You cannot have Ambani owning TV channels when he owns half the nation: Journalist Sandeep Bhushan
NB: Congratulations to Sandeep Bhushan and Caravan for keeping alive the spirit of independent, critical journalism. DS
India’s rapidly
evolving television news industry has come a long way since the days of
Doordarshan’s plodding monopoly. With the influx of private players in the
post-liberalisation era, newsrooms began diversifying vastly in ideologies,
tone and tenor. Television news, especially in the English language, expanded
its disproportionate influence over India’s national conversation, owing,
particularly to its proximity to power. Today, Indian
newsrooms operate in a near-opaque environment with minimum regulatory
oversight, coupled with increasing pressure from the establishment to toe the
state’s line.
The senior journalist Sandeep Bhushan’s upcoming book The Indian Newsroom is an attempt to
deconstruct the agenda-driven journalism purveyed by corporate ownership, and
the concentration of editorial powers in the hands of a star-elite within the
studios, among other things. For his analysis, Bhushan relies on his 20 years
of experience as a television journalist with channels such as NDTV and
Headlines Today. He is also a regular contributor at The Caravan. In an interview
with Appu Ajith, Bhushan spoke about an industry mired in a moral and
institutional crisis, and how this impacted the recent general elections. He
was scathing in his assessment of the role the media played in the elections,
saying that “it infantilised politics, made politics into a game.”
Appu Ajith: In your
upcoming book, you have illustrated some disconcerting aspects of the Indian
television news scene, including access journalism, marginalisation of
reporters, power asymmetry in the newsrooms, and the rise of the “star system.”
Which among these is particularly worrying?
Sandeep Bhushan: Let me
speak a little about why I wrote the book ... Nobody in India writes about
their profession, that is, journalism. Nobody knows what is happening in the
world of media. Having taught in some of the universities, I see there are
parallel discourses [what is taught versus how media actually functions]. It is
a very incestuous, self-referential world. I tried to write what I think as a
reporter: the way I saw it and then connect it to the broader scheme of things.
The second aim was introspection. There is a lot of introspection happening
globally in the media industry but in India, unfortunately, it does not happen.
Especially the liberal space in India—how the liberal media’s shaped up, what
are the issues facing it. While there is a lot of discrediting of the liberal
media, there is still a case for looking inwards. Then there is the rise of
this very powerful, right-wing ideological movement among the journalists. I think it is
important to put on record the journalists who have been hired and fired
because that really is the crux of the issue... read more:
