Thank You..

It’s over two and a half years since this blog started. It is with a sense of happiness and satisfaction that I note this blog crossed One Million views on October 16.2012. For a small blog in some corner of the world I consider it a decent accomplishment. I would consider it an even greater accomplishment if it manages to push many more to write. I have, of course, been inspired by many wonderful writers on the net; writers whose names would make a very long list. They aren’t from the regular media. All of them had something in common which I learned: They weren’t just bold, but in writing, they were never afraid of being wrong, they took the opportunity to say what they believed or assessed to be right. In this post I will share a few personal notes.

Like many, I have observed news media for a long time, national and some international. It was a thrill to see TV news channels adopt a strong adversarial role with the govt in the late 90s. It was only in 1999 during the Kandahar episode that I felt something wasn’t really right. Then, it was in 2002 during and after the Gujarat riots that I sensed the channels had gone far beyond reporting. They were actually concocting lies and fake stories. Naturally, most of it was quite shocking and disturbing. Program after program reported over 2000 deaths, 3000 deaths, mass rapes, foetuses ripped apart with no authentic evidence for anything. By 2004 it was pretty much clear that these news channels were not in the news business but in politics. Some NGOs joined hands with the media too. People we thought were social activists were actually “paid political hacktivists”.

I had a TV in a small office from where my partner and I operated an online business. I was mostly alone in the office and hardly watched but had the sound on to catch any sensible news. Then we got to watch the Cash4Votes in 2008 and that too brought outrage but passed. That year the US presidential election was also interesting with the possibility of a black man becoming a president for the first time. So that got a lot of attention. It was soon after that election, on November 26, that late at night I caught some report on terrorist attacks in Mumbai. This went on and on and I watched till 4am next morning before quitting. At home next morning I thought it would all be over but when I got back to office I saw things had gotten worse. On the evening of November 27 I tried calling a TV channel at least 3 times to complain about their terrible coverage of the attacks but couldn’t get through. In the following months I watched the Chetanya Kunte–Barkha Dutt episode over “shoddy journalism” on the net and that was disgusting to say the least. It was evident that media celebs had a clear contempt for social media and bloggers.

In March 2009 I registered the website MediaCrooks.Com but still didn’t write for a long time. At first we wanted to focus on the ‘financial’ channels but then the stock markets had already crashed since October 2008 and there wasn’t much to write. There were many blogs and sites that wrote about politics, religion, history, ideology etc; most of them great ones. Thus the thought of writing about news channels and only about news channels, be it print or electronic. I had no idea what to write other than what would read like complaint letters to a newspaper. The other idea was to write “reviews” of programs but that would have sounded like movie critics. The first post was made on February 2010 and for about 9 months there was hardly any readership for the site. I recall the readership count till November 2010 was around 400 or thereabouts.

It was then on November 18, 2010 that Radiagate broke and when Open magazine crashed, this site carried all the tapes in a single file without interruption. Since then there has been steady increase in readership. MediaCrooks is intended to be a critique of media without meaning to be merely a serious academic exercise. Without sacrificing accuracy and facts it was always and still is meant to be fun-reading.

Among many stories that inspire, one is definitely the story of Bob Woodward (Of Watergate). People may or may not know but Woodward was sent to cover the hearing of the Watergate burglary not because he was a great journalist but because he was an average journalist. His supervising editor even referred to him as a “Schmuck” who could have been fired. Even his newspaper, Washington Post, had initially considered Watergate just an ordinary burglary which is why they sent a ‘schmuck’. The rest is history. Their meticulous research and inquiries should have inspired many of our real journalists. They didn’t use call-girls, prostitutes and spy-cameras for “sting” operations or entrapment. Does it sound a lot like our very own J. Gopikrishnan of 2G fame? I also rely on the P&G principle: “Facts count, Opinions don’t. What is right is more important than who is”. Even in medical situations an opinion is usually a ‘considered assessment’.

In the current context the media will have us believe that corruption fighters like Anna Hazare or Arvind Kejriwal have come up because politicians have become unaccountable or have decimated our institutions. Only partly true. This is an outrageous half-truth that is being spread. Their spurious argument is that these activists have taken the place of the Opposition in a democracy. This is as far from the truth as Russian is from Tamil. These activists have come up because our media has failed. Our media has stopped being a watchdog. Whatever IndiaToday unearthed about Khurshid may have been possible with all other scams too. Our media failed. Whatever other scams were unearthed by CAG could have been done by the media too. How many times have media used RTI to expose govt misdeeds? Why should a country even need specialist “RTI activists” as they call them? If a small journal like The Pioneer and J. Gopikrishnan could expose the 2G scam what does it say about other news media with greater muscle and influence?

Far from exposing, many in the news media have, in fact, been operating as defence lawyers for the criminals in the govt and politics. With most media celebs swarming around NCR like insects attracted to the honeypot, they fail to acknowledge most crimes have happened right under their own noses. Much of the news media is also now a “political party” that is part of the crime. The anti-corruption activists have replaced not politicians or Oppositions but the news media which is too busy with Bollywood, Saas-Bahu stories, silly Cricketainment and Tamasha in general. At a time like this investigative journalism should have peaked but in India it’s practically dead. That is why I consider a corrupt media the first and biggest threat to our democracy more than politicians.

Many posts on MediaCrooks have been based on readers’ comments. Many have come through emails that I receive. Where possible they have been acknowledged. There are many individuals who have recommended the blog through Twitter, Facebook, SocialMedia forum and even in private circles. Many SM sites have reproduced posts from here. There are professional online news sites that have used content from here. Even IAC has prominently featured some posts on their site. I would love to thank every individual and entity that helped to spread the blog and its message. Naming each of them would make a very long list and run into many posts long.

I would just like to thank all of you for reading and for supporting this site. It is more than I ever expected. I also hope many more such sites come up and many more write about issues that concern all of us in general.

 

The Media Is Never With People...

Mass media biased towards Anna Hazare's cause say experts according to an article in DNA on Sunday, August 28. Bhaskar Rao of Centre for Media Studies adds in the same article: "By its very nature, television is a very biased medium. Whenever a big issue or a campaign like this crops up, news channels try to be on top of it. This is the trend that prevails everywhere," …But unfortunately in the Anna Hazare case, I think TV channels have overdone it…The main issue here is corruption, which is the elephant, but the media has given extensive publicity to "the elephant riders, which is Anna Hazare and his team". There was a lone voice of support for news television channels from noted journalist and Editor and Managing Director of Pioneer newspaper Chandan Mitra, who feels it was not the case.

Everything in the lines from DNA that I’ve quoted could be true. Except that the article misses certain points about the media. Let’s take Chandan Mitra. Apart from being the MD of The Pioneer, he is also BJP member of the RS. That’s double a privilege. The Pioneer is a journal that had many writers severely criticising the Anna movement. One even called it “spreading canards..” Truth is, the Anna campaign made an unwritten proposition to the media – ‘You are with us or against us’. Given that terrible choice there was only one way for the media to jump – the people way. TimesNow took the lead and the rest just had to follow. And follow they did with the best attempt to draft the worst camouflaged tarnishing of the campaign. They pulled out Mahesh Bhatt, Nandita Rao, Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander, Nandan Nilekani and many more that they could lay their hands on. All these worthies did their best to tarnish Anna’s campaign and hold the govt line that all this was against the constitution. Constitution! It’s a word you’d have heard more in the last ten days than ever before in the last 3 decades. Suddenly, constitution was the final line of defence for everyone against Anna’s campaign.

People may have some idea of the privileges of the media but let me give a few examples. Even the lowest level employee in a well-known media outlet extracts the greatest privileges from the system. For instance, you could glide through a curfew area if you flash your media house business card even if you are not a journalist or not have a permit. You can bargain the best discounts at hotels and many other shopping outlets. Your payments could get priority in government organisations if you’re from the media. Even a passport office gives you priority if you flash your media card. The parties of big media houses and their indulgences are something to behold. If you ever happen to attend one of them you would hardly believe these outlets actually serve the general public. So it’s only in a situation like the Anna movement that many media outlets had a compulsion to tilt in favour of common people. They had no choice. Otherwise, throughout the year they are more or less an extended PR department of the government. How do I know? I’ve been there and done that in my association with one of  the highest circulated journals in the country and probably the world. It is absolutely shameful!

The current media as we know it has come about since the reforms of 1991. Prior to that, and maybe even now, the biggest advertiser is not private enterprise but the government. The very survival of many media outlets depends on the govt. In such a situation can the media really be expected to be on the side of facts and truth? Despite all their claims those in the media who accept govt awards like the Padmas must seriously question their own conscience. I was witness to the terrible reporting of the Gujarat riots by star media celebs like Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai. They are also the ones that whipped up the most emotions during Kandahar. They are now Padma Shri award winners. Both NDTV and CNN-IBN have awarded Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi sham awards like ‘Indian of the year’. Are you seriously expecting them to represent the people’s concerns?

On January 17, 1991 I was at home in London. It’s a historic day. I watched till late night the first Gulf war that broke out. Even the BBC that normally shut down broadcast then at midnight carried on airing reports till around 3am. In less than an hour CNN, an otherwise unknown cable channel, became an international household name. History hangs on tiny chances. In the current Anna campaign TimesNow grabbed that tiny chance to become the channel to grab the most eyeballs. If the other competitors followed,  it was out of sheer compulsion and not out of any sense of reporting factually. Thus NDTV, CNN-IBN, Headlines Today and even all the Hindi channels rushed to stand by the people. This time they were all also watching people on the social networks. So, in normal times a media that is a slave of the government had no choice but to be in the right books. Make no mistake, in the days and weeks to come, some of these channels will revert back to their normal position of standing for the govt. They will do everything to indulge in mud-slinging against the Anna Hazare team just as they tried to during the initial stage of the anti-corruption movement in April and June (Against Ramdev).

Ashutosh, the MD of IBN’s Hindi channel, has openly accused some English channel media celebs of being govt spokespersons. He mentions how some of them have acquired luxury flats and residences in a discussion conducted by Karan Thapar. Believable? Absolutely! Go and take a look at the kind of flats and bungalows that our media celebrities live in. You will not find that very different from Bollywood celebrities. Rahul Kanwal even tweets about rising interests bothering home buyers, but I really doubt it’s a problem that seriously confronts him.

Following the outbursts of Kiran Bedi and Om Puri, the Parliament has moved privilege motions against them. Hmmmm! PRIVILEGE is the key word. The media reports it but it fails in their job to defend the right of free speech of these individuals. That parliament has been endowed with such extraordinary powers is wrong. The media should be standing up for these two individuals despite their buffoonery. They will not. What they said and did may be excessive but they weren’t wrong. It’s the way people feel. What does it say about a journalist who cannot get near the people and feels comfortable in her studio when she can rush to Egypt or Libya? Barkha Dutt has learned one thing at least, that being crooked doesn’t pay! It equates with you with politicians who constantly take the people for granted.

Democracy is not a relationship between the rulers and the ruled. It’s a process between and among equals. The moment parliament thinks people are subordinate they go terribly wrong. People are not subordinates. They are the reason parliament exists. They are the reason constitution exists. They are the reason why media exists. The day our media realises that and learns to be honest our parliament will be honest. Till then, our media, more than our politicians, poses the greatest danger to our democracy.

Why Don't They Ask Suzy?

The PM keeps repeating his statement ‘govt has no magic wand against corruption’. Well, why don’t they ask Suzy? Suzanne Arundhati Roy is a single-window system for all your problems. In a post titled India’s worst journalists I had stated: “She is India's only global journalist. Be it a politician, a minister, head of state, saints, print journals, tv channels, everyone relies on her to deliver considered and scientific opinion on everything. And she never fails. Be it literature, nuclear threats, dams, environment, maoists, naxalites, mining, rocket science, environmental problems on the moon and mars, saving martians from pollution. She knows everything!” But we will come back to Roy a bit later.

While there is a huge support for Anna’s anti-corruption movement there are also a good number who criticise him for undemocratic ways adopted by him. It’s hardly possible to have a mass movement without its critics. Some of them are quite fair in their criticism but some are extending the Manish Tiwari line of dialogue, with a bit more sophistry though.

Sample some excerpts from this one from C.P. Bhambhri in a piece called ‘Spreading Canards….’ From The Pioneer:

A democratic system of governance cannot survive or, for that matter, thrive if people are conditioned in believing that every ‘elected representative’ is corrupt and misuses his power to appropriate public resources………Historical evidence clearly shows that democracy can be subverted and sabotaged by anti-democratic military Generals or fascist and Nazis like Hitler of Germany or Mussolini of Italy or General Franco of Spain or near home General Ayub Khan of Pakistan if the ‘public mood’ turns against electoral process which is projected as villain of the piece because democracy is labeled as a breeding ground for corruption.

First of all, I am yet to hear anyone, I repeat anyone, even remotely saying that every elected politician is corrupt. No, not even Anna Hazare says that. If there is anger against politicians as a community it still doesn’t imply that all politicians are corrupt or misuse power. It is fair, though, to believe that a majority do misuse power in some way or the other. The ‘maoists and anarchists’ comment by Manish Tiwari is still fresh but here is someone just putting it differently with subtlety by invoking Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and Ayub Khan. So the canard is now flowing both ways. Democracy was never meant to be a breeding ground for corruption, Mr. Bhambri! Unchecked power and greed are breeding grounds for corruption. If those in the ruling class can’t find the conscience to fight corruption, people will have to defy parliament. We are still lucky that unlike the Mideast people haven’t pulled out guns and swords. So Bhambri’s imaginary threat to democracy is as much a canard that he accuses the protesters of spreading.

Anna Hazare is leading an anti-corruption movement that has a fascist overtone because even Parliament, which represents political diversity of India, is being commanded to accept the so-called Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by Team Anna. Parliament is the pillar of Indian democracy and every Bill gets democratic approval or rejection on the floor of both the Houses of Parliament….The demand to ‘accept’ their Bill or ‘face’ public anger which is manipulated by undertaking emotive steps like ‘fast-unto-death’ is not justifiable……It is bizarre, to say the least, that Anna Hazare is adopting coercive methods to achieve his goal. He is challenging the constitutional and legal rights of elected representatives to perform their legitimate functions.

There is definitely truth in stating Anna Hazare is pushing Parliament a bit too far by forcing the JLP and imposing deadlines. As bargaining chips protesters throw up the weirdest demands. But really, he has only half the blame to share. If the govt itself constituted a joint team to draft the Lokpal bill, then the right thing to do would be to present a bill that is drafted through consensus. They could have taken longer to reach that consensus. Playing tricks on the civil group and presenting a unilaterally drafted bill is bound to force such agitations, especially after the extreme step of arresting Anna, lathi-charging protesters earlier and displaying extra-ordinary arrogance. Very few people in print or TV are actually discussing the merits of both bills or the many versions of bills that are floating but instead focused on which side will blink first. This is the Bhambri version of Anna’s fascist approach. Parliament and government deserve to be respected. But the moment the government becomes arrogant, extremely corrupt and intolerant, it is the duty of citizens not to tolerate the intolerant and corrupt. Throwing out a corrupt and intolerant government is not the same as throwing out democracy. We have seen state and central governments thrown out before on many different issues. All this ‘holiness’ about parliament can only go so far!

There are reports today that around 26 MLAs from Andhra have quit over the CBI raids on Jagan Reddy. Why is it that these raids are happening only now? Was the Congress totally unaware of the corrupt YSR Reddy government? This is hardly the behaviour of a government that people should tolerate. There are lines that shouldn’t be crossed in a democracy. But it’s usually the government and politicians that cross those lines first. Helpless citizens keep watching endlessly. Someday, the protests were bound to get threatening. It is not people who started the Franco and Hitler trend. In this case it is the government that started it and will now have to pay the price for it.

That brings us back to sister Suzy. She says ‘I am not Anna’ in an article in The Hindu. Thank God for small mercies. Frankly, you wouldn’t mistake her or her ideology for Anna even if you met her under a nuclear mushroom glow. She calls the whole JLP draconian. In the whole rant against Anna Hazare and the JLP she does not provide one single clause in the JLP that she finds draconian. She does not challenge anything in the JLP. The entire exercise is to merely poke holes into the character of Anna. The strange part about such lunatics is that they believe that anyone who stands up and fights for a cause should also fight for causes that are dear to their critics. Where does such sick thinking come from? Only from sick minds like Arundhati! So here is the sample from her article which should tell you everything that Anna isn’t:

Who is he really, this new saint, this Voice of the People? Oddly enough we've heard him say nothing about things of urgent concern. Nothing about the farmer's suicides in his neighbourhood, or about Operation Green Hunt further away. Nothing about Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, nothing about Posco, about farmer's agitations or the blight of SEZs. He doesn't seem to have a view about the Government's plans to deploy the Indian Army in the forests of Central India.

Well, to be honest, not everyone is as bright as Suzy to be knowledgeable about every single problem that confronts us. I sometimes wonder why the PM doesn’t talk to her. Is there any problem on earth or the universe that Suzy can’t solve? Because he didn’t talk about Nandigram he shouldn’t talk about corruption! Because he didn’t talk about Posco he shouldn’t protest about corruption! Because he didn’t talk about Singur he shouldn’t talk about anything! If you observe carefully there is only a thin line dividing the Bhambris and the Suzies. If the PM cannot find a magic wand why don’t they talk to Suzy! Anna’s ‘emotional blackmail’, as some people call it, can always be matched by Suzy’s emotional nonsense!