Press And Prejudice

The Indian Express, May 11, 2002

Press and Prejudice

Shekhar Gupta

It is difficult to recall when the last time the media got such bad press within the ruling

establishment was. Narasimha Rao, I.K. Gujral and H.D. Deve Gowda never complained too much about the media, probably because they were more realistic about their expectations of it. Rajiv Gandhi, after his honeymoon was broken by Bofors, did try to take a leaf out of his late mother¿s book though his response was confined to attacking only those sections of the media (notably this newspaper) that were in the forefront of the Bofors campaign. But there was no across-the-board condemnation of the media as a destabiliser that spread hatred, distrust, cynicism and other sorts of poisons, besides being mixed up with hostile foreign forces.

The last time that happened was in the run-up to Indira Gandhi¿s emergency. The media then was the state¿s Enemy No 1. On the independence day in the first year of the emergency, I - then a college student - was witness to a speech by Bansi Lal where he exhorted people to stay away from newspapers. What are they, he asked - ¿¿after 8 am two rupees a kilo as raddi.¿¿ But that wasn¿t enough. He went on to ask, ¿¿What is that raddi used for? It is used by your pakorawala to wrap pakoras for you to eat. Don¿t even do that. There is so much poison in the newspapers, you will die.¿¿

Nothing of the sort has happened as yet. But the bitterness with the media that this government - or at least of some sections of its leadership - feels is rising to alarming levels. Every single day the media is accused of misquoting its spokesman. Every single day somebody speaks out on some television channel accusing the media of being irresponsible, inflammatory and more guilty of fanning the riots in Gujarat then even the mobs and those inciting and protecting them. Motives, obviously, quickly follow this condemnation. The media is anti-sangh parivar, anti-national, pro-western, English-speaking, and so on. During one television discussion, a spokesman of the sangh parivar very condescendingly told me he did not have a problem with the entire media, but only with the ¿¿western-educated, chocolate-box, types who live in South Delhi¿¿. I told him I escaped the first two charges easily - I did not study overseas but in deep hinterland and even my mom would not have described me as having chocolate-box looks. But since I lived in South Delhi, I was guilty anyway.

The sangh parivar¿s own obsession with the media brings a peculiar new dimension to this government¿s distrust of the press in general. The parivar is unique in our political system in terms of not only owning and running a large number of publications but even employing, directly and indirectly, a large number of journalists with varying track records. The Congress has no such assets - or liabilities. Its only newspaper, National Herald, has been more or less dead for a long time. The Left had some pretension for running some publications but they are dying ahead of the ideology. Some of the region