Spiteful newstraders close eyes to Narendra Modi’s good work
Hand it to NaMo for adding a new word to the English vocabulary. Answering the usual media inquisition on the 2002 post-Godhra riots, Modi said he had already answered all the questions to every top journalist of India. And if the question is again being brought against him, it is only because, he said, there are honest journalists and there were ‘Newstraders’. Implied was his view that there are those who peddle news as a matter of business of give-and-take.
The honest journalists themselves and others who are more than familiar with the media reports and political analysis of the last two decades or so would readily endorse Modi’s nomenclature for the state of much of our today’s media.
Hence, it was surprising that Diptosh Majumdar, political editor of News X, an above average TV news channel, lost his customary cool when a BJP member of the panel discussing Modi’s interview brought up thatnomenclature of ‘Newstraders’. Majumdar almost had a froth of rage around his lips as he thunderously proclaimed that there were no such trading community and that, in any case, Modi, as a mere State Chief Minister, had no right to label journalists with that word.
Majumdar’s loyalty to his professional class is touching. But his view is difficult to digest considering that even the Election Commission has accepted the concept of ‘paid news’ as a reality.
All journalists who proclaim that ‘newstrading’ is a non-existing phenomenon, are either genuinely or deliberately ignorant of a devastatingly damaging report entitled ‘Paid News in Indian Media’published by Vyas Desai in October 2011.
This is the report by distinguished journalists Paranjay Guha Thakurta and Sanjeev Reddy on the corrupt media practices during the elections of 2009. Several media houses including the TV news channels and print media, and several politicians as well were accused of malpractices. Media was alleged to have shown the worst form of corruption, maybe even dangerous than the politicians because media could hide the corrupt and mislead the nation. The media is not independent but is guided by the politicians to achieve their electoral goals, said the report. It is conspicuous that the Press Council of India decided not to forward the report following divisions within the Council.
‘Newstraders’ do not exist only in the corporate world. There are those foot soldiers too who attend press briefings only for a price or at least in expectation for something in return. As said someone in the Public Relations field for nearly 30 years and therefore, had to deal with the media, “I have had personal experience of this ugly fact of life.”
A couple of years ago, a TV news channel made a big noise about the BJP paying Rupees 250 to each reporter attending a press conference convened in a small town in Madhya Pradesh. One of those who received the payment in a closed cover was brought in to say so on camera. After a BJP Spokesperson reacted by revealing the practice of “attendance envelopes” at press meets in that town, the TV news channel “killed” that “Breaking News”.
‘Newstraders’ also include those who deal, not in cash or kind, but in personal biases.
Take the latest example of Amit Shah’s so-called hate speech in his election campaign in UP. An English-language daily, established in 1928, had a screaming headline spread across seven columns of the front page on April 6, 2014, saying “Hatchet man courts a controversy”. His ‘Hate Text’ as quoted in a prominent Box item on that page was reported to be,“A man can live without food or sleep. He can live when he is thirsty and hungry but when he is insulted, he cannot live. The insult has to be avenged. It is an election to take revenge for that insult.” The same newspaper’s next day edition not only repeated the earlier ‘hate text’ but to its last word ‘insult’ it added words, “and for teaching a lesson to those who committed injustice.” In both the editions, the text did not cite Shah’s words to the effect that because we no longer lived in the age of swords, the revenge was to be taken by pressing the button of the voting machine. Now, the question is why did a 86-year-old newspaper with a glorious tradition, not only highlight a so-called hate speech of a senior BJP politician on two successive days but also quote it without its non-violent revenge call clearly recorded on the video?
The anti-climax came in that newspaper’s edition of April 18. In a tiny front page report, it carried the report that the Election Commission had lifted the ban on Amit Shah. The whole episode smacked of an anti-Amit Shah attitude of whoever was controlling the display of its front-page news. It was simply ‘Hate Shah’ kind of ‘newstrading’.
The same nasty ‘newstrading’ was seen in the way the BJP manifesto for general election 2014 was announced to the public by a giant English-language daily. It indulged in a front-page eight-column headline to tell its vast readership that the BJP had stuck to its old issues of the Ram Mandir, abrogation of Article 370, and establishing a Uniform Civil Code. That these very issues figured only as also-ran items in the 58-page BJP manifesto was ignored and the party left to live the image of being communal, non-secular antediluvian. This headline was particularly perverse and pathetic because it itself conceded that the Ram Temple was in the manifesto just as ‘one line on second-last page’. Ergo, the BJP’s plans for preventing corruption, curbing inflation, empowering the federal States etc. got tucked away in a box of short summary.
The truth of the above three issues is otherwise.
Take the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya issue; it may be flippant to some but means a considerable lot to millions of believers. And, in any case, the BJP’s manifesto has merely expressed its commitment to building the temple within a constitutional framework. That was the only thing after the Lucknow High Court on September 30, 2010 concluded that the masjid was built on the site where a Ram temple had existed; but it decided that the site concerned be shared by the contesting parties. The Ram Temple at Ayodhya now seems a certainty but the matter is in the Supreme Court and, if needed, negotiations thereafter. The BJP is not foolhardy to resolve it over pitched battles. The BJP-haters should understand that.
About Article 370, it has been declared a “Temporary: provision in our Constitution right from the latter’s inception in 1950”. The fathers of the Constitution had reason to make it only “Temporary” and not permanent. Must it then remain “Temporary” till eternity?
Also since 1950, a Uniform Civil Code for the citizens is embodied in Article 44 in our country’s Constitution as a Directive Principle of State Policy. Over six decades later, it is surely high time that all Indians make it a reality, especially because it will bring equitable treatment to all women in all our communities.
The Supreme Court of India has at least three times in the past harped on the dire need for the nation to have such uniformity in civil laws. Go to the Google and you’ll get the details, including that of a Justice Kuldip Singh who, in just one judgement, mentioned the need for that uniformity as many as 20 times. And, once again, the BJP’s present manifesto is not advocating a steamrolling path to a uniform civil law. It’s only prescribing what its patriarch, LK Advani, did years ago viz. a dialogue with all to work out a code having the best features of all codes. What, pray, is wrong with that? How the hell is it communal? In fact, Nehru might well have been communal in aggressively pushing the Hindu Code Bill in the early fifties — even against the wish of the President of India — while ducking the truly secular approach of simultaneously ignoring the much-needed reforms in the laws of other religious communities including that of the Muslims.
So, whatever is wrong with the ‘newstraders’ was also wrong with secular ‘Nehru’, was it?http://www.niticentral.com/2014/04/18/spiteful-newstraders-close-eyes-to-modis-good-work-213522.html