The Anna Hazare – Baba Ramdev anti-corruption circus, once again raises the question of whether the Indian media can be trusted to function in a manner that is independent, free and fair in its coverage of politics and public affairs.

 

 Let’s go back to what we witnessed in August 2011 when Hazare sat on a 12-day fast at Jantar Mantar. The Indian media cast aside every last pretence of objectivity and blatantly rooted for a so-called cause reduced to one person, one viewpoint and one agenda; and promoted these and itself as being representative of ultimate political values, morality, authority, knowledge and wisdom.

 

From the very beginning, a bulk of the media was dedicated to covering the “cause”. Anyone who was not for it was painted as being against it, and ridiculed and defamed. The media failed to objectively show that the country was not divided into two camps: for or against Hazare’s fast. There was the Hazare camp pitted against the government and Parliament, but not all in the ruling United Progressive Alliance or even the Congress party were one in their view of the Hazare campaign. Similarly, different parties took different positions, and Parliament as an entity was not pitted against Hazare as made out by the dominant media, which was pro-Hazare. Many political parties and a large section in Parliament, including from the UPA and the Congress party were articulate against corruption and in favour of a Lokpal. They were not opposed to Hazare’s demand but his method.

 

Furthermore, despite pressing for transparency and accountability on the part of political players, the media failed these very tests on several counts, including: refusal to scrutinise the record and conduct of those it promoted; non-disclosure of the benefits gained by joining the campaign; its connections to the gurus and godmen involved; the role and contribution of stakeholders and advertisers; and, not telling the audience that some of the channels and their leading figures were also facing allegations of being involved in corruption, influence peddling and dubious political dealings.

 

Neither the print nor the electronic media appeared to be independent of political, business, commercial and religious interests in covering Hazare’s fast and the confrontation between the forces on the one side of Hazare and on the other, of the government and Parliament. In the entire campaign against corruption, the corporate and business class, which is no less corrupt than the politicians, have been either sanitised, kept out of focus or shown as helpless victims.

 

This was also borne out at a panel discussion, in August 2011, on the subject of “Media on the Politics of Corruption” at the India International Centre in Delhi conducted by an association of media professionals with reasonable and respectable people at the helm – who unfortunately did not live up to this reputation.

 

In the chair was a ‘journalist-activist’ in the good sense of the term. Four of the seven panellists – two ‘journalists’, Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav – were flag-wavers for the cause. The other three were Aruna Roy, Vineet Narain (the journalist who blew the lid off the Jain hawala case) and one other journalist.

 

The latter three, especially the journalist who stood out for his sober articulation of how journalism was implicated in the issue, stuck to the day’s theme. The other four used the stage for promoting Anna-ism: Prashant Bhushan was at his clever best, selling Hazare’s campaign, his version of the Lokpal and defending unnamed corporates that were opposed to corruption; Yadav the social scientist glossed over and rationalised some outrageously ignorant and illiterate rants of a messianic panellist; the other two journalists were self-obsessed zealots.

 

Narain and Roy stuck to the straight and narrow of the topic under discussion. After a while, willy-nilly, they too got dragged to the ground opened by the crusaders, who appeared to have brought in their cheerleaders for the occasion. Neither the chair nor the organisers attempted at any point during the 3 hour session to steer the discussion back to the stated agenda. Perhaps, they were overwhelmed by the overflowing auditorium, which they (mis)read as a tribute to their “pulling power”: the gathering was hardly of the size and type conducive to rational stock-taking and sober reflection; it was more like a public meeting where audience expectation dictates performance and output, and whoever played best to the gallery evoked the loudest and crudest applause. What did not add to the aggrandisement of Anna, Annaism and the Ann-activists was either sidelined and not dwelt upon or jeered at.

 

Expectedly, Aruna Roy was sidelined; the anarchists had a field day with the added thrill of gleefully taking uncalled for and unfair potshots at Arundhati Roy; and the audience had a great time wallowing in the self-satisfying orgy.

 

The discourse, if it may be called that, pandered to the audience with an eye on applause. The organisers, much like the media riding on Hazare’s campaign, supinely gave in to whatever was happening, delighted that their “event” had evoked such a tremendous response. They did not pause to ponder what the purpose was and whether it was being served at all in the least degree.

 

As a result, media professionals who professedly set out to do some serious soul-searching went the way of the well-bankrolled media and its friends with benefits.

 

Indeed when the media turns newsmaker, sheds objective and fair coverage of public issues and plunges into partisan politics, then it must be viewed like any other political player. Its credentials, assumptions and claims need to be tested.

 

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The English media's superiority complex