idiots amongst our fraternity who feel that the Lalit Modi story was nudged off the air because the former IPL chief mentioned the names of the Gandhis of the Congress. The current weakness of the Congress Party seems to have passed these people by. Also, a basic journalistic sense would have told them that the story was bound to die out if the government did nothing. In fact, the government played the waiting game and for all that experts and journalists talked about probity and propriety, no action was taken against either external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj or Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje. The media is unlikely to carry on with a story for weeks when nothing happens. That is common sense and a little experience and a lot of common sense would have told these worthies that.

The other sad fact of life is that when you are in power, you face the most flak. It seems absurd that I even have to write this. The focus of the media has to be on the government and the party in power. In the light of this, endless stories about Rahul Gandhi skipping around daisy fields are unlikely. (On second thoughts…!) Nor are stories about why Rahul Gandhi is silent and why Rahul Gandhi is out of the country going to be more exciting than why is Narendra Modi silent and why is Narendra Modi out of the country – although what is true for one is true for the other.

**

My very sad moral of the story to all my fellow journalists who are in love with Narendra Modi is this: it’s only going to get worse. And calling me or any journalist who focuses on the government in power a “presstitute” might make you feel better but it is not going to change reality. My condolences.

By Ranjona Banerji

For what seems like years but could just be under a month, TV news has been going hammer and tongs at the NDA government at the Centre over the Lalit Modi escapades. Every night hapless BJP spokespersons, once masters and mistresses of The Smirk and then emperors and empresses of Arrogance in Victory, are pulverized, pummelled and made to look pitiful by TV anchors in their element.

The facts of the case – whatever they were – have long been lost. We jump from new allegation, revelation and expose night after night and have possibly gone so far from where we started that there seems to be no way back. Is the issue Lalit Modi, former darling of the IPL, and money-laundering and other cases against him? Is the issue lack of propriety and probity by Sushma Swaraj and Vasundhare Raje? Is the issue the silence of the prime minister who excoriated his predecessor for his silence when the going got tough for UPA II?

By now, I can bet the reader has forgotten what everyone is fighting about. If our news channels would like to continue with this until they get what they want, they need to run little refresher courses about what has happened so far. From what one has seen so far, the Centre would like to brazen this out or take its chances once the monsoon session begins. If TV thinks the story is still worthwhile, then some hard investigation may serve it better than nightly high-decibel hysterics. O lord, do I even know what I’m saying?

**

Is international news television more adult than India’s or just more boring? The last week has been Greece Greece Greece IS IS IS. Oddly, though, if you go to the home nations where these channels broadcast from then the main stories there are as local and often as piffly as ours. Which suggests that international viewing audiences are extremely aware, intelligent and interested in important world events. Or, they like to snooze with the TV on…

**

The Times of India, god bless its soul, seems to have lost its bearings a little. I must put in a disclaimer here: I worked for TOI for almost four years and had hardly any bad moments there. But lately, the paper has lost focus and sharpness. Its editorial page is one of the worst in the country and its choice of news and presentation is more questionable than it has been in a long while.

The Mumbai edition, which had improved so much to make the citadel impregnable some 10 years ago, now resorts to some very sensationalist and cheap tricks. Take this front page headline from this week: “5 women held in 3 weeks for driving drunk.” The peg (!) of course is the Jahnvi Gadkar case, where a lawyer with Reliance had an accident which killed two people. However, the headline about the drunk women links to a story on an inside page where says that 824 people were booked for driving drunk in Mumbai in three weeks. For those with weak arithmetic like me, that’s 819 men to five women. So is driving drunk a gender issue? A gender problem? Are women behind the wheel (five to 819) a more significant statistic? Do the numbers correspond with the ratio of male to female drivers? Or is this pure sexist sensationalism?
I wonder.

**

Last week saw the death of one of India’s most erudite, prolific and respected journalists, Praful Bidwai. He was only 66 and died of a heart attack in Amsterdam. His politics was emphatically left but his cogent and incisive analytical style and his scholarship made him and should make him an icon for all journalists. An irreparable loss.