Of news and Narendra Modi’s advice to journalists

Speaking recently at a function in Chennai to mark the 75^th anniversary celebrations of the Tamil daily newspaper Dina Thanthi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called upon editors to use editorial freedom wisely, and in the public interest. The freedom to write, and to decide what is to be written, does not include the freedom to be “less than accurate,” or “factually incorrect”, he said, and quoted Mahatma Gandhi to say that “The press is called the Fourth Estate. It is definitely a power, but, to misuse that power is criminal.”

Modi’s relationship with large sections of the media has long been testy, even adversarial, and his pronouncements on how the press ought to conduct itself are naturally being viewed with interest. His speech has also come at a time when there is an ongoing debate in the country about attacks on media persons and a shrinking of press freedom.

The Prime Minister’s exhortation to factual accuracy is one that ought to be taken well by both his supporters and his opponents. How is “factual accuracy” to be interpreted? In my view, facts acquire meaning in context. Therefore, factual accuracy extends to the interpretations drawn from particular facts, and the tone and tenor of coverage based on such information.

There is a frequent tendency in the media to stretch the facts to draw conclusions that either support or oppose Modi and the BJP, and to overstate the importance of those conclusions. The Wire, for instance, has of late oversold a couple of stories that targeted the sons of Amit Shah and Ajit Doval. In both instances, the facts reported appear to be accurate, but the conclusions hinted at from those facts are perhaps not as exceptional or earth-shattering as the website and Modi’s opponents would like to believe.

The most extreme editorial stances on view, however, are often those that emanate from the allegedly “nationalist” news channels that cheerlead for Modi and the BJP. Among English language channels, Republic TV and Times Now come to mind. Among Hindi channels, Zee TV has been noticeable for its slant. On one occasion, the chairman of the channel, Subhash Chandra, himself went on air to declare his “nationalist” credentials – and talk of how members of a “particular community” trolled him in large numbers on social media, and how he had done so much to bring Pakistani serials to Indian viewers.

Chandra’s statement on his bringing Pakistani shows to India is accurate, but the equation of a “particular community” with that country is not.

In his speech, Modi quoted Mahatma Gandhi to describe misuse of the power of the press as “criminal”. What counts as misuse is open to interpretation. Different people may have different views on the matter, and those various views may all be justified to varying degrees. In the context of Modi’s speech, where he made the statement after speaking of the responsibility towards factual accuracy, it also raises the issue of genuine errors.

News is always published in a hurry; there is a race to be first with it, or at least to be on time, since deadlines are tight. In that environment, mistakes and errors of judgment occasionally happen. It would be unfair to characterise all such mistakes as criminal. Crime implies intentionality; that is why there is a distinction in law between accident, manslaughter and murder.

Defamation itself being considered a criminal rather than a civil offence in India has been a controversial matter. Subramanian Swamy, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal had all challenged the provisions criminalising defamation in the Supreme Court.  The court upheld the provisions by invoking the Right to Life. Many observers found this to be a bit of a stretch.

Apart from the issue of factual accuracy, Modi also touched upon the issue of editorial choice in his speech. He rightly pointed out in his speech that the editorial decision on what news gets space on the front page and what news gets ignored is an important one.

That decision is constrained by various factors. The first and most significant of these is the need for newspapers, websites, and television channels to grab eyeballs and rack up numbers among their target audience. The target audience is determined by the brand management and marketing teams, who base their decisions on advertiser interests. Controversy and drama are often employed to garner attention in the target audience.

A second factor, closely linked to the first, is that news media owners are by and large in the media business to make money and garner influence. Modi said, “Even though media may be owned by private individuals, it serves a public purpose.”

However, public purpose is generally quite far from the discussions in boardrooms of media companies. The rhetoric is all about numbers – circulation figures, ad revenues and profits. News is curated not with an eye to public purpose but with both eyes on the cause of advertiser interest. Any news that goes against advertiser interests is likely to be viewed negatively by managements.

Some time ago, a Mumbai newspaper I was editing carried a photograph of an elephant that fell into a pit dug by Baba Ramdev’s company, Patanjali, in Assam. The mother elephant died as a result, though the little calf with her survived. The next day, I was summoned to the owner’s cabin. “What is this?” he asked me, gesticulating at the photograph. I realised what his problem was, but said nothing. He demanded to know who had made that particular page and who had cleared it. I took responsibility, and left. The next day, the owner again called me to his cabin. This time, he asked me to sack the senior editor who had anchored the page, apparently because of a typo in the introduction to an article that had appeared three weeks earlier, over which he had thrown a fit.

A lot of people seem to think that ideology matters to powerful people in the media. Having seen a few of them at close quarters, I suspect that the only ideology most of them care about is the ideology of more money and power for themselves.

When the Congress was in power, many of these folks did business with the Congress. Now that the BJP is in power, they do business with the BJP. In different states, they worship different holy cows at the same time. In Kolkata, they will happily genuflect before Mamata Banerjee, that champion of media freedom who once jailed a Jadavpur University professor for forwarding on email a cartoon depicting her that she did not like. In Chennai, as long as J Jayalalithaa was alive, they all did shashtang pranam before her, barring those who were doing shashtang pranam before K Karunanidhi. In Punjab, they bow and scrape before either the Badal family or Captain Amarinder Singh. In Kerala, where the comrades have the upper hand, they are likely to wave the hammer and sickle – until the BJP comes to power, when they will suddenly discover that they are Hindus and nationalists.

It is a rare media owner who actually holds an ideological line – and those who do tend to do so because they are permanently aligned to a particular political party. The news they dish out is not exactly free of bias.

Fortunately, as Modi pointed out, “Technology has brought about great change in the media”. The credibility of big media, which he touched upon, is low and falling. “Today, every citizen analyses, discusses, and attempts to cross-check and verify the news that comes to him, through multiple sources,” Modi said. This is increasingly true.

One newspaper owner can sack one editor over a photo of an elephant in a Patanjali pit, but the photo would easily go viral on WhatsApp, Twitter or Facebook, and show up in other news media. The ability of newspaper owners and advertisers including state and central governments to actually prevent a piece of news from circulating is zero. If a piece of news is sufficiently interesting, it will find an audience.

In fact, attempts to suppress news often create controversies, which then take the news to a wider audience.

The boom in social media has its merits, but also its demerits. A lot of fake news is created and circulated these days. From the forwards that routinely pop up on WhatsApp, it appears that there are professional troll armies at work. The BJP and the Congress both seem to have such armies. The news they circulate tends to be heavily slanted, if not downright fake.

Now that everyone with a social media or WhatsApp account is publishing and sharing news, the Prime Minister’s advice on factual accuracy and public purpose will hopefully be taken seriously by at least his own supporters.

In a world where everyone is a publisher, responsibilities that were earlier attached to media professionals are now more broadly shared by all.