Sandeep Bhushan - Manufacturing News
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News studios have gradually become the site where news is "manufactured". Indeed, the very definition of "news" has changed as Indian television networks become increasingly promoter-driven. There are severe cutbacks in news gathering, reporters have been marginalised and the focus has shifted to studio-driven news presentations with outside "experts". From his perspective as a former television reporter, the writer analyses the current state of broadcast media.
As a journalist associated with television broadcast news for the last two decades, how and where does one begin talking about television broadcast journalism? As both a participant and an avid consumer of news, lines blur easily, making it extremely difficult to find any sense of objectivity. But having “hung up my mike” in a manner of speaking, I believe the ringside view afforded to me both as a reporter and a desk hand privileges me with insights not easily available to the growing mass of critics and media sociologists struggling to make sense of prime time television – opinionated, loud, rude anchors, endless talking heads, studio-hopping experts, flashing graphics and even absurd soaked-in-theatre “live” visuals. All this is consumed by viewership, day after day, given the omnipresence of television in the intimacy of our living rooms.
A good starting point would be an observation made by the US regulatory authority, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which in a recent report said:
The Walter Cronkites and John Chancellors (both deceased, but widely accepted as America’s most credible TV journalists) are a dying breed. In many cases you don’t have journalists. You have performers.1
This observation, made in the backdrop of the financial meltdown in the US, accurately sums up the television scenario in India. Post-2008, there has been a profusion of studio-based “performers” rather than news professionals across India’s broadcast landscape, transforming the manner in which news content is packaged, delivered and consumed by the viewing audience.
The news studio has become the site for “manufacturing” news and consent on behalf of the beleaguered state. This is largely the product of an unprecedented financial crisis which has threatened media’s advertisement-based revenue model,2 forcing it to cut costs and increase dependence on the state, the financial market, and other cash-rich promoters who are jostling to move into, arguably, India’s most powerful medium. Taken together, these have ended up making the owners/promoters, rather than editors, the prime drivers of television news content – a point eloquently made by the latest Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) report.3
Owners in the Studio
The Zee “extortion” case is perhaps the best illustration of the role of owners in the studio. The Hindi news network launched a shrill “probity” campaign against Congress Member of Parliament and steel tycoon Navin Jindal for allegedly using his clout to swing favourable deals in coal block allocations. Later, as it turned out, the campaign was eyeing Jindal’s riches, Rs 100 crore to be exact, as a price for rolling back the campaign. Ironically, the matter hit the headlines after two of the network’s editors were caught on hidden camera allegedly “extorting” money from Jindal officials. Later, both the editors, Sudhir Choudhary4 and Samir Ahluwalia spent nearly 20 days in Delhi’s Tihar jail. The Delhi police are now investigating the complicity of both the owners and the editors in the alleged extortion incident.5
In its brief history spanning not more than 20 years, the Indian television broadcast industry has been largely perceived as a handmaiden of the state owing to its emergence within the womb of Doordarshan (DD) – a legacy it still finds tough to live down. In the recent past, however, major private players especially from the non-media sector have also moved in on account of its growing commercial and political clout.
As one of the “midwives” who ushered in this change, former DD boss and secretary Information and Broadcasting (I and B), Bhaskar Ghose discusses pointedly in his book6 how the government sold airtime to private producers for an “irrationally modest” amount. The producers in turn not only charged the sponsors the sky but also sold approximately three to four minutes of free commercial time (FCT) to advertisers. Secondly, “the producer or the sponsor kept the copyright...repeats of popular serials meant paying a fortune (by DD) to the copyright holder.” Ghose mentions the “Ramayana” example where the producer retained all the video rights.7
Finally, as the Central Bureau of Investigation case relating to India’s premier news network New Delhi Television (NDTV) shows, there was extensive patronage and quid pro quo at play.8 The then director general DD, Rathikant Basu is alleged to have “manipulated” the placement of NDTV promoter Prannoy Roy’s pioneering programme, “The World This Week” (TWTW) in a “superior” category which, according to a report of Parliament’s Public Account Committee (PAC), caused the government a loss of Rs 3.52 crore. NDTV is also alleged to have wrangled more than $20 lakh in foreign exchange for the production of TWTW from the Ministry of Economic Affairs on Basu’s recommendation. Crucially, there was no attempt to figure out how the money was used. In its letter to the PAC, NDTV denied these charges,9 alleging that the I&B ministry had provided erroneous data.
But it is not just NDTV. Aaj Tak, India TV, News 24 are some of the other channels that have apparently drawn heavily upon DD’s fabled generosity. Of course, their rise and consolidation was a product of a number of other factors, chief among them being conditions of economic boom and early bird advantage.
In the post-2008 phase, the state-media nexus thrives. But a little differently. The state appears to be actively playing stranger to the growing consolidation underway in the media space on the back of a general slowdown and steadily deteriorating fortunes of media networks.10
Newsroom Meltdown
Post the economic meltdown, the most grievous blow has been suffered by two key institutions that are lynchpins of news systems anywhere in the world, the editor and the reporter. Increasingly, the locus of power in news operations has shifted to the studios – the promoters and their hand-picked editors. This has resulted in a near complete centralisation of news-gathering operations. The shift in power equations chiefly reflects the political sensitivities of the emerging news ecosystem which calls for the involvement of the promoters in cost-cutting operations at various levels on a day-to-day basis (from transportation, outstation shoot, type of hotel accommodation, buying footage, retrenchment, etc).
Cost-cutting apart, every day the promoter walks the thin line balancing several conflicting interests such as businessmen and politicians of all hues in an era of coalition, by no means an easy task in the relentless 24×7 news cycle. A pliable editor provides a way out by not merely filling in but also ensuring that a chain of command is created whose primary mandate is to protect the promoter’s interests. In virtually every newsroom (both in Hindi and English news networks), there is a long unwritten list with regard to covering politicians – depending on their proximity to the promoter (the Ambanis and the Gandhi family, for example, are a complete no-no in most newsrooms).11..
