Media and civil society

By Sevanti Ninan

Public opinion originates from what we call civil society that has a love-hate relationship with the media.

ONCE again, public opinion is polarised between the liberal, human-rights-upholding types and what we euphemistically describe as the majoritarian view. Which means Hindus feeling bullish about their religion, and indignant about the ascendance of pesky minorities. It finds expression in the media, this polarity. It also vents its spleen on the media. Liberals bash the Hindutva brigade in newspapers and TV channels, the majoritarians bash the rest of us. The rest of the time we sit on panel discussions and in seminars and bash ourselves. 

Our alleged sins of commission are long. We are shallow, anti-poor and sensational — we devote acres of newsprint and hours of TV time to upper class deaths, killings, suicides. We are shamelessly driven by the market. We never do enough follow-up on issues which concern people. We are guilty of sham liberalism. We focus on the pogroms in Gujarat but do not investigate what happened on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra with equal fervour. But we are also guilty of blatant communalism. Ask Sitaram Yechury or Mani Shankar Aiyar. 

And who knows, may be we are also to blame for "Lagaan's" no-win. Aren't we the ones who helped the nation convince itself that we were going to take the Oscars by storm? Critics of the media have convinced me that a lot of the problems that this country has would disappear if my tribe took a collective flying jump into the Arabian Sea. 

Public opinion originates from what we call civil society. (Even when it is being horrendously uncivil.) They are a concomitant of the media, we wouldn't exist if they weren't there to read us or watch us. It is civil society that has a love-hate relationship with the media. Lately, the liberals and pinkos among them love us for telling it like we saw it in Gujarat, the right-leaning majority view is that the media sucks. Tarun Vijay, editor of Panchjanya, put it colourfully when he said we are in the grip of the Marxist Mullah combine. 

And the pinko-liberals among us worry about what we should do when we are getting squeezed between a middle class that is steadily moving right, and the demands of the market. Both belong to civil society. The curious thing is that all the sins laid at our door originate from trying to please those whom our circulation and channel managers tell us we must please. And the mainstream channels and big metro newspapers are not the only ones. Go to Rajasthan, or Andhra Pradesh, or Gujarat and you will find leading newspapers both whipping up communal sentiment (doubtless in the belief that they are pandering to readers) as well as coming up with colour sections that could give the froth in the Delhi Times or HT City a run for their money. 

If the media doesn't waste its breath on the problems of the marginalised, it is because those who consume it are not interested. Neither in Bombay, nor in Jamshedpur nor in Coimbatore. Star News used to have a daily feature at the end of the news called "India Matters". It carried either heart warming or heart wrenching stories about The Real India. But the channel concluded that it was only watched by researchers and activists. It never got sponsors for that segment, which they claimed not to mind, but when they found that people were reaching for their remotes (so they said) they dropped it and incorporated those kinds of stories in the main news bulletin. 

Similarly, at a self-flagellating media discussion last fortnight the audience was told that it used to be said in the Bombay Times of India that there was no need to write about the problems of Dharavi because the paper's readers did not live there. 

Besides the sins of omission, there are also sins of commission. Mindless serials churned out by Ekta Kapoor dominate prime time. However Star Plus sent around its viewership ratings for the first week of March to show that these have a 22.26 per cent share of prime time viewing in nine cities. Sony comes next with exactly the same kind of riveting drivel. And a study released in Delhi by the Centre for Advocacy and Research last week showed that children in big and small cities in this country watch as much as five and a half hours of television every day, 50 per cent of it adult fare, in the company of their parents. Did we hear civil society blaming the media for being a bad influence? 

Then there is this business of feedback. Channel decides what sells on the basis of television rating points, which cover only a miniscule number of households in sizeable towns and cities. Also on the basis of letters. The more high-minded among us don't write to TV channels and give them feedback. Do we protest when Aaj Tak carries a close up of Natasha Singh's battered face or clips of the Hindi film "Baazigar" to demonstrate how she might have died? Instead the channel is flooded with advertisements, which is the only kind of approval it is looking for. Advertisers are also part of civil society. Do we ever ask them why they do not support less regressive programming? 

In between are some sins that originate from the nature of the medium. Star News anchor Arnab Goswami said about discussions on news bulletins, "We never get the moderate voices — they are not good television." Besides, in six or seven minutes there was no time for the moderates, he said. He was speaking at a media seminar last fortnight. (These are becoming a veritable cottage industry.) 

But good journalism persists, while making its compromises. The Indian Express carries really hard-hitting investigations about continuing atrocities and the role of the State in Gujarat on its front page. And inside, it carries equally long stories on why the India International Centre is rationing its pastries or what Amar Singh's twins will wear for their first birthday. Civil society such as it is, seems to demand both. 

E-mail the writer at sevantininan@vsnl.com