Making Impact ?

Impact is a big thing at India Today. Just look at the masthead - which, luckily for them, most readers don`t - and you`ll see how high-powered it is.

By Vijay Nambisan

Very few of us are in this profession purely out of love. We may love it and care for what is happening in it, but the fact that it is a paying profession also warms our hearts. Media corporations too run on the same principle, and that is a fact we have to recognise. Telling the truth makes for a lot of news; so does attacking the Government; but as old-timers at The Indian Express can tell you, getting the bottom line figures to stay in the black takes a lot of belt-tightening.

We should not therefore repine when we see "esteemed" journals carrying Government-inspired advertisement features. That horrible-sounding `Advertorial` is here to stay. I think Reader`s Digest was the pioneer, but enough other magazines and dailies have dabbled in that field of speculation to ensure the pot doesn`t call the kettle black. Touting a Government`s achievements, or "profiling" (a bit of journalese coined by the New Yorker which I`m sure they have come to hate) industry high-achievers in the hopes of a quid pro quo are all part of the racket.

About a year ago, when India Today commenced its `Impact` series with those 2-pagers full of State Governments blowing their own trumpets, the only twinge of disquiet I felt was caused by the fact that the matter in the advertorial looked disturbingly like the magazine`s own pages. In a couple of months, however, if I remember right - I don`t have access to back issues - the copy was reset in a sans serif typeface and "An IMPACT Feature" blared at you from above the headline.

Some of the Impact features were risible: Rajnath Singh touting the progress initiated by his Government with the polls racing towards him, for example. But then no one reads these features except those with an interest in them, and if India Today did its bit towards diminishing the Uttar Pradesh Government`s bank balance, that was on their conscience, not mine.

But the May 6 issue which I received did occasion more than a twinge of disquiet. Between pages 33 and 36 was an unashamed screed of propaganda, nothing less than Narendra Modi absolving himself of all accusations of inaction. It begins with the Godhra massacre; indeed the first line is:

After 58 passengers aboard the Sabarmati Express died in Godhra on February 27, the entire state of Gujarat was tense.

Right. But the rest of the article, if it is one, is devoted to saying what measures the Gujarat Government took, how many Muslims were saved, how many rounds of ammunition were fired (8,465 of bullets and 11,690 of teargas shells). This is the first time I`ve ever heard anyone, private or government, validate a police action by stating how many rounds had been fired rather than how few. There is absolutely no mention of how many people lost their lives; how many women were gang-raped (there are plenty of eyewitness accounts of these, but India Today has not seen fit to include them in its "esteemed" pages); how many were burned alive. The two subheads are "Effective Steps" and "Minimal Economic Loss", the latter saying, as Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has said in Singapore last month and thereafter, that there is no likelihood of fall in foreign investment.

(In passing: The advertorial [ugh] says:

A smear campaign is also on to prove that the post-February 27 events have caused unimaginable economic losses to the state and that foreign investment in Gujarat has greatly suffered as a result. As they stand, the facts prove this to be a white lie.

No wonder the Impact writers don`t want their names mentioned. "White lie" is a literal translation from the Hindi. "Safed jhoot" means an obvious lie, a glaring lie, something that stands out [against the colour of our skins?]. A "white lie" in English is defined by Webster`s as "a well-intentioned or diplomatic untruth". For