Shayma S analyses how mainstream media is fanning divisive politics just to remain in the good books of the powers that be, and pins hope on the alternate media outlets that are surviving anyhow.
The field of journalism has been heady with ‘news’. Plenty of year-end awards, particularly for freelance journalists and digital media outlets point to the waves of change steadily lapping away at the field; on the more shocking front, apps such as ‘Bulli Bai’ and ‘Sulli Deals’ have been particularly out on the hunt for vocal, young, Muslim woman journalists. But the same media institutions that had stood tall during the time of the Emergency, where famously, media houses crawled when ‘merely’ asked to bend, lie in ethical shambles today.
An ad in the Indian Express, depicting a man in a ‘before (2017) and after (2017)’ frame – wearing surma (kohl), with a scarf wrapped around his neck, throwing a fiery stick at presumably an innocent crowd. Post 2017, he is shown with folded hands, with a shorter haircut, missing scarf and an apologetic look at a police station, with a ‘Wanted’ poster in the background. The ‘before’ is titled – ‘Dangaiyon ka Khauf’, the after, ‘Maang Rahe Hai Maafi’. The overwhelming subtext, of course, is that the Yogi government has erased the climate of fear and reign of terror and ‘tamed’ a vicious community.
The ad has drawn outrage and many subscribers and contributors to the Indian Express have expressed their disapproval and have withdrawn from further writing commitments to the paper. Professor Jayathi Ghosh, Professor Apoorvanand, actress Swara Bhaskar among others spoke out and Tweeted against the ad. While some commentators have cited an inevitable compromise on journalistic ethics due to financial changes in the print industry, others point at a more sinister and active choice that is being made by media outlets to not just stay afloat financially, but also remain in the good books of the government.
THE CHOKEHOLD OF REVENUE
Media observers have noted that while in the past, a large chunk of ads used to include luxury products – housing, jewellery and so on, the ratio of ads has tilted in favour of government ads. As Saheefa Khan, freelance journalist points out, government ads pay handsomely, and as the financial burden on print media has increased concurrently, few other options are left. The implementation of GST has also compounded matters. This has allowed for increased control of the government in denying or allowing ads to the papers of their choice.
A 2019 report in the Deccan Herald noted how the Modi government froze ads to three Indian newspaper groups, citing unfavourable coverage of the government’s policies – including the Telegraph and its parent ABP Group and The Hindu newspaper group, especially after the latter reported on the Rafale Deal. Thus, withdrawing or granting advertisement has become a weapon in the hands of the ruling dispensation to control the narrative around its failures and simultaneously, there is a construction of an alternate version of events through social media and misinformation networks. This deadly nexus has diluted the meaning of media freedom to the point of almost-meaninglessness.
So, it has become clear that a newspaper’s survival as well as freedom to report has become a delicate balancing act, rather than one based on any kind of ideological firmness. Offend the wrong people, and the future looks dismal. Unfavourable data, like unfavourable reporting, is only worth denial and dismissal. Facts are questionable, and the truth flexible. Apart from the freedom to report, the irrefutable fact is that mainstream media has both fanned divisive politics and a weakening of the social fabric, as well as directly targeted minority groups. It is unsurprising then that it has put up very less resistance against government ads that repeat this sentiment.
‘THE HANDMAIDEN OF HINDUTVA POLITICS’
As Ziya us Salam, senior journalist and author of a book on the Tablighi Jamaat (that became a prominent victim of the media’s entrenched Islamophobia during the Covid-19 first wave) notes, there has been a clear increase in dependence on government ads for mainstream newspapers, simply because many ads are going to electronic media, which has eaten into a sizeable chunk of the print business.
Salam notes two previous incidents – full page ads of the BJP during the 2014 elections carried by all Hindi newspapers and many English newspapers, and the recent ads celebrating the stone laying ceremony in Ayodhya as if it were a national achievement.
But even for senior journalists like him, who are unsurprised to see papers like Amar Ujala and Dainik Jagran carry inflammatory ads, it is still disappointing for papers like the Indian Express, despite the dilution in their ideological integrity, to carry something so divisive and bigoted. Cleverly enough, he notes, no words are used in the ad, but only allusive imagery, as if to represent what the Prime Minister had once said, that rioters can be identified merely by their clothes.
Javed Gaihlot, a Bangalore-based journalist with over 24 years of experience currently working at a new media outlet, News Trail, believes that even as media houses often are openly backed or serve the interests of the ruling government in the state or the centre, the role of a concerted ideological line has actually dwindled. Money rules supreme – and it is the two-way relationship that helps both the advertiser and the newspaper thrive. He also believes that this is not a product of the Bharatiya Janata Party itself, but an established practice at the state level as well. Essentially, with enough money, anything can be published. The press has always placed an important role in fanning communal passions, he argues, citing how the vernacular press plays a provocative role in Gujarat, 2002.
COLLAPSE OF A FAÇADE?
But while there is a gradual normalisation of such openly communal and divisive state policy, there is also an acknowledgement that while in the past, such control over the media has remained tacit, and the messaging has remained vague, things are changing. Ghazala Jamil, author and professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, notes: “Indian newspapers have always been dependent on advertisements as a major source of revenue…this has always exerted pressures on the editorial lines of the newspapers. However, these pressures have remained tacit except for the period of the Emergency…
“There was always a duality of state policy with a gap between what it said and what it actually did. Even as discrimination was systemic and deeply entrenched, at least in formal and public broadcast and messaging there was emphasis on ‘unity in diversity’.
“This produced a restraining impact on open communal messaging overall both in state advertisement and advertisement by private sector. What has changed in the recent years is also that funding to political parties has become opaque, and the line between a political party in power and their governments has blurred.”
HOPES FOR A BETTER FUTURE
Recalling the billboards that were put across Lucknow with the intention to ‘name and shame’ anti-CAA-NRC protestors, Anas Tanwir, Advocate on Record, Supreme Court of India, places the current IE advertisement in a longer run of government’s dog-whistle politics of targeting certain communities. But Gaihlot, like Tanwir, also has hopes from smaller publications, many of whom do not rely on advertisements at all, such as Lankesh Patrike and the subsequent Gauri Lankesh Patrike. Tanwir too echoes this hope from younger and more upright media houses who have reported fearlessly on human rights violations and the government’s failure in managing the Covid-19 pandemic, such as Maktoob Media or The Caravan, who are not dependent on government funding.
It remains to be seen whether the mainstream print media will continue this slow march towards complete submission and overt approval of the government’s bigoted ideology. However, all is not lost. More and more alternate media outlets, despite the fear of reprisal, are surviving despite major attempts at repression and even outright violence on journalists.