Sunday, 13 July 2014
Two case studies presented by Rupa Subrahmanya point to a stir among the SoniaG chamchas who have not yet reconciled to the fact that Congress-mukt Bharat has almost been achieved.
The most pathetic response is the comparison to the Emergency days of Indira Gandhi. The chamchas do not seem to have read the Shah Commission Report now available on the public domain to write that portion of the sordid history of Independent Bharat.
Wow, it takes time for NDTV to understand the nuances of Company law? They have not even heard Arun Jaitley's NewsX interview justifying the IT notice to the SoniaG, RahulG duo and their chamchas?
Chamchagiri is a phenomenon whose story has yet to be fully told.
Kalyanaraman
A case study in selective outrage in the Indian media space
Rupa Subramanya
“A case study in selective outrage in the Indian media space”
On July 11, 2014, two instances of what can best be described as questionable editorial decisions were made by two major English language media houses in India, the DNA newspaper and NDTV channel.
The differential reactions of well-known journalists and commentators in the Indian media space to these two instances make for a fascinating case study in selective outrage.
Exhibit 1:
DNA yanks a poorly written and argued opinion piece by journalist Rana Ayyub on the selection of Amit Shah as BJP President. Ayyub is a former Tehelka journalist whoclaims to have “exposed Shah’s role in the fake encounters in the state” of Gujarat.
Ayyub’s piece itself rehashes well-known allegations and adds no new insight to the public record. In fact all of the points she raises are well-known to those who have followed the allegations against Shah over the years.
Of course, it goes without saying that the piece’s lack of insight is not a valid reason for the newspaper to have withdrawn it once already having published it.
As of now, so far as I’m aware, DNA’s editors have offered no serious explanation as to why the piece was taken down. The best we have is this somewhat mysterious blog post by Harini Calamur, online editor of DNA, who seems to suggest there was something she picked up in the piece which was problematic, but doesn’t tell us what it it was.
Predictably, critics of the Modi government, of which there are many in the Indian media space cried foul, suggesting or insinuating without a scrap of evidence that somehow political pressure must have been brought to bear on DNA to pull the piece.
Ayyub herself tweeted extensively on what had happened. Here’s a representativetweet suggesting free speech had been attacked.
Shivam Vij, associate editor of news site Scroll.in,went so far as to draw a comparison with an imminent new Emergency a la Indira Gandhi.
Here’s Sagarika Ghose, former senior anchor at CNN-IBN, who suggested ominously that press freedom is acutely at risk in India.
And finally noted historian Ramachandra Guha called out what he saw as a “new low for media self-censorship”.
These are just a few snapshots of the varieties of outrage on display of what was no doubt a questionable editorial decision by DNA to pull Ayyub’s piece.
From the quotes above, Guha is perhaps closest to the truth in describing it as self-censorship, although since neither he nor anyone else can read the minds of DNA’s editors, it would be premature to assert that they acted out of a desire to censor themselves — Calamur certainly denies it.
But Vij, Ghose and Ayyub herself are exaggerating greatly the significance of DNA’s editorial decision in suggesting that Ayyub’s freedom of speech in some way had been violated, or implying that some form of state sponsored censorship might be behind DNA's actions. The fact is that, as DNA took the piece down, Ayyub was free to and did subsequently republish the piece on her own blog.
The Modi government has not blocked or censored access to her site and her freedom of speech is intact.
Further, these critics fundamentally misunderstand the meaning of free speech, and this is rather serious coming from journalists.
Here’s the Reader’s Digest version on what freedom of speech actually means and does not mean.
Person X’s right to free expression does not legally, morally, or in any other way oblige person or news organisation Y to offer X a platform to express those views -- yet this is frequently how freedom of speech is misunderstood.
The illogic of such a misunderstanding is evident from the fact that both Ghose and Ayyub have blocked me on Twitter for asking them legitimate but uncomfortable questions about what I perceive as their own biases which are on view in the content they produce.
That is absolutely fine, as their timelines are their property and they can block whomever they wish for whatever reason without telling someone why they blocked them. But if they truly believe that DNA is obliged to provide Ayyub a platform to express her views, and not doing so violates her "freedom of speech", then logically they should also be committed to offering the same “freedom” to someone like me who shows up on their timeline!
The correct understanding of free speech does require, rather, that the government protect X’s right to express herself and prevent any harm from coming to her from doing so. At this juncture, there’s absolutely no evidence that the current government has infringed anyone’s right to free expression, Ayyub or anyone else.
On the contrary, under the previous government, several notorious cases where people were picked up by the police and charged for things like Facebook updates critical of politicians do constitute a violation of free speech. Also, the previous government, allegedly at the behest of some senior journalists themselves, blocked a number of Twitter handles, many of them prominent voices on the right. So far, there’s no evidence of any repetition of such behaviour by the current government.
Vij’s invocation of the Emergency is the most ridiculous and hysterical of the lot, as it fails to recognise how totally different the media landscape, to say nothing of the world at large, is today as compared to 1975.
When Mrs. Gandhi declared the Emergency, there were no private TV channels, no mobile phones, and no internet. She controlled the content on state owned TV and radio and it was relatively easy to brow beat and coerce the editors of newspapers.
In today’s world, even if the government wanted to restrict access to content they dislike — and I repeat there’s no evidence that this is the case, but let’s take it for the sake of argument — it is extremely difficult if not impossible to do. Just as in the Ayyub case, if a newspaper takes down content from its website, the writer or someone sympathetic to them can immediately put it on a website or a blog and then share it widely over social media.
The truth is that the most accurate and fair way describe what happened is that DNA made an editorial judgement, one which on the face of it appears dubious, and further, for the sake of their credibility as a news organisation, they do owe morally, but not legally, Ayyub and their readers an explanation for why they pulled the piece.
Meanwhile, DNA's ill-conceived decision has given Ayyub's mediocre piece -- badly written, argued, and with nothing new to offer, essentially a rant against Amit Shah -- a new lease on life, and Ayyub herself has become something of an overnight celebrity, given the stellar and high-powered folks who've rushed to her defence.
Now on to Exhibit 2, which as it happens occurred on the same day as Exhibit 1.
Sunetra Choudhury, a senior reporter at NDTV, broke what looked like what she herself called an “exclusive”.
Unlike Ayyub’s piece, Choudhury’s report was new and potentially very important as it appeared to offer support for Subramaniam Swamy’s allegations against Sonia and Rahul Gandhi in the Herald House/Young Indian case, currently working through the Indian court system.
While I didn’t catch it when it first aired Friday morning, it appears that NDTV yanked the story after one or two airings and didn’t archive it on their website as they do with most other videos of important news stories.
A sharp-eyed viewer Sankar K noticed that NDTV had apparently pulled the piece after airing it a couple of times and didn’t archive it on their website.
Interestingly, apart from a few folks on the right, not part of the mainstream media establishment, there was little interest in NDTV’s editorial decision to pull Choudhury’s story, which on the face of it looked as dubious as DNA’s decision to pull Ayyub’s piece.
I became aware of this on the 12th afternoon, roughly 24 hours after Sankar K had posed his question to NDTV’s Vikram Chandra.
Again, it’s noteworthy that those outraging on the Ayyub case pointedly failed to ask NDTV why they yanked Choudhury’s story and certainly there was no widespread outrage or calls to boycott NDTV, etc. of the type raised against DNA.
It was not even deemed newsworthy by those organisations like the Times of Indiaand Firstpost who had written pieces about Ayyub’s op-ed being pulled.
Only Newsmedia, an independent news site, wrote about both exhibits 1 and 2 on the 13th.
Meanwhile, a tech savvy viewer had captured Choudhury’s original report when it aired and placed it on an external website.
NDTV’s top brass remained silent on the issue until late on the 12th evening, when Vikram Chandra, CEO and senior anchor, offered the following terse and not especially enlightening explanation.
Here’s a link to questions I subsequently posed to Chandra. He hasn’t yet replied to me.
Here’s a link to my conversation with Singh, where she offers little more in the way of explanation than her original tweet.
Also Singh says here that “editorial processes” of which she gratuitously thinks many on Twitter might be unaware were the reason for the peculiar life story of this news report.
NDTV did finally restore the story, which they’ve archived here.
Two things are noteworthy.
First, in Singh’s reply, she says that NDTV needed to do some fact checking about Company Law after the piece already aired and was billed as an exclusive by the reporter who broke the story, when in fact Company Law is central to the story itself! It would be a bit like a news story on new banking regulations being implemented and then being pulled to fact check what the banking regulations are.
Further, what “editorial process” allows a major story to run without the necessary fact checking beforehand?
Second, the story that was restored by NDTV is identical to the original story which they pulled without explanation two days earlier.
What exactly was being fact checked and why did it take so long to determine the story was fine as it was?
As of now, Choudhury, who broke the story, has not commented on why her story was pulled and then restored or indeed made any other comments on the situation since originally plugging her exclusive.
Also as of now, the many voices of outrage on Exhibit 1 did not and have not raised their voice on Exhibit 2.
Clearly the outrage has been selective and media coverage of these two cases has been disproportionate and one-sided.
If one is honest with oneself and rightly criticises DNA for pulling Ayyub’s piece without explanation, one surely should do the same for NDTV having pulled Choudhury’s report. In fact, Ayyub herself, who writes frequently on press freedom, hasn't bothered to send out a single tweet criticising NDTV or even questioning their editorial judgment -- when she herself was at the receiving end of what looks like a bad editorial call. Neither have Guha, Ghose or Vij among others.
The selective outragers now have an easy out, since they can accept without question NDTV’s explanation for why the story was pulled and then restored.
I criticised both editorial judgements -- as my outrage is not predicated on which political party the issue in question might cast in poor light. The fact that many in the media establishment chose to outrage over one and not the other is worth noting.
You decide, on the evidence of their differential reactions to Exhibit 1 and 2, how fair and balanced the Indian media establishment has shown itself to be in the past few days.