The Media’s Sahib Mentality

Thirty-eight years. That was the gap between the launch of the first English newspaper in India and the first regional language daily.

The Bengal Gazette was started in Calcutta in 1780 by an Englishman. In 1818, the first vernacular newspaper in India, Samachar Darpan in Bengali, was launched. It took another four years to launch the first Gujarati newspaper, fourteen for the first Marathi newspaper and thirty six years for the inception of the first Hindi newspaper.

Since then, prominent regional newspapers have been published in languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, and Urdu.

The growing literacy rate and the emergence of a new class of people, literate in their own language, have led to the continuous expansion of the regional Indian press. In terms of the number of publications, readership and influence, the vernacular press may have even overtaken the English one.

But despite its rich history, the regional press has not been able to cover the gap between itself and the English media when it comes to market size (going by individual languages), facilities to employees, wages, glamour and impact.

Language scribes get secondary treatment compared to their ‘big brothers’ in English. The salaries and perks given to them are always less than those of their English counterparts, even if they belong to the same media house.

Shockingly, after more than 30 years of experience, a language journalist in a southern state draws an annual salary of just four lakh rupees. The reason cited for this discrimination is that the market size of the language is small.

A few years back, the Resident Editor of a leading language daily quit in protest against the management’s refusal to give him a car, while providing that privilege to his English-language counterpart.

Interestingly, the circulation of this particular language daily is far larger than that of its sister publication in English. In fact, the city edition of the English paper survives on the revenues earned by the language daily.

The disparity is not restricted to wages and benefits. In many cases, the number of staff is less in the language press. This is typically more pronounced in multi-lingual media houses with one English publication than in independent regional newspapers.

The language dailies or weeklies in big media houses are asked to appoint fewer reporters, and instead, pick up and translate news and articles from the flagship English publication.

A few years ago, the Editor of a prominent language daily insisted to the management that the team of sports reporters covering the Olympics must include one from his paper. Otherwise, he threatened not to use the English copy. His contention was that for years, the media group had been sending only English daily reporters to cover events, and so at least sometimes, the language reporters should be given a chance to get on the big stage. Moreover, the language reporter could write basic, grammatically-correct English, and even if his copy needed improvement, the English desk could take care of that. Because of the editor’s distinguished status both in society and in the media house, the management finally gave in to his demand. But it isn’t often that such a concession is made.

The third problem, and one of the biggest challenges language scribes face, is related to the prevalence of plagiarism.

When a language reporter files an exclusive story, the impact is restricted to that language group and state. Often, English press reporters blatantly pick up these stories, rehash them with a couple of minor quotes or details, and publish them with their own bylines, without giving any credit to the original publication or the reporter.

Once the story appears in the English press, it makes a nationwide impact, and it is deemed to have been broken by the English publication. The careers of many English language reporters have probably thrived on such instances, and these reporters have become celebrities.

In the ’80s, the Editor of a well-known English daily told his staff that whenever they came across an important exclusive story in a regional language sister publication, they should talk to the concerned people, confirm the story and then publish it as the English edition’s scoop. On the other hand, the language publications were expected to translate their counterparts’ stories as they were, with full credit.

In protest, the language reporters stopped sending copies of their news reports to the English publication. As a result of this, the English paper completely missed an important exclusive about deaths in a government hospital caused by adulterated drugs, forcing the editor to reconsider the instruction.

So, why this ‘Sahib’ mentality? The reasons are probably historic. Perhaps the fact that the first daily to start on this land was an English one set the tone for the future. Also, since the British set foot on this land, English has been the language of the elite, the decision-makers. Instead of losing its influential power in the decades since independence, this perception is growing stronger, despite the phenomenal growth of the language media. Strangely, barring a few exceptions, the English media has taken a corresponding downturn in terms of quality, fast losing its connect with ground reality and living in its own world.

The net outcome of this situation is a general atmosphere of dissatisfaction, frustration and envy for English-language journalists, in the regional press.

On a more practical level, it is leading to, with due respect to exceptions, language scribes aspiring for and accepting concessions and largesse from governments, political parties, individual leaders and corporate bigwigs, aligning with them and writing as per their wishes in return for favours.

Of course, this does not mean the high-earning English press is pious, and stays away from such acts. The recent exposé on the 2G spectrum scam by Outlook magazine shows clearly that reputed English-language journalists are no different, except perhaps in intent and scale. Their lobbying may not have been driven by money, but a thirst for power. Also, a language journalist may not have been able to lobby at the very high level the elite English press can. The role of a vernacular journalist would probably have been restricted to the power corridors of his or her state.

Even a shocking incident such as involvement in influencing government decisions serves to highlight the chasm between the two blocs of the press.

Is thirty-eight years too wide a gap to bridge in a society held by the ‘sahib’ mentality?

Agents of Brands – not of Change

Non-implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is akin to 100 jumbo jets crashing every day and a tsunami hitting a country each week. Every year, ten million children die before they reach the age of five, as 800 million people suffer from hunger. Poverty claims more victims than war does.

Actually this is enough diet for the media, which is ever-hungry for sensationalism, to get attracted towards MDGs. Still, it is not, and in all probabilities it would not. After all, the sufferers due to non-implementation of MDGs are not real air travelers. They are poor people, most of whom cannot afford the cost of consuming media and definitely not potential customers of fancy products, displayed in advertisements on print pages or TV screens. So, why should media bother for such people who are in no way going to contribute in any way to their revenue? May be a story/article here or there can be published or telecast just as a fashion or for the sake of a point to show that we too care for poor. But not a sustain campaign.

The media seem to have lost their way. They have not only forgotten their social agenda but have also lost their very purpose due to the rampant commercialisation of the media ‘business’. With this ‘poverty of purpose’ within media, how can anyone expect this profession to help in eradicating poverty worldwide or to run a sustain campaign for fulfillment of MDGs in a given time span? Modern journalism is very much sensitive to deadlines. Unfortunately, it is also much more insensitive to social agenda and lacks the right purpose.

Fault lies with all in the process – media managers, content developers and the message receivers. As James Fallows narrates his American experience of media in the preface to his book “Breaking the News”, the controls of the media are no more with the professionals or technocrats (in this case real professional journalists). They are with managers (finance and marketing people). In modern days (during the last few years) they call the shots and not journalists and editors as the entire profession (or mission) is turned into business of readership, market share and profit.

Some time back, a few senior editors from India expressed concern over this trend in their respective articles with, of course, reference to India. “Editors in India are an endangered species,” said Vinod Mehta, editor of the newsweekly ‘Outlook’. Another legendary senior editor, Khushwant Singh, expressed similar sentiments, “the hard truth about Indian journalism is that proprietors matter, editors do not; money counts, talent does not.” Rahul Singh, another senior Indian journalist, aptly summarised the situation, “The marketing departments, not editorial, run the show, often making editorial appointments and deciding how the front page should look and what it should display. The Indian newspapers have become brands and products, not agents of change and enlightenment.” Though all the three editors referred to the situation in India, I think it is one and the same, with a little variation, elsewhere too.

Monarchs, political dictators, uniformed heads of state, military junta and similar entities are generally considered to be anathema to independence and freedom in general, and independent media in particular. But the real threat to media freedom, post globalisation, is from private enterprises and corporations willing — and capable — to spend billions on advertising, rather than from political systems and personalities running the country. Market share, advertising revenue and political self-interest drive corporate media agenda. As a result, the society has started to lose the diversity of political viewpoints that are important for democracy and freedom. On one hand, the media is growing and expanding rapidly. But the growth is not translating into improved content standards and empowering the lowest strata of people. In fact, fierce competition is scaling down the level of content to the bottom.

CEOs and boards, along with media managements and to some extent journalists, are willing to surrender their freedom for revenue. Journalists and content developers are forgetting their traditionally established role in the society. They often lack in study, deep understanding, research, analytical skills, hard work and more than all that the sympathy for ‘have-nots’ and an urge to provide them voice. It is really worth doing a survey to find out how many journalists know about MDGs. The content persons or journalists too appear to have lost touch with the people’s real issues. From the third angle, knowingly or unknowingly, the message recipients are adding to worsen the situation by their viewing and reading habits.

It is really worth finding out how many people are interested in reading or watching real issues the people are facing. Even the so called strong media critics, lambasting the media for its deeds, are in the privacy of their homes often found to be interested in watching or reading the trash that media churns out. When a group of educated, urban middle class people were asked to honestly respond as to which programme they would watch-wedding report of two stars or reportage on suicide of poor farmers, they accepted that they would prefer the celebrity wedding report.

This situation brings us to an important point of media literacy. The people are bombarded 24 hours with well carved out, well planned, well thought of, well loaded messages giving information, analyzing issues, selling products. The question is as recipients are we equipped to decode them properly and understand the games media people play? Has anyone taught us to receive and understand the messages in a proper sense? Unfortunately not much effort has been made in that direction for a long time when media was growing to become a monster. Though late, it is needed to be done now as ultimately the business minded media is going to play to the gallery. If people stop receiving trash using a remote in their hand, the source will stop giving the trash. The media is very clever. The moment they know that people’s taste is changing, they change themselves. We witnessed it in Bollywood movies during the last few years.

While working on a large scale for making masses media literate, it is essential to launch a campaign for literacy in media. People working in the media too are needed to be educated about media’s role in a society, social agenda of media, the real issues people are facing, problems of marginalized and downtrodden, MDGs, our recent social history and heritage and issues like human rights, water and gender and more than all the freedom and independence of media. It is also necessary to help them to re-establish their contact with the people.

So, it has to be two-way process of literacy – for content people within media and for large number of readers and viewers. This may lead us to independent media looking into social issues, running sustained campaigns for development, poverty eradication, promoting health issues for poor. The media literacy will create demand for proper messages from outside and literacy in the media will create mature, well equipped, strong and independent media. For independent media, we must remember and emphasise the editor’s role, the purpose of journalism and the function of news. In this context, I cannot resist once again quoting ‘Outlook’ editor Vinod Mehta. He wrote in his piece, “Editors are employed to lead readers, not to be led by them. Really great journalism must do more than merely give people what they want. Brand managers, with honourable exceptions, are congenitally incapable of understanding the nature and purpose of journalism in a free society. They can never understand that content also has a social dimension.”

Independent Media Struggle Against Commercialisation

Mention 'independent media' and we immediately think of monarchs, political dictators, uniformed heads of state, military junta and similar entities as the main obstacles for media independence. There may be some honourable exceptions, but in general, our past experiences tell us how these types of political systems are anathema to independence in general, and independent media in particular.

At this forum, there is hardly any need to discuss how crucial independent media is for strengthening democracy. All of us, who are fighting for the cause of independent media, know it well. We all believe in the values cherished by independent media and have strong roots and traditions of free media. Some of us may have a history of struggle for free and independent media.

In this context, I always remember James Augustus Hicky, an Irishman who launched India’s first newspaper ‘Bengal Gazette’ in 1780. A vocal proponent of media freedom, Hicky once said, “I am willing to enslave my body to gain freedom for my soul.” Due to this strong tradition, Indian journalism has always enjoyed complete independence, except for a brief period during the Emergency of 1975-1977.

But we must understand that the threat to media freedom, post globalisation, comes more from private enterprises, entities willing — and capable — to spend billions on advertising, rather than from political systems and personalities running the country. CEOs and boards, along with media managements willing to surrender their freedom for dollars, are potentially more of a threat than dictators, prime ministers and heads of states. Here, monetary power appears to be more influential than political power. Unfortunately, media managements are also more than willing to succumb to corporate pressures.

But these are at least outside powers, if we may use the word, that are trying to dictate terms by throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars at the media. The issue that causes more concern is the undermining of the scribes' rights and powers within the media organisations by the managers. It is the circulation, marketing and advertising managers who have started dictating terms to journalists, and they have the full support of the managements on this.

The former editor of 'USA Today' James Fallows, in his book 'Breaking the News', expressed concern about this shifting of business controls from the hands of technocracts to finance people in the U.S.A. The trend, which probably began in the U.S. in the '80s, is now evident in many other places, particularly — and very strongly so — in India.

Recently, a few senior editors from India expressed concern over this trend in their respective articles. “Editors in India are an endangered species,” said Vinod Mehta, editor of the newsweekly 'Outlook'. Another legendary editor, Khushwant Singh, also expressed similar sentiments saying that “the hard truth about Indian journalism is that proprietors matter, editors do not; money counts, talent does not.”

Rahul Singh, another senior Indian journalist, has aptly summarised the situation in his article when he said, “The marketing departments, not editorial, run the show, often making editorial appointments and deciding how the front page should look and what it should display. The Indian newspapers have become brands and products, not agents of change and enlightenment.”

Market share, advertising revenue and political self-interest drive corporate media agenda. The society has started to lose the diversity of political viewpoints that are important for democracy and freedom. On one hand, the media are growing and expanding rapidly. But the growth is not translating into improved content standards. In fact, fierce competition is scaling down the level of content to the bottom.

I have purposely elaborated in detail the developments in India. There is a danger that the same trend will be followed elsewhere in Asia sooner or later, or perhaps it already exists elsewhere. The most unfortunate part of the story is that this is all being done in the name of readers and viewers. The managers are telling the journalists what type of content the readers and viewers want. And they are taking it upon themselves to decide in these matters because they claim to know more than the journalists as to what readers want.

Unfortunately, many readership surveys and television rating points (TRP) support this argument. Viewers are interested in trivialisation and sensation. There could be many fallacies in measuring TRPs or conducting surveys. But the fact remains that decisions in advertising markets worth billions of dollars are taken on the basis of these figures.

One more obstacle for independent media is created by what we call 'mobocracy'. In every society there are some sacrosanct issues and personalities. Writing about them or against them is sure to invite the wrath of supporters of that issue or personality. And this wrath normally takes a violent form, resulting in attacks and assaults on media offices and journalists. Learning lessons from such violence, journalists often tend to bypass that topic completely and wisely avoid writing about it. The loss is again to the people and society.

Secondly, it is necessary that we all do some introspection. Many times it is observed that journalists have lost contact with the people. The fourth estate is supposed to confront the three estates. Instead, the fourth estate is either becoming a part of or associating with the other three estates.

It is easier to fight against the political system when it works as an opponent of or an obstacle to freedom, because the enemy is known to all of us. We have established methods to fight against it. But fighting an enemy that is within our own system is a formidable challenge.

When we search for solutions to these new problems and challenges we will have to work on several fronts. On one hand, we will have to give good quality content to our readers and viewers and train them to consume it. To put it crudely, if we have been giving garbage to people as food, after some time people will think garbage is the food and may not accept real food.

Thus, when we talk of independent media, media literacy should be considered an integral part of it. It is only with the strong backing of the people that we can stand up and fight for independent media. But to gain people’s support for independent media, media also will have to gain credibility and in order to do this, serious content will have to be provided to the people. We will have to avoid the sort of news that James Fallows describes as a “distractant machine”.

But here lies the crux of the problem. As journalists we do not call the shots — the marketing people do. The marketing department is not interested in serious content. It is a vicious circle that we have to break somewhere.

We will have to tell the people that we cannot have an active democracy with a news system that self-censors stories on their marketability rather than considering their real news value and importance for informing the society impartially. We will have to tell the people what the real news is — the news that touches on daily life and the problems people are facing in their daily lives. The real news is that which keeps the people informed, helps them to decide a course of action, enhances their social and political understanding, empowers them and supports and builds movements for social change and for people-centric policies.

To invest in independent media, we must remember and emphasise the editor’s role, the purpose of journalism and the function of news. In this context, I again wish to quote Vinod Mehta’s words. He said, “Editors are employed to lead readers, not be led by them. Really great journalism must do more than merely give people what they want. Brand managers, with honourable exceptions, are congenitally incapable of understanding the nature and purpose of journalism in a free society. They can never understand that content also has a social dimension.”

Finally, we will have to think of how we can have a level playing field for our media organisations versus advertisers to maintain our independence. On the other hand, we will have to think of how we, as journalists, will have level playing field within our organisations as against our colleagues from managements.

Our agenda for investing in independent media and having a system for ensuring independent, pluralistic media, should include the following points : a) think of good public service broadcasting as a positive alternative and work for it, b) give importance to readers’/viewers’ training to have media literacy and c) as individual journalists, to establish strong ties with people’s organisation. These steps will pave the way to a resurgent independent media.

Problem of Journalism’s ‘Poverty of Purpose’

We are now passing through the mid-term-point of the MDGs, a right time to stop for a while and look back to check how far we have reached and how far we still have to go to meet the deadline of 2015. Journalists know the importance of meeting deadlines. Present day journalism is even more sensitive to deadlines than before. But unfortunately, it is also much more insensitive to social agenda and lacks the right purpose for this whole activity called journalism.

Journalism can actually play a crucial role in assessing the progress and present status of implementation MDGs continuously and keep the implementing authorities on their toes. It should highlight the gaps between tall claims and on ground reality for each of the goals by citing case studies as well as with the help of studies conducted and data collected by independent organizations.

Journalism should also reach out to the masses and mobilize them around effective implementation of MDGs by thrusting political will on the political leaders. It should also identify lacunae in implementation and provide effective solutions in achieving targets.

As per the trends exhibited so far, it was expected that the MDG target for poverty reduction would be met as projected. But as per the revised estimates, the global food crisis and resulting rise in food prices will force about 100 million people world over back to poverty and hunger.

Asian scene is no different. Asia region too appeared to be moving rapidly to meet some of the MDGs targets, mainly due to the economic progress made by many Asian giants. But the food crisis has pushed them all back. It now looks like that Asian countries may not achieve all the MDGs targets by 2015. Unfortunately, Media, is least interested in really going deep into the issue and analyses how commercialisation of agriculture as a deliberate policy by many nations, at the cost of food security for the poor, has brought the world to this stage, where poor only are suffering.

The rapid economic growth in many Asian countries, like in India, raised hopes of waging a successful war against poverty. But apart from the food crisis, there is another obstacle in fulfilling these hopes. Rapid strides in economic development have given rise to the problem of even more rapidly growing inequality. The growth in inequality is manifold. The gap in the economic status among various classes is widening at an alarming speed as well equally alarming distance. A recent report in New York Times “Inside Gate, India’s good life; Outside, slums” by Ruth Fremson aptly depicts this current situation in India, which is replicating in many countries.

This rising inequality has led to two further issues. The upper classes do not want to relate with poor and have no sympathy for their issues and problems. Media and journalists too are addressing the interests of only upper class as they are potential buyers in a market. Safeguarding or fulfilling that class’s interest can give media readership or viewership that is required to fetch good advertisements and revenue. The poor, backward and marginalized have no alternative but only to have their own media. But that too is difficult as they may not get the required market ad support as they do not belong to the “consumer class”.

The role of journalism has become more crucial in such a situation. Journalism can create an enabling environment for achieving MDGs by promoting good governance and accountability. Good governance incorporates participation of the people, responsiveness of the authorities, transparency by the governments, equity, rule of law and consensus orientation. Responsible and credible media, if it wishes, can promote all these values.

Media should effectively use ICT4D, which has spread rapidly, to actively campaign for achieving MDGs targets. But to use ICT4Ds, first we will have to concentrate on infrastructure development, that too in rural parts, and to generate funds for the same. On the other hand we should also look for low- cost technologies. On capacity building front, we should train journalists on ICT applications to promote MDG agenda. Training and skill development of journalists should include awareness and attitude change.

As additional efforts media and civil society organisations should form a common platform to have synergy and work together. Lot of information that media collets but does not use, can be shared with civil society organisations (CSOs). Media and CSOs together can create credible data which is essential to measure the progress and success at every stage.

But, the million dollar question is whether media and journalists understand and recognise the responsibility that has descended on their shoulders? Do they have any estimation of its magnitude?

Historically, journalism has been interested in sensations, wars, cyclones, tsunamis, accidents, deaths and destructions. Its taste for such a diet has increased to an alarming level over the years. But journalists should realise that there is enough sensation in MDGs stories also. Non-implementation of MDGs is amounting to 100 jumbo jets crashing every day and a tsunami hitting each week as every year 10 million children die before they reach the age of 5, eight hundred million people suffer from hunger and poverty claims more victims than war does.

Media can play an important role in influencing the policy for MDG implementation. It can demystify the technical policy goals and framework, by presenting it in common, non-technical parlance, and making it accessible to everyone. As all these goals are ultimately aimed at the betterment of the downtrodden they need to be communicated to the stake holders in their language, to incite them to demand their rightful share. This is a challenge for the journalists.

As professionals, journalists should strive hard to ensure that the suppressed voice of the marginalized gets space, which is shrinking rapidly within the media. At the same time journalists should play a role of citizen activists by coming out of their cocoon of inaction which they have masked under the garb of impartiality. Lack of awareness and political commitment is leading to absence of public pressure and political will to turn the MDGs into reality. Journalists should play an important role in building public pressure to ensure political commitment and will.

Journalism can play a historic role in the path towards the achievement of the MDGs. Unfortunately, journalism has not only forgotten its social agenda, but caused by rampant commercialization of media “business”, it has also lost the very purpose for which this very noble profession works. It is a deliberate and conscious replacement of social agenda by commercial agenda. It is showing a poverty of purpose. And how can we expect a profession to help in eradicating poverty when that profession itself is facing poverty of purpose?

(The term “Poverty of Purpose” has been borrowed from an article of well respected Filipino journalist Malou Mangahas)

Welcome

Hi,
Welcome to my blog, where I will write about the media issues about which we all feel very strongly.
Let us discuss, deliberate, think, argue, fight and keep this democratic place alive for the betterment of the global media.
So wait to read from me.
Milind