CORRUPTED BHARATIYA MEDIA
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
Corrupted Indian media
Thursday, February 18, 2010
If the fence eats away the field, who is to save the crop?
The fourth estate is becoming yet another chamcha of a corrupt regime
with little care for national interests. Who will cure the corrupt
Indian media?
S. Kalyanaraman
http://www.thehindu.com/2010/02/18/stories/2010021852821000.h
Advertising, Bollywood, Corporate power
P. Sainath
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Issues today have to be dressed up in ways certified by the corporate
media. They have to be justified not by their importance to the
public but by their acceptability to the media, their owners and
sponsors.
That the terrible tragedy in Pune demands serious, sober coverage is
a truism. One of the side-effects of the ghastly blast has been
unintended, though. The orgy of self-congratulation that marked the
media coverage of just about everything since January is now in pause
mode. Maybe the flak they copped for their handling of the November
2008 Mumbai terror blasts has something to do with it. But there is,
so far, some restraint. At least, relative to the meal they made of
the 2008 blasts.
Otherwise, through January and early February, the media stood up
bravely for freedom of expression and some other constitutional
rights you've never heard of. They slew the demons of lingual
chauvinism and worse. And they're just spoiling for a fight with any
other enemy of our proud democracy. Just so long as they can keep
Bollywood in central focus.
Every issue is now reduced to a fight between individuals, heroic,
villainous or just fun figures. So the complex issues behind the
shunning of Pakistani cricketers by the Indian Premier League are
reduced to a fight between Shah Rukh Khan and Bal Thackeray. (As one
television channel began its programme: "Shah Rukh stands tall. His
message to the nation ..."). The agonies of Bundelkhand are not about
hunger and distress in our Tiger Economy. They are just a stand-off
between Rahul Gandhi and Mayawati. The issues of language and
migrations in Maharashtra are merely a battle between Rahul Gandhi
and Uddhav Thackeray. And the coverage is all about who blinked
first, who lost face.
The devastating rise in food prices (let's skip the boring factors)
and the mess in agriculture are a face-off between Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. The pathetic
squabble within the Samajwadi Party is virtually a television serial.
A blow-by-blow account of Amar Singh's valiant bid to retain his
honour against Mulayam Singh's yahoos. (Indeed, some Hindi channels
have begun using the language of theatre to report it -- Act II,
Scene II. And there was one programme which Mr. Amar Singh ended
humming verses from his favourite film song). The Bt brinjal story
had mostly only one villain -- Union Environment Minister Jairam
Ramesh. He had no visible adversary unless you pose the humble
Brinjal as the hero. But that won't work for television. The other,
more sinister heroes in this media story preferred to function from
behind the scenes, plying newspapers and channels with faked data and
false information. Hell hath no fury like a powerful corporate
scorned, as the Minister is learning.
Issues? The same media that passionately fought for freedom of
expression for a month from mid-January had billed the 2009 Lok Sabha
poll as one without issues. The country was actually burning with
them, but they didn't make good television either. More accurately,
the dominant media hadn't the slightest intention of covering them
with any sincerity. The story of rising food prices remains one of
the worst reported -- no matter how much space it has been given.
Sure, there have been exceptions -- as in the case of some
outstanding reports on Bundelkhand. But they've been just that.
Exceptions.
If these last six weeks have been about freedom of expression, we
have neither. Or, at best, a twisted freedom and a tortured
expression. There is little freedom for thousands of journalists in
the corporate media and the few editors who still believe we ought to
be doing a better job of informing the public on the key issues of
our time. There's very little freedom for readers or viewers, too.
For days on end, it didn't matter which television channel you
switched to, it was SRK on all of them. When that movie drew to a
close, the 'Rahul Gandhi storms Sena den' film was released and
sustained. A visit of some hours produced days of footage. But with
the end of Mr. Gandhi's visit to Mumbai, it was back to Shah Rukh
Khan. Of course, viewers had the freedom to choose, which sets us
apart from totalitarian states. They could choose any channel, from
among many, to watch SRK saying exactly the same thing, at the same
time. And they will be free to choose again when the figure is
Amitabh Bachchan or Aamir Khan.
If what we've watched on critical issues these past weeks is
expression, we're through scraping the barrel. We're drilling holes
in its bottom.
Many corporate-owned media houses have sacked hundreds of journalists
and non-journalist staff since late 2008. Hundreds of other
journalists have suffered wage cuts. Of course, the 'right to know'
of readers and viewers does not extend to this information. Why scare
the poor lambs? And how can you tell them the truth about that while
everyday crowing about the once-again booming economy? It might lead
audiences to ask that dull, boring question: "If things are so good,
why are you axing so many people?" Answering that means revealing the
interests the corporate media have in the fate of the stock market.
It means talking about their need to keep the shares of the companies
they are linked to (or have heavily invested in) afloat and buoyant.
That is regardless of how rotten they are within. No matter how their
own shares in those companies were obtained. And no agonising over
how unethical the means used to keep them heated. This was in part
behind the fatwa issued by some newspapers to their staff banning the
'R' word last year. Recession is what happens in the United States.
In India, it was a slowdown -- and it's already turning around
brilliantly. The hundreds of sacked and ruined staff have little
freedom to speak of. Even the professional communicators within them
cannot tell their own audiences their story. Cannot tell them they
were laid off, let alone tell them why.
Leave aside escaping a recession, India Shining is back. The cover
story of a leading weekly gushes over the fantastic 'rural
resurgence' that is, in fact, saving all of us. Farmers are doing
just great. Drip, micro-sprinkler, and other micro irrigation, the
stories in it suggest, played a major role in this hidden-from-the-
human-eye revival. This resurgence is seen more in urban media than
in rural India. And the proliferation of such stories across the
media spectrum reflects, in part, the strenuous media efforts of a
major Maharashtra-based company. A corporate group that spends a
fortune on propaganda and whose interests in this line of irrigation
are pushed by some of the most powerful members of the Union Cabinet.
Oddly, stories such as these come out even as the government's own
projections for growth in agriculture are dismaying.
The main 'rural resurgence' story hit the stands the same day the
National Crime Records Bureau officially brought the 2008 data for
farm suicides on to its website. The 16,196 suicides that year
brought the tally of farmers' suicides since 1997 to 199,132. That's
the largest single, sustained wave of such suicides ever recorded in
history -- anywhere. Guess nobody told them about the resurgence.
Farmers in 2008 did know of that year's loan waiver, but it didn't
stop large numbers of them from taking their lives.
The 'rural resurgence' story comes after any number of the
government's own committees, commissions and reports suggest that it
revise poverty figures upwards. Whether it's the Suresh Tendulkar
committee, the BPL Expert Group, or earlier the National Commission
for Enterprises in the Unorganised sector. Or a U.N. study which
reports that 34 million more Indians remained poor or joined their
ranks in 2008 and 2009, because of the 'slowdown.' That is, 34
million more than would have met that fate prior to the 2008 crisis.
It matters little if Census data show us that 8 million cultivators
quit agriculture between just 1991 and 2001. (That is, on average,
well over 2,000 a day, every day for 10 years.) Or that the 2011
Census just months from now will show us how many more have fled
agriculture since then, un-seduced by the rural resurgence. Never
mind the facts. One giant private irrigation company stands to make
its already huge fortune bigger. Good for growth.
The ABC of Indian media roughly translates as Advertising, Bollywood
and Corporate power. Some years ago, the 'C' would have been cricket,
but that great sport is fast becoming a small cog in the large wheel
of corporate profit. (In the IPL, the ABC of media converge, even
merge.) And, of course, everything but everything, has to be
bollywoodised. To now earn attention, issues have to be dressed up
only in ways certified by the corporate media. They have to be
justified not by their importance to the public but by their
acceptability to the media, their owners and sponsors. The more
entrenched that ABC gets, the greater the danger to the language of
democracy the media so proudly claim to champion.
End of forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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and/or www.mantra.com/jai
harmony
that indians are and will remain corrupt for a long time to come.
such confession would help see thr' the media with a sense of realism and
comfortably.
so i urge all political parties to gather together at rajghat and say india
is corrupt, buyers beware.
<use...@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)> wrote in
message news:20100220Hs11e70QMFXwfag9UIUb6nf@NZ85b...
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
http://www.worldaudit.org/corruption.htm
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
In article <4b82f426$0$12421$bbae...@news.suddenlink.net>,
"harmony" <a...@hotmail.com> posted:
>
> perhaps it is time to acknowledge publicly with a sense of inevitability
> that indians are and will remain corrupt for a long time to come.
> such confession would help see thr' the media with a sense of realism and
> comfortably.
> so i urge all political parties to gather together at rajghat and say india
> is corrupt, buyers beware.
> Dr. Jai Maharaj posted: