Cleaning up
After a year of handwringing but little action on paid news and other aberrations, media ethics seem to be finally coming onto civil society’s agenda. Will it stay there?
A HOOT editorial. Pix: The Outlook cover.
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Action on paid news, action on private treaties, newspapers saying no to awards instituted by politicians, journalists writing about ethical aberrations they see in their profession: something is stirring at last in the soul of a profession that was becoming increasingly corrupt. What a cheering thought.
Lets start with paid news. Just the sums of money involved made this a tough one to tackle. When you are talking of newspapers collectively earning Rs one crore per candidate per Lok Sabha contest, getting the perpetrators to stop was not going to be easy. It has taken a coming together of different kinds of pressure to tackle one of the more audacious kinds of media corruption in recent times.
A major newspaper decided to campaign with a messianic crusader leading the charge. A new chief election commissioner decided to show more inclination to act than the last one. And the Press Council did the cause a favour when the publishers on it diluted the findings of their own fact finding team. It created a stink which made more people wake up.
Positive developments have resulted. The Election Commission of India announced the formation of a expenditure monitoring division. The Hindu report by P Sainath on October 8, 2009 seemed to suggest that there is or will also be a media division to receive and process complaints of paid news at the Commission’s headquarters. The Bihar elections we are told, will be the test case.
Though paid news began to make news after the May 2009 general elections, under Navin Chawla’s dispensation as chief election commissioner it did not generate any categorical action from the Election Commission. In a letter dated May 7, 2009 women journalists in Andhra Pradesh had written to the state’s chief electoral officer detailing practices of paid news observed in regional editions of Telugu newspapers.
In an article posted on the Hoot on May 27 last year NALSAR University professor Madabhushi Sridhar also documented some of the rates charged in Andhra Pradesh. But in September CEC Chawla told journalists that while there had been a lot of complaints it was very difficult to prove such charges unless the media came forward to offer evidence.
Then came the Maharashtra elections in October 2009. Even before the results were announced the Hoot was approached by a candidate from Satara with her experience. The three Marathi newspapers and one English newspaper in her area she said, had differing rates. One rate for writing positively about a candidate, and a lower rate for suppressing coverage of rival candidates. If a candidate was willing to buy a package some newspapers were offering, 'they will give a photographer and someone with it to write.'
But it took P Sainath writing a first lead in the Hindu after the Maharashtra elections,and successive edit page and op-ed-page articles, to make it a national issue the country could no longer ignore. As demonstrated by his dogged campaign on farmer’s suicides, Sainath has that ability, backed with a lot of support from the paper he writes for. He manages a consistent visibility that no other daily has given to an issue like this, and a visibility and positioning that the Hindu accords to very few. Sainath took on the Maharashtra chief minister and the coverage Mr Chavan got during those elections to make a dramatic point.
This year when the Press Council rejected the report of its own subcommittee which investigated the paid news issue, there was a huge piece by Sainath on the Hindu op ed page announcing it, with a colourful headline of the sort which accompany his articles. And earlier this week again the Hindu ran a Sainath-written first lead on the election commission appointing a director general who would look into complaints of election expenditure including those related to media coverage. The paper is running a highly visible campaign on the issue, other big newspapers are not.
How can they? Last summer the Hindustan published by HT Media Ltd faced allegations of paid news in its Varanasi edition, the Times of India began the practice of paid news in the English language press some years ago, unrelated to elections. The Dainik Jagran and Dainik Bhaskar, the country’s two largest read regional papers, have at different times been shown to be practising some variant of paid news in 2009 and 2010. The Jagran figured in the original Press Council report, the Bhaskar was written about in the Hoot recently, soliciting ads from candidates in the Haryana zilla parishad elections which looked remarkably like coverage. The reports were in Hindi, the tiny legend at the bottom saying ‘advt’ was in English.
But journalists and media bodies like the Editors’ Guild are now constantly raising this and other ethical issues, far more than before. Shortly after the new chief election commissioner took over, the Guild and a few other media bodies got him and politicians on a dais to discuss the issue. Outlook magazine ran a cover story on the subject. TS Sudhir writing on this website earlier this year described how the Andhra Chief Minister’s publicity machine ensures that his trips around the state get regular coverage.
Another significant development in recent months is the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) taking steps to clean up practices relating to media coverage of the stock market and listed companies . In August this year SEBI ordered that all media houses should disclose on their websites the private treaty they have with companies and mention it when reporting news of such companies.
This particular practice, initiated by the Times of India was soon copied by other leading media houses. Earlier this year former Sebi chief M Damodaran had ticked off media personalities for "talking up" and "talking down" stocks. And SEBI sought action against a CNBC TV18 market analyst accused of misleading investors in 2005.
So overall 2010 has been a year for at least making a start in cleaning up how media conducts its business and how media and politics interact with each other. There is a long way to go. Last year journalist Aroon Tikekar wrote about the visible increase in awards that the Maharashtra government instituted for journalists, this year Haryana chief minister Hooda instituted no less than 153 cash awards for journalists. Most of the hacks cheerfully accepted them.
The exception was the Indian Express which told its staffers to decline the awards. The paper last month also sent around a circular on ethics to its staff, on conflict of interest, disclosure of ownership of shares, acceptance of gifts, and much else. You could say it should be applauded for this, but a tart comment on this website suggested that the IE should "stop urging its staffers to be scrupulous in their ethical conduct and start requiring it of them. Scrupulous conduct in the workplace, be it in journalism or in any other profession, should not be a choice." Indeed.
Like Mint, every newspaper and TV channel should point its readers prominently to its code of ethics, so that society at large can hold the profession to practicing what it preaches. And it would help if media consumers had more exacting standards than they do now!
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