No Windows to the World: Indian Media has Keyholes to Offer

Last week I was going through some archives on how the Press covered the Indian Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.  I came across a report, which was filed thousands of miles away from India for a newspaper which was published from a city further thousands of miles away. The report was dated July 31, 1857 and was filed by the London based Europe correspondent for The New York Tribune (not to be confused with The New York Times), which published it on August 14, 1857.

For those who believe in journalism as the ‘first draft of history’ and in its internationalist character, the report is a great read. No ordinary mortal had filed the report. He went on to become one of the seminal influences on how we see society, economy, politics and culture. He was Karl Marx. You may or may not agree with him, but you cannot deny him his place as an original thinker.

Interestingly, in the context of early media trends what caught my attention was the internationalist outlook of The New York Tribune. Just pause and reflect, as early as the mid nineteenth century with very basic technical set up here was a newspaper in US which was informing its readers, and analysing for them events of a British colony, located thousands of miles away in Asia. And remember, this was a period which is considered a period of America’s ‘glorious isolation’ from world politics.

Now move to the current Indian media scene. Despite all the buzz around the ‘globalising world’ and India’s self-perception as a ‘rising global power’, Indian news channels, newspapers and mainstream news magazines cannot claim to be your window to the world. Indian mainstream media would not let you believe that the world existed beyond India unless there is: a terrorist attack killing at least 5000 people (that too with some dramatic element and in upmarket locations as the 9/11 attack), the dramatic killing or hanging of a dictator or sometimes a dreaded terrorist, the election of new power pivots like US Presidential elections, a human calamity claiming at least 10,000 people, a royal wedding or a Hollywood star having a fling, the stock markets across the world making violent swings (especially in USA), some developments having ‘voyeuristic peep value’ in neighbouring countries like Pakistan, and most significantly, anything ‘bilateral’ with India at the centre of engagement like Indo- US nuclear deal.

Except such sparks that ignite Indian media’s global imagination, the globe does not figure in India’s mediascape.

Missing the bus of Nehruvian Internationalism     

Such lack of internationalist outlook in Indian media is ironic not only because of the supposedly global times that we are living in but also because it is a waste of a historic opportunity that Indian media had in the times immediately following the country’s independence.

India had an internationalist statesman as the Prime Minister for the first seventeen years of its existence as a sovereign country. Nehru’s avid interest in the affairs of the world was infectious and the imprint of his personality was visible in how India viewed the world. A case in point is the interesting fact that he personally interviewed new career diplomats- the new recruits to Indian Foreign Service (IFS) before they went for foreign postings. The Indian diplomats of those times recall that Nehru’s worldview was so well articulated and well informed that they imbibed it effortlessly.

Going through the Indian newspaper archives of this period I found that the Indian Press was not infected by Nehruvian internationalism in any noticeable way. The reporting of foreign affairs remained confined to India’s engagement with the world and some potentially ‘earth shattering’ events like the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962.

24×7 News Channels in India – The World Does Not Fit In

Indian news channels have a partial view, reporting developments that concern India’s concerns and affairs in the world, that too very selectively. For non-India stories you have to wait for the spectacular, and even the ‘sense of the spectacle’ can have TRP considerations.

For instance, take a week in which there was only one independent international story in the prime time slot (meaning something that is not dependent on an India angle to be reported), on four major English news channels – NDTV, CNN-IBN, Times Now and Headlines Today. These channels which can be expected to be cosmopolitan could not look beyond the ‘Memogate’ in neighbouring Pakistan throughout the week. Even the tickers did not inform you enough about the happenings in the world in the week which witnessed developments in European economic crisis, US diplomacy, Russia, Syria, Sub Saharan Africa, political violence in Egypt, German Chancellor’s important announcements, etc.

Inheriting from The World This Week days, some channels have taken an escapist route giving an assorted and shallow weekly package of world news. Maya Mirchandani does it for NDTV and Suhasini Haider for CNN-IBN. There was an attempt to revive The World This Week by NDTV in a new avatar not more than a couple years ago but without success. NewsX, a channel with low viewership tried to do a weekly world round up differently but could not continue. On Saturday evenings, it would run through some important stories from The Economist, sprinkled with visuals. Such arrangement, rampant in print media exposes the fact that news organizations have not thought it fit to invest in having dispatches from their own correspondents. Apart from relying on agencies, syndicates and some other tie-ups, they have their own some fly by night journos who land, report and pack up.

Business channels follow the ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ line and their international reporting is confined to dishing out international stock market figures and analysis of foreign companies and markets. The lack of in house expertise on international economy also stands exposed in these channels and channels like CNBC, NDTV Profit, ET Now and Bloomberg have not come up with even one in house expert on international economy.

In terms of in house expertise on foreign affairs, even general news channels have not produced anything significant. For talking heads on international issues, they generally rely on experts from print like C Raja Mohan, serving or retired diplomats like G Parthasarthy, K C Singh, etc., defence analysts like C Uday Bhaskar or scholars from research institutes and universities like Prof Kanti Bajpai.

The Broadsheet Papers, Not Broad Enough For the World

In an anniversary issue of news magazine Outlook, former UN Under Secretary, Shashi Tharoor lamented the lack of international character of Indian newspapers. He was not off the mark.

In general, the mainstream print media in India does unlock for you the doors to the world outside. Papers have an India angle precondition for international reporting and have tended to move disproportionately towards Indian foreign policy analysis, neglecting wider international coverage. As in house resources, they have standalone eminent names as Sidharth Vardarajan for The Hindu, C Raja Mohan and Pranab Dhal Samanta for Indian Express, Indrani Bagchi for The Times of India and Pratim Pal Chaudhri for The Hindustan Times. However, in terms of international reporting, they have only few foreign correspondents. The Hindu, in a league of its own, has relatively larger network of people reporting for it across the world. Some papers have tied up for regular assorted pages with reputed foreign publications – The Indian Express has done it with The Economist and The Financial Times and The Hindustan Times with The Los Angeles Times.

The general news magazines in India also have a very restricted ‘foreign’ content. Outlook, India Today and Week have no consistent policy to give space to international stories, except some bilateral issues concerning India. To an extent, the fortnightly Frontline fares better on this count, giving regular space to major international issues and developments.

I have no ambitious pretensions of aiming for the world to conquer, but certainly expect the news media to unveil the world to know. While the Nehruvian India had an internationalist outlook, the ‘globalising India’ is getting a parochial deal from its media. Expected better from the Fourth Estate.

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