Mayawati tames the media

BY hoot| IN Media Freedom | 24/06/2008

 Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati does not waste much time personally on the media, though the capital has six major dailies coming out of there, with Amar Ujala also set to launch soon. She does not give interviews, and press conferences are not frequent. But her bureaucrats make sure that the media falls in line if they show signs of getting too critical of the state government or the  chief minister.  The most recent newspaper to bow to government pressure is the Hindustan Times, whose owners have chemical factories and sugar  mills in the state.

The paper  announced a new resident editor last week after the previous one was asked to stay home from the first week of May, by the management.  Vipul Mudgal  who succeeds Chandrakant Naidu, is  based in Delhi but has begun to  make periodic visits to Lucknow. Naidu’s efforts to keep the paper reporting events as they happened  were  cut short by the management. Paranoia about the UP government’s displeasure also led HT to drop Khushwant Singh’s May 30 column in its Lucknow edition. Singh had used Ajay Bose’s recently released book  Behenji  to write an unvarnished account of her methods of functioning. Before that the paper stopped carrying the column Naidu used to write as resident editor.

Last year the UP government shut down one of the factories owned by the HT proprietor and her husband. Earlier this year it was allowed to reopen but the government has continued to be prickly about reporting of Mayawati’s recent demolitions in Lucknow, as well as of the BSP’s social engineering and the way it is impacting the dalits.  The irony is that the paper that looks good now is the Times of India which is not vulnerable to government pressure the way newspapers like Dainik Jagran, Hindustan and Hindustan Times are, given the industrial assets their owners have in the state. Said senior newsman J P Shukla who used to be the Hindu’s representative in Lucknow, "It (TOI) is writing more aggressively against her."

He adds that Lucknow is a major centre of  publishing, but not exactly a feisty one. The Hindi newspapers are better at disseminating news than at playing a role in forming public opinion. The Indian Express is somewhat critical, but backtracked recently after carrying a story about Mayawati’s brother. HT plays safe. And  according to Shukla, apart from the government, the other holy cow in Lucknow was Subroto Roy of Sahara whose affairs nobody in the UP press dared to touch upon. With Mayawati’s government undertaking demolition of his property, it is a little different now.