Flawed media, flawed democracy?

BY Visa Ravindran| IN Media Practice | 27/08/2009

Anyone watching the TV coverage of Jaswant Singh¡¯s expulsion from  the BJP, his press conferences, the launch of his book that launched a million TV shows, the soundbites by the different party spokespersons on every news channel with the same questions fetching the same answers, the interviews and discussions which brought all inanities together and then added some of their own, would have been forced to conclude that the objectives of dumbed down media and lilting lullabyes are one and the same.

Whom do the news media serve when they provide coverage going beyond saturation to cloying excess: their viewers or themselves?

And as though all this coverage were found wanting by the providers, bits from shows and interviews (Barkha¡¯s and Shekhar Gupta¡¯s with Jaswant Singh, Shekhar Gupta¡¯s Walk the Talk with Arun Shourie, Arnab Goswami¡¯s with the RSS head etc.), some already aired and others yet to be shown, found a place in every news bulletin for at least 96 hours, if not more. Multiply this by the number of news channels and the number of hours you got of the same subject treated similarly dozens of times is mindboggling.  And outside that was inter-media borrowing leading to more repetition as when a leading newspaper carried  a print version of Karan Thapar¡¯s interview with Jaswant Singh on Devil¡¯s Advocate on the Tuesday after the Sunday it was first aired.

In times of recession one speaks of the ¡®lipstick effect¡¯ in consumer spending. A term coined by Leonard Lauder, Chairman of Estee Lauder, when he saw a huge jump in lipstick sales after 9/11, it refers to the tendency among women  during times of economic uncertainty, to  load up on affordable luxuries as a substitute for presently out-of-reach goodies like clothing and jewelry. The ¡® cufflink index¡¯ is the male equivalent suggested  in The Economist.

Have the intellectual equivalents of the lipstick effect and cufflink index invaded our media in a time of  imaginative and creative recession? How do viewers and readers put up with hours of the same thing presented in the same way for days on end? Have they been numbed into accepting drivel or have they become conditioned to constantly lowering expectations?  For the compulsive shopper, it is the act of shoppingþu-acquiring rather than  possessing  what is bought that quickens his being.  But for the TV viewer tightening the mental belt leads to unhealthy side effects. How can the avid news-watcher make do with fluffy morsels  consisting entirely of mental carbs in place of well-planned balanced meals?

Jaswant Singh wrote and had released a book that revisited an emotional mine in our history, the Partition. He chose to view the main actors differently.He got expelled by the party which he helped found, this was done gracelessly and left him close to tears. Around this kernel of news reams of words were written, spoken, thrust into various mouths and filled talktime for more than four days. Other lipsticks like Vasundhara Raje¡¯s problems with the party powerfuls and Bengali ministers not being properly invited to a Kolkatta Metro-related function, which would have been clutched at in similar mode normally, bit the dust because like a terrier worrying a bone, every news anchor, every reporter on the political beat insisted on gnawing on this story even after it was picked clean.

After all the overbreathing on the A H1N1 flu deaths, came the coy self-questioning of whether the media had over-reacted to the swine flu possible-pandemic. Shah Rukh Khan¡¯s anger and disappointment at going unrecognised  at Immigration in an American airport monopolized the airwaves similarly for some days and underwent a subtle metamorphosis too while alive on the news from ¡®I¡¯m angry and disturbed¡¯ to ¡® it was not the being held for a while, but the silly questions asked¡¯.What is it about our fascination for celebrities that catapults them so regularly into the news giving us too-large, airbrushed heroes instead of  toilers in the entertainment industry? Is the vicarious pleasure of the charmed life so fulfilling that it is acceptable as the staple diet of the nation and to the neglect of everything else that impinges more cruelly on the daily life of our people?

Granted droughts and failed monsoons, prolonged sufferring and crime, dealt with seriously in the news do not make pretty stories.But an indigestible spin of the frothy and the frivolous, the debatable and the controversial provided it is pinned on a political  controversy or a filmy celebrity, is an unimaginative and lazy way of capturing the viewer and then holding him prisoner by giving him no option. Not to mention that even our festivals are filmy todayþu holi in the Kapoor khandhan, Diwali as celebrated in various film families and Ganesh Utsav, Bollywood or Kollywood style.

In a critical evaluation of the media, particularly TV news, which he dismissed as "coarser, shallower, more trivial, more prurient, more inaccurate, more insensitive, with each passing year,¡± star BBC journalist, Michael Buerk said ( in a 2005 - lecture at Ryerson University, Toronto,) that ¡° A flawed media leads to a flawed democracy. Ill-informed citizens cannot make proper judgements about their leaders¡¯ actions, about the actions that take place in their names, about the laws that govern them.The media matters.¡±

 But how much can media matter if it cannot even prioritize news according to its importance, learn when to focus on an event and when to let go? If it makes a too-swift transition from public service broadcasting to a marketplace ethos where the bottomline rules and TRPs alone decide the viability of shows? New formats, new anchors and spokespersons, better-informed/less emotional, more orderly discussions are needed.  At least mentally producers ought to fix a reasonable sell-by date for programmes and avoid too many repeats. 

Panellists drawn from all over the country, from different walks of life and not only from academia, politics and advertising would bring in other perspectives. More representation from civil society and the general public would balance out the government/ bureaucrat and political takes on every subject. When discussing social crimes careful screening of victims and their spokespersons enhance credibility.

 Not only high-profile activists but committed citizens making very real contributions to change who do not have time to get publicity for their causes, would add expertise and sincerity to the causes they espouse.

The globalised world begins to see the media as a cultural product and the ¡® banalisation of culture¡¯ a natural byproduct of the times. As customers/users we ought to insist on value, suitability and efficiency if media is to move beyond role as a time-filler or a soporific.