The media revolution has swept the country. Business and media houses are openly promoting the dominant political agenda at a time when India is at the crossroads ideologically, politically and economically. It is hardly a coincidence that the issues most debated today relate to beef, love jihad, the role of Mughals in history, the singing of Vande Mataram and chanting Bharat Mata ki Jai. There are other more critical issues such as joblessness, agrarian distress and hate crimes but they don’t get the attention they deserve largely because the media doesn’t take them up; it is preoccupied with provocative speeches and comments of politicians that become breaking news and topics of hyperbolic TV debates.
There is now general agreement that the Indian media is sensationalist often at the expense of honest reportage of the events and issues that matter to most of the people. The sensational dimension has frequently been commented upon. But what has not received adequate attention is the recent shift in media practice from being adversarial against those in authority to one where the media sees itself as the conscience keeper of the state, waging a battle against ‘enemies’ of the nation, principally those who disagree with the government. From being a watchdog of the government, it has become a voice of the government. The new and dangerous trend is the use of media not to communicate news but to propagate the ruling ideology.
For the past four years, sections of the Indian media have trained their guns on the opposition rather than on interrogating the government. This is particularly true of television which night after night is putting the spotlight on the Opposition. Arguably, partisanship of the media is not a new phenomenon, but it is more evident now than before. When the UPA was in power, the media was playing its adversarial role to the hilt; it was fearless in taking on the establishment. It supported and helmed the anti-corruption movement. Four years later, there is no Lokpal in sight, and the media has all but forgotten it. Curiously, the media has rarely raised the issue of appointment of the Lokpal. In his reply to the Motion of Thanks, the Prime minister Minister delivered a long and combative speech in the Lok Sabha. More than half the speech was devoted to the Congress and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Shouldn’t we be asking why the country’s most powerful leader still spends much of his speeches talking about the government that came before him? Shouldn’t the media be asking these questions instead of getting caught up in history debates? These are only a few among several issues that the media outlets regularly shy away from highlighting.
Trends in the media-government relationship in India are quite different from those in most other democracies. The tension between the Trump presidency and the media is a prominent example of the contrarian position in this regard. In the US, many newspapers, TV networks and websites have kept up the pressure on the Trump administration. The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and CNN continue to take an adversarial stance despite Trump calling them crooked or lying or failing. In India, on the other hand, most of the television channels and newspapers with some notable exceptions are reluctant to challenge and expose the government.
Why is this so? Three developments can explain this shift. Corporate control of the media is a major reason why this is happening, but that alone cannot explain the shrill pro-government tone of many television channels and newspapers. The same corporate sector owned the same media even five years ago. Then they were freely going after the government whereas now the media readily accepts the government line uncritically.
The growing dominance of corporate capitalism is certainly an important reason but even more important is the nature of corporate control. Media channels are now owned and run by networks of capitalist interests with investments in a wide range of other sectors, therefore, naturally introducing conflicts of interest in the coverage of news. Also, a number of commercial media channels are owned by politicians across the country who also run other businesses. The interplay of media, profits, and politics has meant that the media tends to promote the agendas of the political-capitalist classes.
The second major reason has to do with the political climate today. Media proprietors are far more risk averse because the space for dissent and difference has shrunk noticeably. It is clear that certain kinds of questions will not be tolerated, and the media is willing to oblige, it doesn’t ask uncomfortable questions. For example, economic figures given by the government are rarely fact-checked, it was left to the politicians to look closer at the actual numbers in this year’s budget. And even when this was done with regard to the proposed healthcare scheme, they did not highlight it. In short, self-censorship is growing in the mainstream (Indian) media.
Thirdly, influential sections of the media tend to be soft on the government because of the ‘nation’ and the ‘nation under threat’ argument which has given rise to jingoism which seems to have become the norm across media platforms. The whole language of public discourse has become nationalist, but this is nationalism of a particular type, it is Hindu nationalism, it is not inclusive Indian nationalism which could accommodate a billion differences. Media has become complicit in the manufacturing of the nationalist narrative stoked by the flames of hate.
Finally, when the television media is not overtly pro-government, then it adopts non-partisanship which is whataboutery in the guise of neutrality. The media ever fearful of criticising the government balances any criticism by apportioning blame on the government and opposition in equal measure. Very often the discussion ends up focusing more on what happened under previous governments than what’s happening now. Non-partisanship must not exclude speaking truth to power; neutrality is not an option at this fraught moment.
It is important to be truthful, not neutral.
Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
