When is it news?

IN Media Practice | 15/12/2012

Two recent news events seem to throw light on this important question in the news business; one, the killing of ASI Ravinder Pal Singh of Amritsar by Ranjit Singh Rana, an AkaliDal leader; two, a revealing article in the Indian Express about news papers and television establishments getting into financial deals for providing positive coverage for Raman Singh government in Chhattisgarh.

Journalism schools concentrate on teaching what is news and what news values to apply when selecting news items. Frequency, threshold, unambiguity, unexpectedness, prominence, personification, negativity are some of the criteria that Galtung and Ruge set out (1).Galtung argues, the more of the 12 criteria of news worthiness an event/issue satisfies, the more likely it is to be news.

If one looks at the case from Amritsar, the story is from an important city with fairly good presence of media. The perpetrator of the crime, Ranjit Singh Rana, is from the ruling political party and holds a responsible position in it. He and his men were harassing the victim’s daughter over the past few weeks. There are witnesses to this behaviour. There has been repeated misbehaviour. The victim was from the police force. But despite all this, till the policeman was brutally assaulted and murdered in the middle of a street, the media did not report the misdeeds of those involved.

Why does persistent, unprovoked harassment, blackmail, threats, collection of protection money with involvement of prominent people never figure as news till it culminates in a crime? This question can be asked of all stories that involve prominent people or social institutions like the khaps as players.

If one applies the news values, the Haryana story satisfies most criteria even BEFORE the daylight murder; the behaviour of the politician affects a large number of people, it is proximate, it is unexpected (of a legislator to harass people), it is about prominent local people, it allows for personification of the issue and it is negative.

In the context of a highly competitive political climate, there are obviously rival political parties and their people witnessing the problem. There must have been media from various rival camps around, apart from the police and other law and order machinery. None of them respond to routine abuse of power, coercion, and general misdemeanours. This often results from local musclemen from political parties staking territories to wield influence. The others in the area keep silent as they are using precisely the same strategies in areas under their control. There is a general cartelization and collusion among political entities, sometimes with silent compliance of other parties and even the police.

The stringers and journalists operating at the grassroots are themselves struggling to get by and often look to favours from the powerful, leading to an inevitable conspiracy of silence.

While the small-time journalists’ predicament is understandable, even if unacceptable, the big media houses are known to appease and play along with the local legislators, especially if the media house’s business interests are based in the legislator’s constituency.

There are instances in places like Hyderabad, when the most credible media group also treated the death of a ‘politician’ emerging out of the land mafia as something like the passing of a Mahatma. In life, the politician unfailingly supported all causes of journalists. It was enough to ensure good coverage even as his activities seriously damaged public interest. This is the ‘pragmatic’ approach to news that the major houses have had even before the “paid news” phenomenon became public.

The Chhattisgarh case of media striking deals for positive coverage for huge amounts goes a step further. The earlier example shows the tendency to barter public interest for buying peace, while the Chhattisgarh instance shows that some media houses are bartering the safety and welfare of people for monetary gain. By keeping silent about issues that matter and by expending energies on eulogising the rank criminality of those in power, even in ordinary times when elections are not on, is the new low we are discovering.

If the Express report is to be believed, the Chhattisgarh state was arresting people under false charges and spinning ‘Maoist’ stories around the arrests, and the media houses were colluding in the process for money. In a news environment where money is the primary value of exchange, it is the powerful and moneyed classes like the politicians, the mafia and the corporations who will win the battle for public opinion.

According to the report, “Those involved in such deals include Z24, Sahara Samay, ETV Chhattisgarh and Sadhna News, Chhattisgarh's main TV channels, besides some smaller, local networks. Z24 is a franchisee of Zee News. While its reporters are recruited locally, its editor Abhay Kishore is deputed by Zee News. The cost of such programmes can range from Rs 4 lakh to Rs 1.1 crore”.

A major consequence of the erosion of media credibility is the impunity it gives the powerful. In the past, media could hold people in public life to account through its exposes. Today, media by its own lack of accountability to the public has lost its authority as the fourth estate. Some of the gravest offences against public interest are glibly explained away on media (for whom the offenders are newsmakers) and the same players continue to rule. The news anchors somehow transfer the onus of recognising criminalityto the voting public alone, even as theyprovide an umbrella of neutrality and help such politicians get elected.

Much of media debate on riots or the scams is revealing. Because a politician/scamster is able to garner votes despite criminal subversion of democratic norms, s/he becomes a celebrity for media. The very lionising by the media in fact puts the wind in the sails of such politicians, giving them a larger than life image in public life, which in turn helps to entrench them in power. Instead of acting as a deterrent, the so-called ‘neutral’ media coverage ends up projecting them as invincible – partly through the extensive coverage provided and partly through the sense of negotiability constructed around non-negotiable issues like communal violence and criminality.

Over the last few decades, several politicians with criminal records have been magically transformed into messiahs under the selective glare of media (any coverage is good coverage for building a power base); selective, as in, not reporting when the illegal empires are being built, and once built, providing coverage to legitimise the illegitimate power.

The general public in an unjust society like India is fast losing the sense of what is fair and unfair in public life. When to report, it appears, is as important as what to report.

1. http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/icdc-content-folder/news-values/