Modi ‘Makes News’ In Maharashtra

BJP buys prime-time slots across Marathi channels to broadcast Modi’s MSG speech. Legitimate campaigning or paid news?

WrittenBy:Arunabh Saikia
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Last Sunday, October 12, Marathi news channels in Maharashtra skipped news for a more engrossing (and better paying) alternative during their prime-time slots. Instead of the news at 9 pm, four Marathi news channels — IBN Lokmat, Lemon News, TV9 Marathi and Jai Maharashtra — chose to telecast “the speech that is making ripples across the world”.

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The speech being talked about here, if not already evident, is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the most patriotic Indians in the world – the Madison Square Garden speech in the United States of America.

Maharashtra will vote to choose a new government today. So understandably, the last few days have been high on drama and the repeat telecast of Modi’s speech hasn’t gone down too well with the BJP’s primary opposition parties in the state: Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The two parties have complained to the Election Commission (EC), which hasn’t responded formally yet. But sources in the EC say the broadcast falls in a “grey area” and no action is likely to be taken.

So what exactly is Congress and NCP’s grouse (apart from the fact that they don’t have a “rockstar” campaigning for them)? The parties have two grievances – and one of them is pretty legitimate on grounds more than one. The first issue – the one that perhaps does fall in a slightly grey area – is that Modi’s speech/rock concert at Madison Square was in the capacity of Prime Minister of India and not a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader. The BJP’s response – although a tad convoluted – can be considered: the event at Madison Square was organised by a private party and hence could be used as campaigning material by the party.

Modi’s visit to the US, however, was a diplomatic exercise and funded by the state exchequer but the speech was indeed a private function and the cost of it wasn’t strictly borne by the taxpayer back home. So one could argue, as many in the BJP already have, that BJP is well within its legal, if not moral rights, to use the speech to garner votes.

The second accusation is, however, much more serious and implicates not just BJP but most of the Marathi broadcast media as well. Now we know that the BJP does not believe in half measures when it comes to publicity. Just to make sure that people knew that instead of same ol’ boring news they were in for Modi’s rockstar treat during prime time, the BJP circulated a print ad too. The Times of India, gleefully, carried it of course.

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So, what is the problem, you ask? Isn’t being transparent better? After all, BJP claims it has mentioned in its official expenditures the cost of these prime-time spots. It’s not that simple. Of all the channels that broadcast the speech instead of news, only one of them, ABP Majha, carried that all-important disclosure during the entire course of the feed: that it was sponsored content. Newslaundry has examined the footage of channels concerned and it is clear that none of the channels except ABP Majha carried the disclaimer during the actual speech.

IBN Lokmat did put up a disclaimer, but only at the beginning and end of the broadcast. Hardly enough since the rule is very clear – advertorials and news have to be very clearly defined and, in this case it wasn’t for 20 minutes of the speech.

Jai Maharashtra didn’t bother carrying a disclaimer at all.

TV9 Marathi, too, had no disclosure at all

So while BJP’s PR machinery has gone overboard dismissing claims of the broadcast being “paid news”, a closer look at the fine print of the rules pertaining to the subject would be prudent. According to the rules (at least as they stand right now), the onus is on the party who’s paying for it. Of course, it goes without saying that the rule is daft (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has in its latest recommendations called for the offending media house to be held culpable too), but shouldn’t the BJP have been more careful, considering the footage was provided by its PR machinery?

Also, the broadcast was a brazen violation of TRAI’s “10+2 rule” – which states that an hour of programming can’t have more than 12 minutes of advertisements. This was 20 minutes of uninterrupted advertisement during the most important news slot of the day. The 10+2 rule has always been contentious, and the News Broadcasters Association had lobbied hard with the last government to get the Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) to prevent TRAI from taking coercive action against it for not following the rule. In December 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) didn’t have any jurisdiction over TRAI, which makes the erring news channels liable to be hauled up by TRAI. Whether that happens or not will be interesting to see.

There are loopholes in a lot of our laws pertaining to paid news and election campaigning-related programming. Both media and political parties have worked around them to suit their agendas.  During the run-up to General Elections, we reported how top editors of TV channels colluded together to illegally broadcast the release of BJP’s manifesto on the day two states were voting. It was a clear violation of Section 126(1)(b) of the Representation of People’s Act, but there was no action taken against anyone – to no one’s surprise.

With there being no cap on a political party’s election expenses, the BJP is within its legal rights in buying the entire prime-time space of news channels. However, some caution in terms of full disclosure would have been prudent – particularly since it’s the governing party. As for the Marathi news channels, they sold more than just their prime-time space on October 12.

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