One of the most enduring legacies of George W Bush is the number of words he invented and the number of
amusing statements he made. Try these: “Nu-cu-lar”
instead of nuclear or “misunderestimate”
instead of underestimate. In an interview he once said “I make decisions… I am the decider” in defence of Don
Rumsfeld. In his final months of presidency, at the end of a climate meet in
Japan in July 2008, he told the G-8 summit members: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter”. Those were silly ones.
But GWB, a good friend of India, did leave the stunning and ever-lasting phrase
for the world: “Axis of Evil”. Bush
was strongly influenced by his Faith and even believed his foreign policy was
influenced by God. So it’s a bit of a surprise that he didn’t use the term “Unholy Trinity” instead. But we do have
an Unholy Trinity in our media and it’s often hard to tell where one begins and
where the other ends; Hindustan Times–NDTV–CNN-IBN.
This threesome is easily the most potent propaganda machine. Add to this their
little ones like Mint, NDTV Profit, CNBCTV18 and their siblings. The TV18 group
does have an online site, Firstpost, through which it tries to balance the
propaganda work of its TV channels. But
that’s not the point.
In an article titled “The new Ram and Ravan” in Firstpost, Anant Rangaswami explains how HT buried
the allegations against Robert Vadra in the inner pages to fool the public.
Well, that story still remains buried. Now even the National Herald scam of Congress and Young Indian of the Gandhis
remains buried in the media. But this isn’t about any of these. Then there is
this extreme obsession of this Unholy Trinity with a guy called Pervez Musharraf. The number of times Barkha Dutt has rushed to interview him
is not possible to count. The number of times the media hosts him in their
conclaves and summits is not possible to count. I don’t have to run a history
of Musharraf which is already known. But
that is not the point.
If leadership is what India has to learn from an army guy then there
any number of honourable generals in this country to learn from. A recent
retired General is quite anti-govt so not acceptable. But hey, someone who is
predominantly anti-India is the one to lecture on leadership. While individual
interviews are fine, where in the world would you find such disgusting media
pampering of someone to whom India is a sworn enemy? Imagine the Washington
Post or New York Times hosting seminars on leadership and inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to lecture
Americans on it. I guess these summits don’t pay unless there is some
controversy, some glamour and some comics. Seriously, you need to learn
leadership from Katrina Kaif? I
guess you’d need to if you want to be in the glamour business or sell mango
juice. But that is not the point.
So what exactly is the point? It’s about this Unholy media Trinity that
seems to protect and serve the govt and the Congress at all points of time.
Focus on tiny issues of other political parties and cover up major issues that
concern the govt or the Congress. Who pays for HT’s ego trip with such
frivolous summits? YOU DO! How?
Let’s do some math. There were 34
speakers invited for HT Summit 2012,
most of them from foreign countries. Most of them charge speaking fees and all
their travel expenses are paid by the host. So depending on the pecking order
you can make your own calculations of how much it would cost to invite 34
speakers, put them up in swank hotels, pay for their travel, pay for all the
meals during the 2-day summit. Do you feel lucky? Okay! Now, it is normal for
corporate bodies to pay and sponsor such events, get a little media mileage
over competitors and maybe even some good display. They could even bargain for
precious favourable columns and air time to be used in the future. You know,
all those luxury cars, SUVs, high value real estate, consumer goods; any kind
of competitive business. Right? Take a look:
Well, what do you see? I admit I was wrong; there’s no car company or
real estate company or consumer goods company. Except for a couple there aren’t
even regular major advertisers. Instead,
we see a host of govt companies. Most of them are oil and power companies!
Some of these companies are more or less in some kind of monopoly. The
Associate partners are ONGC and LIC, both huge govt companies.
Interesting, eh? Now let’s do a count of Summit partners too.
Of the 14 companies listed as HT’s Summit partners you have: 1) ONGC 2)
NTPC 3) LIC 4) Petronet LNG 5) Power Grid Corporation of India 6) Oil India Ltd
7) Power Finance Corporation 8) ESIC 9) SAIL 10) BHEL. Simply stunning! Of the 14 companies who are Summit
partners, 8 are PSUs/Govt companies or companies in which our govt has a
sizeable stake, in addition to ONGC and LIC as Associate partners. Mostly, your money! Does
that tell a story? I guess it does and a big one too. So companies that are
largely funded by the public or survive on public money are sponsors of a major
event of HT Summit, an ego trip for the private media outlet. That’s the first
lesson in leadership to learn: How to use your smooth connections with a
political party to have govt companies shell out money for your luxury trip.
If you were in place of HT would you care to return the favour? And if you were
HT and part of the Unholy Trinity, would you care to ensure this nice party
stays in power?
I know what you’re thinking. That this maybe a one-off year. Well,
can’t tell because I haven’t been able to go into the 10-year record of HT’s
Summit sponsors since they aren’t currently available. That might require an
RTI inquiry with the govt, DAVP or with these govt companies. But what I can
tell you is that this is no isolated case. Back in August 2011 the CAG was reporting certain wrong-doings
in the contracts awarded to many parties. By Darth Vader, you will find the Unholy
Trinity in there too. Remember how Times
Now and the whole TOI group went
after the CWG scam and Suresh Kalmadi? Well it was suggested
by many that the main motivation for TOI going hammer and tongs at CWG and
Kalmadi was not getting certain media contracts from the CWG organising
committee. That was estimated at some 12 crores. Not really a big amount
considering the size of the event and the size of scams we are used to. But who
got the contracts? You get no prizes for guessing – the same Unholy Trinity of
HT-NDTV-CNN-IBN.
Most of us are aware of “paid
news”. Most of us are also aware of the huge spend on various dynasty ads
of the govt. What we may be missing out is on the other leakages that aren’t
quite evident to us routinely. I’m no RTI specialist or activist but I’m sure
if an RTI is filed with the DAVP and govt companies it could well reveal the
amount of ad spend on certain dedicated media outlets. Well, I suppose we
shouldn’t complain. After all, Leadership
isn’t free to learn! Especially, if it earns a tidy sum for some.
