Star suspect - The Indian Express
Editorial
()
March 2, 1998
Title: Star suspect
Author: Editorial
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: March 2, 1998
Doing business also involves some values, Mr Murdoch
The more competition there is in any field, the better for the
consumer and, eventually, for the industry itself, right? So this
newspaper has argued, maintaining that competition empowers
consumers who then force underperformers to sharpen their act or
bow out. Sadly, recent experience of the visual media in India
seems to stand this wisdom on its head. The anxiousness to
please the powers that be by Rupert Murdoch's Star TV, as
reported in detail by this newspaper, is nothing short of
disgraceful. Can this deferential troupe, one eye fixed
avariciously on obtaining permission for direct-to-home satellite
transmission, be expected impartially and in a hard-nosed way to
confront politicians and public figures for the enlightenment of
a public whose credulity and patience have long been tried by
Doordarshan? The Indian Express has, aside from those which had
a vested interest in such a thing, consistently argued that the
print medium should also be thrown open to foreign investors.
Greater financial resources, it was believed, would give media
publishers greater staying power and independence. But Rupert
Murdoch's brazenness and Star TV's genuflections are proof that
Indian viewers would be foolish to look to a shade more
independent journalism from private television, and that
certainly such good luck is not coming their way through the
aegis of Rupert Murdoch. What has happened instead, as some
observers say, is the purchase of India's "creative classes" with
this money. If buying up journalistic integrity and throwing
media values to the winds is a necessary concomitant to foreign
presence in the media, perhaps India could do without it.
It was probably naive to expect things to be different. Murdoch
has a formidably negative track record to defend. Not only was he
singlehandedly responsible for the 'dumbing-down' of the serious
British Press, he also dropped the BBC like a hot potato from the
Star network in China when the BBC's uncompromising reporting
became a thorn in Beijing's side. In the current rush of stories
on how Murdoch, part owner of Harper Collins, personally
intervened to drop the publication of former Hong Kong Governor
Chris Patten's book - again for fear of offending China - his The
Times has failed even to run stories on it. But other papers are
awash with reports of how Murdoch's employees had to constantly
worry about offending his business concerns. Good business sense,
but surely journalism of a poor sort?
Is this the future that the Indian media envisages for itself,
and what the Indian public looks to from television? The choice,
for once, is clear cut: between the Rupert Murdoch view of the
media as just another industry where the interests of business
must take primacy over all else and the more conventional view of
commercially viable media which nevertheless has a special right
and obligation to question things. Other countries have been
singed by the Murdoch phenomenon. His bona fides as a benign
influence on media values are not suspect: they are non-existent.
He and his tribe must be prevented from setting off a competitive
degeneration here.
