The Editor's Delivery Vehicle

What’s a cigarette? Ever heard anyone giving the most accurate definition of a Cigarette? You might hear “it’s something people smoke” or “it’s a tobacco product” and so on. In the movie “The Insider” (a true story) Jeffrey Wigand is a Tobacco industry insider who turns whistle-blower on CBS News’ highly popular programme “60 Minutes”. His decision to speak the truth about the corrupt tobacco industry wrecks his life. CBS gets scared and doesn’t telecast the actual interview but a truncated one in the end. But in a moment during the interview where Wigand describes how the tobacco industry creates addicts, he provides the best definition of a cigarette I have ever heard. He calls it “a delivery vehicle for nicotine”. A delivery vehicle for the addictive and harmful nicotine! In the end the Tobacco companies had to collectively pay damages over 2Bn dollars for their ‘excessive nicotine delivery’ misdeeds.

If you observe newspapers or news websites, lately almost every one of them carries a small disclaimer at the end in case of articles written by columnists. This disclaimer usually says “the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not the newspaper”. There may be a lot of such articles that are essential to be put out for the public but the disclaimer was created because our media has now developed a practice of putting out a lot of opinions that suit its own political or ideological preferences. Excessive nicotine for your brains! Political pursuit constantly demands excessive opinions to be peddled. Most of these opinions through columns are not backed by 100% facts, can spin truths and can consistently aim to cause damage to a particular individual or group. The news site (I will use the term news site for both digital and print for convenience) is therefore “a delivery vehicle for slanted and planted opinions”. Er… much like the cigarette is a delivery vehicle for the harmful nicotine.

Certain news sites are delivery vehicles for character assassination. With the disclaimer, the Editor could then claim he is not responsible for the crap he peddles in his news site. But a recent Supreme Court ruling could change all that. We could probably now call the nonsense of the “disclaimer” of opinions being personal and hold the Editor responsible. Of course, I am stating this as a matter of “interpretation” but not as an actual event that happened. Legal experts will tell us better. Here’s what the SC, while dismissing the plea of the Editor, ruled in an old case from 1999 concerning Sandesh newspaper of Gujarat (Full report at Lensonnews):

"A news item has the potentiality of bringing dooms day for an individual. The Editor controls the selection of the matter that is published. Therefore, he has to keep a careful eye on the selection. Blue-penciling of news articles by any one other than the Editor is not welcome in a democratic polity. Editors have to take responsibility of everything they publish and to maintain the integrity of published records," the bench said… "It is apt to remind ourselves the answer of the Editor of the Scotsman, a Scottish newspaper. When asked what it was like to run a national newspaper, the Editor answered, 'run a newspaper! I run a country'. It may be an exaggeration but it does reflect the well known fact that it can cause far- reaching consequences in an individual and country's life,"… The court passed the order on a appeal filed by the then Executive Magistrate in Vadodara who approached the apex court against the Gujarat High Court's verdict for quashing proceedings against the Editor.

Please note that Editors are liable for even advertisements published in newspapers and not just other content. There are some basic precautions that Editors need to take even for advertisements. Most newspapers now carry “disclaimers” and “buyers beware” warnings on ad pages as well. The Editor has a tough job and cannot be hanged for content he hadn’t considered malicious to the best of knowledge. But in current times Editors have shifted to being Editorialists whose job is to primarily swing opinions. Shekhar Gupta recently mentioned on CNN-IBN that lately Editors have become Business Managers cum Editors and play dual roles. This is hardly a good sign for the media and consumers. The case of SpeakAsia which collected a lot of funds from the public later became controversial and has since disappeared from sight.

A certain newspaper has recently hired a columnist to write an exclusive weekly series on Narendra Modi. This ‘opinionist’ is a known Modi-baiter. There’s ample chance that this writer, in his pursuit to malign Modi, will use a lot of spurious figures and incidents to garnish his articles. The newspaper’s Editor shouldn’t be allowed to escape with the disclaimer that it’s the writer’s personal opinion. He should be made liable for every untruth and half-truth that his newspaper carries. The writer was in any case a “specialist” in targeting Modi in all his previous writings for quite some time. Or for that matter Justice Katju writes about a lot of things as “personal opinions” which newspapers carry with a disclaimer. In case there are damages to any individual or entity the newspaper’s Editor too should be made liable. The Editor specially chooses certain writers to drive his newspaper’s ideology and writers aren’t always picked on merits or analytical skills. But that is much about newspapers where are crimes are far less these days.

Since 1999, when the Sandesh case was first tried, the media has come a long way. As of now TV wields tremendous clout. The TV Editors call panellists and guests who throw wild allegations at people and even use defamatory terms to describe certain individuals. TimesNow was penalised 100 crores for carrying a wrong picture of a former judge in a corruption case. It’s not clear what happened to that case or if there has been some arbitrated settlement. Arnab Goswami carried out a 21-episode campaign against Nitin Gadkari. On CNN-IBN Rajdeep Sardesai repeatedly allowed Sanjiv Bhatt to call Modi a “common criminal”. In the first instance Rajdeep can be forgiven if he was caught unawares by Bhatt’s defamatory term. But when he didn’t stop Bhatt further or didn’t expel him from the panel or interview then Rajdeep as Editor is deliberately allowing defamation of a person and should be held liable. This is what TV Editors have allowed to continuously happen on their channels. The latest SC judgement should now be taken further to apply to certain TV channels who are behaving like dogs without a leash.

In another incident a few years ago an innocent school teacher was declared as a sex operator by TV channel in a fake sting operation. She was beaten up by the public. This had permanently caused damage to her. The then Editor in charge of the channel, Sudhir Chaudhary, who is now with another channel should have been permanently barred from any media operation. Like Wigand’s tobacco industry, much of the TV news and some print media have become mere delivery vehicles. And much of the media has become a delivery vehicle for propaganda, some poisonous stuff and a huge fix of malicious and willful character-assassination.

Disclaimer: This article represents entirely my own assessment and no Editor in India will ever be liable to agree with it.

India's Biggest Mafia

Of the thousands of comments on this blog site there a handful of commenters that call it a Pro-BJP site. Some add humour by calling it a ‘BJP-funded’ blog. To me, this suggests that these commenters probably do not work in a media outlet or have little or no understanding of how media houses work. And this is not in any way to suggest that all other commenters do. If funding or profit was the only motive for a political blog the only sensible thing to do would be run a Pro-Congress blog. I guarantee you the returns can be handsome. But then again this is not a political blog. If it were, the title and tag line of the blog would have been very different. In the previous post one commenter summed it up stating “…any criticism of the media is pro BJP and anti-Congress. So criticism of media=criticism of Congress?”. This is what has become the mantra of Congress sympathisers. They have been consumed so much by Paidmedia, they are no more able to distinguish the party from much of the media itself. So what’s it all about? Well, there are many gangs in India and this blog is dedicated to just one gang – The media. Lately, the choice of the media to describe such gangs is “Mafia” so let’s begin with some minor understanding of the mafia.

Originally, to be a Mafiosi you had to be of Sicilian origin. In foreign lands the term ‘Paisan’ is also used to describe Italian, Sicilian descendants who could be part of the mafia. The mafia then is a network of many bosses controlling many different turfs and activities. We call it crime, they call it business. And the businesses extend from smuggling, extortion, match-fixing, gambling and so on. Each turf is headed by a ‘Made-man’ who is the local boss. Only a Sicilian or Italian can be a boss. His foot soldiers (who could be of any race) are known as ‘Wiseguys’ (or fashionably ‘Goodfellas’). It’s the wiseguys who do most of the dirty work. So just as after Watergate almost every scandal is suffixed with ‘Gate’ every gang has come to be termed mafia, at least in India.

Our media has successfully tagged every such gang as mafia. So you have Land mafia, Mining mafia, Liquor mafia, Timber mafia, Corporate mafia, Trade mafia, Fake-currency mafia and the list can go on and on. They usually leave out two mafias. Both are bedfellows. One is the political mafia and the other, even more dangerous one, is the Media Mafia. Look deep into our media. You will find extortion, blackmail, murder, connections with anti-national elements, black money. Everything you can associate with a regular mafia you will find in equal measure in the media too. But since they claim to be ‘God’s own messengers’ they will never expose their own mafia.

Every mafia thrives on a few specific sources of income, what’s that for the media mafia? Advertising and through that revenue the power to influence opinions! Circulation, viewership may help the ad rates but they don’t directly generate great revenues. And so this mafia came up with the great idea of paid news too. Earlier, in the print media the art was to bring out spurious supplements which may look like a casual entertaining read but were actually ‘Paid for’ supplements. Now that art has taken the form of great scientific methodology. Take even Bollywood! Every movie release has a scientific methodology to it. Or even ever wondered why Ram Gopal Verma’s movies are trashed in the media even weeks before release?

Now, let’s come back to the question of why any anti-media article or site invariably appears to be anti-Congress. No need for a history class but India has long been ruled by the Congress, and still is, and therefore the greatest income source. Don’t be under the illusion that the corporate world alone is a great ad revenue source. In the past most print media would find it hard to even survive without govt ads and most of them had a person dedicated to dealing with the govt ad department (The DAVP or the State Information Depts.). Now add to that all the PSUs, the various govt. bodies (like PWD, Municipality, Water resources etc.).  Aha you say! It is bigger than any corporate segment and bigger than the land and mining mafias. Yes indeed, it is so damn lucrative that in most states almost every political party has its own media outlet. Yep, even the Congress in some states. Surprisingly, it's only the BJP that doesn't have one yet. 

So you’d ask if it’s all about govt doles why Congress alone? Let’s take Indian Express for instance. This once strongly anti-establishment newspaper is now a big Congress mouthpiece. Why? Because internal divisions and competition has more or less threatened its existence. It survives. And how do you think it does? Now if there were a BJP or some other govt at the centre yes there would be dole outs too but with the Congress the dole outs can be extra-ordinarily disproportionate. How do you explain Shobana Bhartiya being an RS member? Do you expect her Hindustan Times to be fair and balanced? HT has another extension – NDTV. They are linked by the informal association of their editors who appear in each other’s media outlet. How do you explain a financial disaster such as NDTV still on air? How do you explain a consistent loss making CNN-IBN still on air? (Only recently they’ve been bailed out by Reliance).

A media house like Hindustan Times or NDTV having a bias in favour of Congress is not a crime. It is when most of the national media outlets have a severe bias in favour of Congress that it becomes a MAFIA. And it is true that most of the media outlets have become a Congress mouthpiece. The recent elections and coverage of politicians would tell you enough. It is when their bias leads them to commit crimes by spreading untruths, fake reports, excessive spin, fake and fixed debates and even utter lies against the opposition and other parties that blogs like these are born. This mafia has found a very profitable equation with the Congress at the centre. Why would they want to change that, eh? In fact, they will do their best to ensure there is more of Congress in as many states as possible. Isn’t that why all the scams of YSR and Jagan Reddy are only coming out after the former’s death and the latter’s quitting the Congress? Now wait for the Gujarat elections where it’s a clear BJP V Congress fight. Watch how many lies and spins will show up.

Okay, so how else does it profit to be a mafia in league with Congress? List all the names: Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and all the deaths and anniversaries and every major project launches after their names. Where do you think the huge ad and media spend goes? And to all of this, just add ‘Paidnews’. How does it make it profitable to be a mouthpiece for anyone but the Congress? So just like the mafia bosses our editors guard their turf and have regular meetings all together. Secret meetings! The last such opportunity would have been the very SECRETIVE RahulGandhi-‘Off the record’ breakfast meet. Their ‘wiseguys’ are on the field, on the ground and extend the bosses’ work. How do you explain the now commonly used term ‘Hit-job’ in relation to articles by journos? That’s a mafia term, isn’t it? Wait a few years it will be properly known as a "Whack-job"!

In December 2011 Umesh Agarwal premiered his documentary on Paid News under an event of Moneylife (edited by Sucheta Dalal). This documentary titled “The open frame” is now on youtube and other sites going by the name “Brokering news”. Although limited in its effort one must commend the effort of the producers and the director. Do watch the video below:

The documentary does not touch upon the ‘mafia’ like work of the media for very obvious reasons. (It was produced in association with Prasar Bharti). Here’s what Umesh Agarwal had to say after the premiere: “Every aspect of news be it political, business, sports or entertainment had a price tag. Even panel discussions on an important national issue were ‘fixed”. Guests were invited to give the discussion a particular slant. Selection of guests wasn’t dictated by the editorial policy of the group but there were other considerations”.

The 'Made-guy' is free to kill anyone, anytime, even the wiseguys. But no one can kill the Made-Guy unless a majority of all the bosses approve. Does that explain how and why many of our editorialists continue to hold their jobs despite their crimes? 

And that is that! Next time you hear an anchor or an editorialist mentioning the word Mafia just imagine, it could be the media's ‘Wiseguy’ or ‘Made-guy’. It's simply India's biggest mafia talking to you.