Good journalism that is also commercially successful
The Hindu’s newly stated code of values raises the question of the plausibility of the traditionally-understood role of the media as the ‘fourth-estate’ and its compatibility with what is understood as ‘commercially successful journalism’ today,
says MAYA RANGANATHAN Pix: N Ram
The war of attrition in The Hindu may at best be a wrangle over family fortunes, but it also calls to attention new problematics for media in the region caused by changing cultural contexts and communication flows. It particularly raises the question of the plausibility of the traditionally-understood role of the media as the ‘fourth-estate’ and if it is indeed compatible with what has come to be understood as ‘commercially successful journalism’ today.
The reasons cited for the change in the composition of the management of the day-to-day running of the 132-year-old newspaper points to some of the challenges posed by rapid evolution of technologies with subsequent blurring of ‘places’ and ‘spheres’, thus turning on its head some basic assumptions about what ‘good journalism’ is. It is interesting to note that the ‘commercially successful’ media of today seem to have become so by moving away from the traditional model of ‘good journalism’.
While one cannot quarrel with the ideals of “truth-telling, freedom and independence, fairness and justice, good responsible citizenship, humaneness, and commitment to the social good,” what confounds the issue are two facts: first, that as The Hindu editor N Ram states in the Code of editorial values, in today’s world “good journalism cannot survive, develop, and flourish unless it is viable and commercially successful.”
Operating in the fault-line as participants in a democracy and as commercial enterprises (Meikle, 2009: 70) is fraught with complexities in the time of 24/7 news when every media is competing with itself and also other media. In the clamour for TRPs, news channels focus on only those issues that will snowball into controversies; and newspapers pick agendas that will ensure them a fair market share. How else can one explain the news channels’ frenzied engagement with the 97-hour fast by Anna Hazare against corruption and abject indifference to the decade-long fast by Irom Sharmila against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958? Or, as this website has time and again established, the print media’s attempts to obfuscate issues international, national, regional or local?
It might seem simplistic to attribute the state of news today to just commercial interests. But it remains the most significant factor that has changed ‘news’ as we knew it. The cut-throat competition for the viewers’ (and the readers’ too) eye-balls has led to, much like in the West, a proliferation of ‘pseudo-events’ that has changed the definition of news. In an age when viability of a media outlet depends on wooing the advertisers and keeping them, news that can lead to informed public opinion has been jettisoned by infotainment, news that can be packaged in an entertaining way. This is perhaps why Boyce (1979: 27) concluded: “The paradox of the Fourth Estate, with its head in politics and its feet in commerce, can however, be understood if it is appreciated that the whole idea of the Fourth Estate was a myth.” This intertwining is what points to the conclusion that most of the ideals that dictate ‘good journalism’ must have different connotations for the owners and the viewers/readers. As Thompson (1995) and Curran and Seaton (2003) argue news media are part of major global industries and their interests do not always coincide with those of their audiences. Does it mean then that ‘good journalism’ and ‘commercial success’ must remain mutually exclusive?
The tensions between democracy and commerce as also editorial and advertising have been explored in many dimensions in the West. However, they need to be reconsidered in the Indian context, particularly in the light of growing figures of newspaper readership and the exponential growth of communication technologies.
The second problematic arises from the sheer multitude of and diversity in voices that crowd the ‘mediascape’ leading to a situation, when almost all the ideals mentioned above at best remain one interpretation, among many. ‘Truth-telling’ that rests obviously on the “discipline of verifying everything that is published,” far from ensuring objectivity has of late made news nothing but “a representation of authority” (Erickson, Barek and Chan, 1989: 3). The professionalisation of journalism has further reduced the distance between the media and the government, and of late has brought them uncomfortably close, as the Radia tapes have revealed.
The second problematic arises from the sheer multitude of and diversity in voices that crowd the ‘mediascape’ leading to a situation, when almost all the ideals mentioned above at best remain one interpretation, among many. ‘Truth-telling’ that rests obviously on the “discipline of verifying everything that is published,” far from ensuring objectivity has of late made news nothing but “a representation of authority” (Erickson, Barek and Chan, 1989: 3). The professionalisation of journalism has further reduced the distance between the media and the government, and of late has brought them uncomfortably close, as the Radia tapes have revealed.
Ironically, even as journalists trash ministers and bureaucrats elsewhere, they continue to regard them their ‘credible’ sources of information, for professionalisation lays much store by hierarchy and order. The ‘primary definers’, a term Hall and others (1978: 57-60) use to refer to the high-status authorities who generate enormous amounts of information, have come to exert a strangle-hold on ‘news’. Partly, it is to do with the demands of the 24/7 news where deadlines seldom allow for cross-checking information with obscure sources. But most significantly, the pronouncements of those in authority have come to be equated with ‘objectivity’ and ‘impartiality’, despite their actions having proved time and again, that they are anything but.
If one could skew Newton’s law, almost every account of significance seems to have an equally opposite account, featured in some communication platform. With different accounts vying for attention in the different ‘spaces’ and ‘spheres’, ‘truth’ has become a much-contested commodity. This was much in evidence in the run up to the April 13 elections to the Tamil Nadu Assembly, in the media and public debate on whether the leader of DMDK actor Vijayakanth had indeed thrashed the party candidate as shown by a private television channel or if it was a cleverly-edited clip. With the USP of the new communication platforms being to point out to what it is outside the ‘frame’ projected by the dominant media, news interpretation now calls for more than average understanding of media dynamics. One major study on the negotiation of information on websites by Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in India in 2008 revealed that most readers sought a multitude of sources to construct their own version of events while believing none of them to be ‘objective’. The diversity of media outlets seems to have ironically led to disenchantment with media.
One must indeed be careful of where the argument is going. Pointing to the complexities of the present-day media scenario is not to make an argument for the dispensation of values or codes. It is not that the ideals of “truth-telling, freedom and independence, fairness and justice, good responsible citizenship, humaneness, and commitment to the social good” are not desirable or essential. The argument is that the articulation of these must take into account that media is in a period of transition not quite comfortable with the complexities of a changing world. What is called for is a re-think of the ideals of journalism in the present context in both media and academic circles. Indian media would do well to pull these ideals down to reality rather than relegate them to myths, as values that reigned in the ‘golden age of journalism’.
References
Boyce, G. 1978, ‘The Fourth Estate: the reappraisal of a concept,’ in George Boyce, James Curran and Pauline Wingate (ed.s) Newspaper History: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day, London: Constable, pp.19-40.
Curran, J. and Seaton, J, 2003, Power without Responsibility: the Press, Broadcasting and New Media in Britain, London: Routledge.
Ericson, R.V., Baraneck, P. M. and Chan, J.B.L. 1987, Visualizing Deviance: a study of News Organization, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Hall, S. et al., 1978, Policing the crisis, London: Macmillan.
Miekle, G. 2009, Interpreting News, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thompson, J.B, 1995, The Media and Modernity, Cambridge: Polity