MEDIA MATTERS
Invisible issues
SEVANTI NINAN
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The election coverage of the electronic media tends to give disproportionate prominence to a just a few top candidates... Where are the issues?
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Media firewalls are spectacularly discernable at election time…
Photo: AFP
Space for everyone somewhere: Selling campaign banners in Hyderabad.
Those who critique the media in the West have coined the term “media firewall” to denote various kinds of exclusion that operate in news coverage. It borrows from the cyber notion of firewalls, the software line of defence which blocks out unwanted intrusions from cyberspace into a computer.
Media firewalls are spectacularly discernable at election time, two of them in particular. One, the propensity of television to not look beyond the top candidates in apportioning coverage. And two, the tendency to compartmentalise stories which are interconnected, or not look beyond a story to where its causes lie.
Only two candidates?
The first one of course has been so visible this time around that even the most brain-dead remote control jabber would have registered it. L K Advani and Manmohan Singh matter, nobody else comes close. Only the BJP and Congress count, and even though we shout each day that they cannot form a government on their own, we give them the lion’s share of attention. If Priyanka Gandhi surfaces, she blocks out all else, on every channel that particular day, even if she is not a candidate.
This election we have a TV tracker that was put in place just this month (http://campaigntrack.in) and till the day of writing its “party of the day” and “personality of the day” graphs had not registered anyone outside of the BJP and Congress. The only exception was Lalu Prasad Yadav on one day out of 13. Priyanka Gandhi, strictly extraneous to this election, got the maximum coverage on three days out of 13.
The media firewall is just as effective at the level of regional TV channels. More so because there are more politician or party-owned channels in place this time around. Sakshi TV, owned by Y.S. Rajshekhar Reddy’s family, is my favourite. Its long, daily poll special, which runs for some four hours every evening is even called “Jaya Ho Election Special”. Here an anchor turned out like a movie star (black shirt, white jacket, shimmering white tie and if there are white shoes we cannot see them) will take you through the day’s outings by the main parties. As with Jayalalitha on Jaya TV, when YSR surfaces on Sakshi, the footage is presented in the idiom of advertising. Drawn out footage of leader, adoring crowds as a backdrop.
Going across OTV (owned by BJD leader Jay Panda’s family in Orissa), Jaya TV, Sun TV, and Sakshi, you get ample leader-who-matters footage. Political ownership apart too, the same principle operates, Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar dominate coverage on ETV Bihar.
This election we have had the firewall principle applied to offenders. Varun Gandhi and Sanjay Dutt (the latter far behind) have blocked out others who have been controversial. The Varun Gandhi obsession has been truly extraordinary — one certainly hopes some agencies will come out with the column inches and TV minutes that were afforded to him over several weeks. Along with Chief Minister Mayawati, we have the media to thank for making a man-of-the-election out of a serious offender.
Setting the agenda
What are the consequences of television firewalls? One is that they set the agenda for commentary in the print media. The more TV anchors goad L.K. Advani and Manmohan Singh to say more about each other, the more it drowns out other kinds of debate. Column and edit writers pick up from there, India Today and Outlook decide there can be no other cover story. Two, by dominating prime time, they crowd out a lot of other good coverage on the same channels to less-watched time bands.
The other kind of firewall is the one that prevents you from going beyond the sensation of the day to what might have triggered it, or to what it is an indication of. This again was most strikingly illustrated by television coverage of the Varun Gandhi episode. Yes, correspondents did go to Pilibhit to suss out what people thought of his behaviour but what led him to vent spleen? What have been the trends in the region that make it receptive to communal pitches? How many ran such stories?
Such coverage pushes many painstaking stories to the margins. Every election is discovery-of-India time on television and in the print media, many reporters do a sterling job. Once you get used to the incongruity of female anchors in shapely Western jackets urging correspondents for reports from Kurnool or Bhagalpur, you are grateful for the glimpses you get. ETV Bihar reported on how health workers were missing from hospitals because they had been deployed on election duty. If you want to track Mayawati, you have a better chance of doing so on ETV UP than on the national news channels.
Some exceptions
NewsX has an even stranger look because its anchors are colour coordinated with the sets, but it has taken pains with its regional coverage. On one day there was an articulate Shiromani Akali Dal candidate from Punjab, on another, a studio interview with a CPML leader from Chattisgarh with whom Shireen visibly lost patience. Plus a caste issues survey of the Southern states by a non-local reporter, who had a lot of trouble with the names! NDTV had a lovely feature on imported netas, including Jaswant Singh on the stump in the Darjeeling hills.
Newspapers are wonderful at election time for their depth and breadth of coverage. And you don’t have to channel hop. You can get past the personality overkill by simply turning the page.
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