2018: The year of the craven news professional

It was supposed to be a gift. You thought you’d get your parents a smartphone so they would stop bugging you to book their Uber rides and now they’ve stopped taking their heart medication because they saw a YouTube video about how the CIA uses modern medicine for mind control. You thought you’d send them cute pictures of their grandkids. Instead, they’re sending you book-length emails about how secularists want to turn the country into an Islamic Caliphate. They used to be self-aware adults who took responsibility for their actions. Now, they just blame Nehru for all the problems in their life.

You thought you were giving your son a wonderful birthday present. It was going to change his life! A reward for all the hard work he put in. He got good grades and kept his end of the promise. And you kept yours and finally got him that laptop. Then one day you borrowed it because you forgot yours at the office and you were stunned with what you found. Not only had your son turned into a Men’s Rights Activist, he had authored an entire manifesto railing against feminism on his laptop.

Year of the deluge

Welcome to 2018! That’s how the media works now. Everyone is continuously inundated with disinformation, rumours, hearsay and gossip on a daily basis and it becomes quite difficult for them to sift through it to ascertain fact from fiction.

And the Internet doesn’t make it easy. Social media algorithms are built to analyse the content you’re accessing and feed you more of the same. So if you start with watching one crazy video, then it automatically brings up another. And then another. And it goes on and on until those are the only sort of videos that you see.

A lot of people who get on the Internet are not aware of the fact that you don’t need to take everything on it seriously. They haven’t spent enough time on the Internet to develop a healthy skepticism about the information on it. So, when you keep getting served the same crazy thing day after day, even the most rational of minds cannot resist giving in and start believing in it. It takes a lot of effort to be properly informed these days. You have to curate trustworthy news sources and fact check everything.

We used to depend on our media to do that for us. Someone whose full-time job was to do all the research and investigation so that they could speak truth to power. But many of our mainstream news organisations have always been short of that standard. And now, most of them have given up and joined up with those who practise the dark arts and taken to spreading the misinformation themselves. In the present day, most media outlets pride themselves in being messengers of power. They relish their roles as the town crier.

And the limited number of organisations that try to do so lack the resources or the capability to actually counter the torrent of distortion. For fudge sake, our TV channels are still holding panel discussions. That’s right. They could dedicate an entire hour to actually educating their viewers about important events but all we get is the same people on every channel regurgitating the same stupid arguments.

And they still act so naive and glib whenever obvious things happen. Especially when it involves someone in the same social circle as them. We are treated to a smorgasbord of pearl-clutching whenever a person who is one of those “people like us” does something horrendous but expected. Please spare us the histrionics, you guys.

These mush-brained idiots spend their time exacerbating the problem and then they write social media posts about how no one does the news anymore. For example, the biggest issue facing the entire human race—global warming—rarely gets mentioned or discussed anywhere. The only way to get Indian media organisations to care about melting glaciers is to get Priyanka Chopra to marry one.

A lot of journalists with huge platforms who can counter the propaganda are caught up in the both-sides false equivalency and are incapable of calling lies as lies. They present everything as two sides of the coin. Equal time is given to those who talk about human rights and to those who want to take rights away from certain sections of our citizens. Every dumb utterance, every piece of chicanery, every statement designed to divide, is passed off without context and comment. Even Internet publications, who are supposed to be the last bastions of free speech, end up publishing many idiotic takes in the name of maintaining a balance.

Year of the pink slip

Not that some people haven’t tried to provide some semblance of journalism to their viewers/readers. But they somehow end up on the chopping block and are shown the door for their efforts. Some get fired because they dared to ask a real question that one time and their prime-time show got mysteriously “blacked out” during subsequent broadcasts. Curiously, the satellite lost its signal at the same hour everyday! What a coincidence!

Some journalists lost jobs because asking uncomfortable questions to those in power ended up affecting their bosses’ non-media business ventures and we can’t have that. Profits before people! That’s just how the world works!

Other people were fired because they upset the powers-that-be to such an extent that certain VIPs wouldn’t attend the organisation’s summit/conclave/seminar/adda without them being fired. You’re only as good as the number of powerful people you have on speed-dial.

Year of serious consequences

There were some journalists who had to pay an even bigger price for just doing their job: losing their life. Most of them fell victims to the people they were trying to expose—mafia dons, corrupt politicians, mining cartels. It would had been easy for them to make like most of us and ignore all the problems around us and go on with their lives. But they still went and risked their lives. Not for money or fame. But to speak truth to power.

Year of false pretenses

Then there were journalists who were sent to jail under farcical provisions. State governments all over the country have been cracking down on dissent and using the vague provisions of the Indian Penal Code to jail journalists. In fact, India fell two points from 136 to 138 in the World Press Freedom Index this year.

Year of the defamation case

Another tool that is used to silence dissent is to use the courts to sue any news organisation that dared to expose any alleged wrongdoing. You know what they say, if you can’t beat ‘em, tie them up with a years-long, grueling litigation process. Even if they end up losing the case, the process is the punishment. And a lot of our courts are trigger-happy to block first and ask questions later.

Year of the U-turn

One the hilarious trends of the year was former Modi supporters trying to cross back over from the dark side. Some of them thought that they would hitch a ride on the SS Modi because it seemed unsinkable. They thought they’d do whatever it takes to stay on that ship and would use their padded bank accounts as a flotation device in case the unthinkable happens. But they bailed at the first sign of a storm.

It’s kind of breathtaking to see how some people have gone from being ardent supporters of Modi and picking personal fights with all of his critics to being an overt critic of Modi and defending the same people who used to be their mortal enemies. Those who used to provide statistical and intellectual cover to lynch mobs are now preaching tolerance. It’s apparent that none of them have grappled with what their support wrought. They’ve gone to adopting policies from one side of the political spectrum to the other without blinking.

Year of the reckoning

We can’t talk about the year without talking about the beginning of the #MeToo movement in India. In this country we have a habit to run away from the truth. Especially when it comes to victims of sexual assault. Women (and men) have been telling these stories for centuries but our society and culture finally arrived at a point when we start paying attention and believing them.

When the movement began, we read harrowing account after account about how men harm women in various ways. It must have been terrifying and gut-wrenching to do so, yet women after women bravely stood up and told the world their story. They did so at a huge personal and professional cost. They did so that they might never get any vindication or closure. They did so despite knowing that revealing their story will get them more abuse and scorn from a society built to make them feel like they don’t matter. Yet they persisted. And made themselves heard.

Many men were exposed for the perverts and criminals they are. Many of these pretend to lead respectable lives but used the power they had over their female colleagues and employees to abuse, harass, manipulate, and belittle them. They used the trust they had publicly cultivated along with their fame to silence their victims. Many virtue signaling “woke bros” were exposed for the hypocrites they are. All those who had learned the buzzwords without actually doing the work to understand the meaning behind them were revealed for who they are.

Of course, many men and their enablers tried to make the conversation about themselves! It’s so hard to be a man these days, apparently. Now that a small percentage of men have begun to almost being held responsible for their actions, they’ve started calling it the “end of men”. Yeah, if men aren’t allowed to ask creepy personal questions in a business meeting or people frown when they give women advice on what to wear or if someone takes offence when a random man tells a woman to smile, it spells the end of the entire gender. Asking men to change some harmful aspects of their behaviour is oppressing them!

Well, we’re going to say the same thing to those men that we’re going to say to 2018: time’s up.

Thank you.

Next.