AGAINST THE GRAIN
The great media let-down
C. RAMMANOHAR REDDY
RANJEET KUMAR
I CANNOT understand why everyone is turning on the psephologists for not having made accurate predictions about Verdict 2004. They may not have forecast a Congress-led victory, but at least they got the trend right. The group that should be hauled over the coals is the media. Journalists are not in the business of making predictions. But we in the media should at least have been able to report, first, the countrywide resentment about the National Democratic Alliance Government's performance on bread and butter issues and, secondly, the anger about the BJP-led coalition's election campaign. We did neither. If we had, the results would not have been as surprising as they now seem. And the amazing thing is that after being "stunned" by the verdict, there is very little reflection about how and why the media did not do the job it was expected to do.
The reason why journalists in the English print and electronic media abdicated their basic responsibility is very simple. Over the years the journalists on the political beats had been, by and large, co-opted by the BJP, while the mediapersons covering business were willing to swallow the NDA government's propaganda about its economic record. The result, obviously, was that blinded by its bias the media did not see what it was supposed to. One can speculate about why the media was so quick to accept the NDA propaganda. (The argument here is entirely about the English language print and electronic media.)
The first reason why journalists lost their balance about the BJP and the NDA is that we became victim to the oldest rule in the book of media manipulation. The suave managers of the BJP were what is called "media-friendly", but this can actually be the kiss of death for professionalism. The BJP managers spoke well, they encouraged a first-name cosy relationship, and they planted the (mistaken) notion in the minds of journalists that they were privy to the innermost workings of party and government, thereby giving mediapersons the illusion of making policy. No wonder then that gradually it was the media which became "NDA/BJP-friendly". Other parties too have done the same thing in the past, but none was as effective as the BJP. Nothing else can explain how time and again the media let the BJP/NDA off the hook so easily. For example, from the recent reporting on corruption, one would think the NDA Government had a satin-white reputation. There never was any serious attempt to investigate, for instance, the Unit-64 scandal, the subversion of rules in telecom or the extent to which particular business groups were being consistently favoured — all of which should have led the trail to some of the highest offices in government.
The second reason was that journalists got swept up by the propaganda about India becoming a "superpower" under the BJP. They swallowed the talk about "India rising", which was why they gave such an easy ride to the distasteful "India shining" campaign. They basked in that praise from abroad about India as an economy of the future. And they were quite pleased about upper class India being able to integrate itself so easily with the global economy. So the party that brought this about was showered with roses and the focus in general was on what was happening in the "new" India, even if it was the old India that was more important. The media's vulnerability to gloss was most evident in the pink press, though the general English language media was not much behind. A good example was how much was made without any critical analysis of the economy growing by 8.1 per cent in 2003-04 and India being one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
The third reason why mediapersons did not ask the questions they were supposed to ask is that by the late 1990s, most of them silently or openly endorsed the Hindutva agenda. The other side of this acceptance of Hindutva ideology was a sense that the NDA Government was doing a magnificent job in all respects. Of course, the same media highlighted Gujarat, but soon this too was seen as only an "aberration". The contrast between the "moderniser" BJP and the fuddy-duddy Congress was too obvious to admit that there may be something seriously wrong with the NDA Government's administration. It will always be a mystery how from reporters to editors, most journalists who claimed to have an eye on the future had at the same time no problem accepting the antediluvian Hindutva ideology.
There certainly were exceptions in the media community. But the dominant trend was quite the opposite. Perhaps because of the errors of omission and commission over the past few years, the reaction to Verdict 2004 has been just as appalling. After a grudging nod to the decision of the electorate, the media has for the most part resorted to rationalisation. Some have made the absurd argument that the poll results show that governance does not matter: "Whatever you do, the voter will reject you the next time." (This is just a shade this side of saying that the right to franchise should be restricted to the enlightened.) Slightly less ridiculous is the argument that the verdict shows that the Indian population has rising expectations.
That is, the administration of the NDA should have been even better than it was. Then there is the Bharat vs. India argument, which too ignores the countrywide spread of anti-NDA anger. And, finally, the most common analysis, which is just as self-serving as the others, that this is anti-incumbency at work. All these arguments show a complete lack of introspection about what went wrong earlier.
E-mail the writer at crr100@eudoramail.com
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