How journos and netas became BFFs in the SP regime

It’s no secret that the previous Uttar Pradesh government under Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav pampered sections of the media, so to speak, to keep journalists in its good books. The former government adopted a typical strategy of ‘reward and punishment’ to seek favourable coverage and avoid bad publicity.

This resulted in an unusual spurt in the number of newspapers, local news channels and accredited press correspondents.

The power to distribute advertisements and grant accreditation to correspondents was used without restraint. The number of accredited correspondents in the state capital, which was around 350 when Akhilesh came to power, went up to nearly 800 by the time the governing party was routed in the 2017 Assembly elections. A similar upward spike was witnessed in the number of newspapers and TV channels.

Media insiders would testify that the ‘collaboration’ between the establishment and influential media personnel had reached such a level during the regime of Akhilesh that many of them were allowed to play a role in the allotment of tenders or transfers and postings of bureaucrats. Ministers readily co-opted journalists and succeeded in avoiding bad publicity.

A glaring example was the functioning of the state mining department under former minister Gayatri Prajapati, who was sacked in 2016 for promoting illegal mining only to be reinstated in the Cabinet 15 days later. Prajapati is currently in judicial custody on charges of gangrape and molestation. During the tenure of SP government, news reports of illegal mining seldom found space in newspaper columns or TV news bulletins. Names of journalists who had collaborated with the former minister are freely discussed among the journalist fraternity in Uttar Pradesh.

“Many things were done by journalists and media houses during the Akhilesh Yadav government which fell short of ethical and professional standards. I only hope that professional standards would be restored now with a change in the government,” says Pranshu Mishra, President, UP State Accredited Press Correspondents Committee.

Independent journalist Ram Dutt Tripathi, who has worked with BBC for over 20 years, agrees that a large section of the media failed to play the role of a watchdog during the previous government’s tenure, with the administration breaking all records in distributing advertisements and granting accreditation. Anyone with a little connection with the government became an accredited correspondent. Even legislators who had no connection with news reporting were recognised as reporters.

For example, Sanjay Lathar, Member of Legislative Council with SP who is considered close to Akhilesh, is an accredited correspondent, though no one has ever read a news report that he might have written. Former MLC and current Vidhan Sabha Speaker, Hriday Narayan Dixit, is another example. To his credit, however, it can be said that he is a writer and occasionally contributes articles on cultural and religious issues. Whether that puts him in the category of a news correspondent is another matter.

Tripathi, however, says that the state government is not solely responsible for this. Rampant corruption in Union government agencies, like the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) and Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI), has helped nondescript newspapers claim huge circulations. On the basis of certificates issued by these central agencies alone, these organisations were given government facilities in the state.

Another drawback, he points out, is the lack of a definition of a journalist. The Working Journalists Act, 1955, is as good as dead. The status of journalists working in TV news channels and online publications has not been defined. This confusion suits the government, which can recognise anyone as a journalist and bestow favours. Real journalism is cursed to suffer in this scenario, says Tripathi.

While nurturing a compliant media did help the former government, it also cost it dearly. “Akhilesh Yadav threw money and media danced to his tunes. That created a wrong impression in his mind that everything was fine in his government. The result was the colossal loss that he had to suffer during the Assembly elections,” says senior journalist Sharat Pradhan.

The institution of journalism and public trust has suffered irreparable damage in all of this, even as some journalists rose in stature and power. (There have been cases in which some of these journalists went on a spree of self-publicity putting up hoardings at important sites in Lucknow to announce their journalistic excellence.)
With a changed regime, all eyes are now on the Yogi government and how it would interact with journalists. Will it continue down the same path and cultivate its own set of scribes, bestowing on them similar favours? Or will it find other ways to ‘manage’ the media? It’s still early days to see a clear pattern but for the sake of journalism and news consumers, one hopes journalists, rather than fixers, lead newsrooms.

The author can be contacted on Twitter @jpshuklaji