Author: Sunanda K Datta – Ray
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: November 2, 2012
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/52759-not-just-informing-but-also-manipulating.html

Today's successful media teaches people what they should want. That is a perversion of the purpose of newspapers, but it's a profitable perversion for the owners of the media

 If India’s media is apprehensive about possible new controls, Britain’s is even more so. Indeed, the current excitement over the Leveson Inquiry into the alleged misdeeds of the now defunct News of the World recalls Macaulay’s comment about nothing being as ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

 But the country that elevated newspapers to rank with the Crown, Parliament and judiciary as another organ of governance (hence the ‘fourth estate’) is genuinely concerned about how the media uses and abuses its rights. A recent panel discussion organised in London by the Commonwealth Journalists Association’s active new ethnic Indian president, Ms Rita Payne, even asked if tighter controls in the home of Press freedom would encourage other Commonwealth Governments to clamp down on their own media.

 The bigger question of how the media can serve the public without trampling on public rights, exercises all democracies. Only a free media can disseminate information and shape opinion. Yet, freedom is not licence. A free media must also be accountable. But accountable to whom? To itself? Justice Markandey Katju, chairman of the Press Council of India, dismisses self-regulation as an oxymoron. That implies an “independent” regulator from outside. But can such an authority ever be independent of the appointing power?

 Though India isn’t bothered about British precedents, some individual Indians might be. Delivering a lecture in London shortly before the CJA meeting, Mr N Ram of The Hindu said he awaited the Leveson Inquiry report with great interest. So, no doubt, does Mr Katju, whose response is of wider general relevance.

 The inquiry was set up to investigate allegations of misconduct by the Australian-born Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation which, even without the News of the World, still publishes The Times, The Sun, Sun on Sunday and Sunday Times. The group is accused of telephone-tapping, bribing policemen, gross intrusions into privacy and exercising improper influence in the pursuit of news stories. The resultant outcry against the tabloid Press prompted calls to replace Britain’s Press Complaints Commission with a new body with the power to impose stronger sanctions.

 A Coordinating Committee for Media Reform was set up as an umbrella organisation of advocacy groups, academics and individuals who, like Mr Paranjoy Guha Thakurta in India, demand meaningful reform. The three inter-related areas on which they  focussed were media ownership, the funding of news and journalism practice. As the CCMR says, “The problem for journalists is that owners (often public companies) are more concerned with serving their shareholders than with serving the public. They transmit this view to the editors they appoint who, in turn, increasingly, enforce a top-down editorial line that journalists are expected to obey.”

 The challenge in India is not qualitatively different, though details vary. Mr Guha Thakurta has compiled a damning report on ‘paid journalism’ as well as a draft Bill to tackle the menace. Mr John Lloyd, director of journalism at Oxford, found Indian newspapers obsessed with what he called the three C’s — Cinema, Celebrity and Cricket. Mr Katju speaks scathingly of 512 reporters covering a Mumbai fashion show while hardly anyone writes about the dire distress of those who grow the cotton that supports fashion. Mr Ram mentioned “private treaties” in his lecture. Others have talked of “Infotainment” and “Advertorial” as the media’s new gods.

 No list is ever comprehensive. The focus is on the bad things the media does and less on the good things the media leaves undone. It overlooks the enormous power of official patronage (titles, decorations, dignities and nominations) in respect of individual journalists. Mr Tom Wicker of the New York Times called self-censorship the most effective means of censorship. Nothing, he explained, silenced a reporter more effectively than Henry Kissinger calling him by his first name.

 The Government is also able to pressure proprietors through its substantial licensing and sanctioning powers. Advertising is a third instrument of control, though, admittedly, less potent than in the past.

 I would add tone and quality to the list of failings. Many of our television anchors are too shrill to be credible. And the language and presentation of many of our English-language papers —even major publications — are jarring. That is as much the fault of journalists as of proprietors. The former are no longer interested in anonymous effort. Everyone wants to bask in the limelight with a by-line. In consequence, subbing, make-up, proof-reading and other essential elements of a newspaper’s production are neglected. Grammar and syntax don’t matter.

 Proprietors are to blame when they do not insist on quality support services and do not invest in well-equipped news rooms, good libraries and reference material or on proper training. The less said about the ‘schools’ some of them run the better. If profit isn’t the raison d’etre, it’s propaganda. Neither can be the only prop of a vigorous media that satisfies the needs of a discerning public.

 There lies the rub. Does the media give people what is good for them or what they want? One suspects that in the latter case, today’s successful media goes a step further and teaches people what they should want. That is a perversion of the purpose of newspapers but it’s a profitable perversion. Most proprietors seek no higher justification.

 The CJA panellists tackled all aspects of the situation from their different positions. If there was agreement on one point among these experts, it was that the media must regulate itself. No one else knows the trade as it does. Bureaucrats and politicians have vested interests. Even well-meaning lay outsiders suffer from preference and prejudice. Or else they are victims of ignorance, idealists who seek to impose conditions that the industry cannot sustain.

 Mr Katju’s criticism of the Press has considerable validity but the historical analogies he draws are inaccurate and misleading. He doesn’t inspire confidence either by taking a public position on a complaint before the PCI has considered it. What is likely to be most counter-productive is the PCI’s resolution under his guidance calling for broadcast and social media to be brought under its jurisdiction. Let the PCI attend to what it has on its plate before reaching out to what looks suspiciously like empire-building.

 No matter what Lord Justice Leveson recommends, at least no one will accuse him of folie de grandeur. His commitment is only to the media.