Sunday, March 16, 2014

The questions we don’t ask

Statecraft

HAPPYMON JACOB


The Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal is asking the right questions even though his charge about the entire media being sold out to BJP’s Narendra Modi may be an overkill. But then sometimes you have to exaggerate in order to emphatically make your points. Though the argument that the ‘entire’ media is sold out to ‘Modi’ will not stand the scrutiny of evidence, reason or commonsense, there is some wisdom in what Kejriwal is trying to say: that we simply don’t ask the uncomfortable questions, more often than not. We shy away, hide away and look the other way when we should ask those unsettling questions. 

By using the words that he used, Kejriwal was shooting the messenger, argued the no-nonsense Express patrakar Shekhar Gupta in the Indian Express yesterday. Was he? Is the Indian media merely the innocent, stakes-free, messenger which promotes no (one’s) interests or agenda in the public sphere? Does the Indian media simply “convey the message” to the common people from the sites where news is generated? You and I know that it is not the case: the media actively promotes certain arguments, interests, lines and agenda over the others. It does take political positions and supports or denounces various political parties and leaders. If so, how can the media call itself the neutral, equidistant messenger of news?  It simply is not. 

Be that as it may, the point Kejriwal raised is even more serious: how often do we, in general and the media in particular, ask uncomfortable and deeply disturbing questions? We rarely do and that is why his statement, even though it borders irresponsibility, is a courageous one. Remember, he is the same person who has been challenging the means used by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries to become the richest business house in the country. Kejriwal has further argued that Narendra Modi is a property dealer for the Ambanis and other corporate houses. Forget the politically charged language for a moment, the fact is that it is easy to recognise that there is something substantive in what he is saying which most of our media is clearly silent about. A lot of us perhaps wanted to ask these questions but did not find enough courage to do so. The fact is that most of our media outlets simply don’t question the country’s powerful corporate houses such as the Reliance Industries. In fact, they don’t even publish news that could potentially damage the Ambani family’s reputation. 

In December 2013, for instance, some international news agencies and news outlets carried a story about the crash of a Reliance Industries-owned Aston Martin car in Mumbai which was speculated to be driven by the son of Mukesh Ambani. The investigations are currently ongoing and it is now being reported that there is not much evidence suggesting that Ambani’s son was driving the car. While the Forbes magazine and the UK-based Daily Mail reported the story, most of the Indian media maintained a stony silence about the story. Would the Indian media have kept quiet had the person driving the car been someone else?  Most probably not. If so, how can the media claim that they are merely the neutral messengers of what happens in the world? 

That takes me to the root of what Kejriwal asked: what is the nature of the media-corporate-politician nexus in India? We do see on a daily basis how the Indian media plays up a particular news item over another or ‘favourably’ covers news relating to a particular political party over that of another. It is not unknown to us that the media houses have their own political favorites who they support in their news coverage. More importantly, while TRPs do matter, what matters more is the financial support of the corporates who either own the media houses or provide the crucial support of providing advertisement revenues without which the latter simply would not be able to exist. What about the interests of the corporates?  Is anyone suggesting that the corporate houses have no political favorites? Corporate houses have traditionally supported one party/leader or another whose coming to power will enormously benefit them. 

In this context Kejriwal’s question as to whether the Indian media has done enough to show the real picture of development in Modi’s Gujarat is a pertinent one. His argument is that Modi and the corporates who support him have managed to create a certain myth and manufactured consent about good governance and development about Guajrat  which the media is unquestioningly propagating. While the media has celebrated the ‘Gujarat model’, they have not done enough to expose the shortage of basic amenities and facilities in rural Gujarat. 

In short, if the corporate houses have a financial hold over media, they would certainly try to influence the latter’s editorial and news coverage decisions. Are we to assume that the corporates who fund them have absolutely no interest in making the editorial decisions or have never tried to do so? This is no rocket science. This is exactly how news is made and unmade in almost every country. If that is so, why are some people so unhappy about being told that this is the reality? Why are they feigning that they are nothing but messengers? If anything, Arvind Kerjiwal is the messenger here, who has shown the courage to tell the fellow citizens that there is indeed a nexus between the corporates, media houses and politicians which needs to be exposed.

(Source: Greater Kashmir, March 16, 2014. URL: http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2014/Mar/16/the-questions-we-don-t-ask-5.asp)