Deciding whom to support

They say that summer is the silly season.  If you look at the Indian media, you would believe it.  April has been hot, humid in some parts, and dominated by news you could happily have missed.  The media has swayed wildly from obsessive focus on one subject at a time – from Sania-Shoaib to the on-going IPL saga. Meantime, in the rest of the world there have been natural disasters, political crises and the run-up to an important election.  Looking outside our shores might not necessarily help us to stay cool, but it does help provide some sense of perspective on life and times.

Take, for instance, the May 5 general election in Britain.  It does not have the ingredients of an American election.  It has not yet caught the attention of the Indian media -- preoccupied as it is with the constantly "breaking news" at home -- because it is not as sexy or exciting as the American Presidential election was in 2008.  Britain doesn’t have an Obama-like figure.  Even the American style debates that the Brits have adopted this time do not generate the same kind of interest outside the country.  Yet, in this election, the media is expected to play a greater role in determining the final outcome than in times past.

The print media in Britain, unlike India, does not hide its political leanings. Many British papers are open about their political allegiance, the exception being The Independent and The Guardian.  The latter, in particular, decides before each election which party it will back. This is done by the editor calling a meeting of the entire staff of the paper to discuss the editorial position the paper should take. 

This year The Guardian has gone a step further.  Its Editor, Alan Rusbridger, has also asked readers to send in their opinions on the subject and all these messages are posted on The Guardian’s website.   The paper has also posted a chart that indicates the positions taken by the leading eight newspapers in elections from 1945 onwards.  Only three papers, The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror and The Daily Telegraph are consistent in their political positions, which are Conservative, Labour and Conservative respectively.

And what do the readers of The Guardian say? Amongst the many responses here’s one from someone called Sandlewood who expresses his or her views rather well:

"It's simple: The Liberal Democrats.

Labour deserves nothing but your contempt; if the Guardian is indeed the world's leading liberal voice, the Labour party should be denounced as a serial infringer of civil liberties, hounded out for being the party that launched an illegal war in Iraq and Gordon Brown derided for his inability to see beyond the glamour of the city and for the nauseating sycophancy that saw him bow before the glorious banking system that generated oh-so-very-much wealth... before blowing itself (and the economy) to pieces.

What about the Tories? Well, just ask yourself where they have stood on those three issues of civil liberties, war and the economy.

As I said, it's simple. Support the Lib Dems."

What if even one of our newspapers undertook such an exercise in the next election?  Newspapers argue all the time that they are giving readers what they want.  This argument is trotted out particularly if readers object to the obsessive focus on celebrities, or the use of semi-nude women on the sports pages, or the excessive coverage of sexual assault crimes particularly when middle class people are involved.  But how about turning to readers on what they think "their" paper should do during an election, who it should back, if anyone, and what should be its editorial line. 

The Guardian’s editor does not guarantee that readers’ views will necessarily change or dictate the paper’s editorial position. He does not suggest any kind of voting – and certainly not the instant sms polls that our news television channels love so much.  But he does promise to consider the arguments put forward by staff and readers before arriving at the paper’s editorial position.

At a time when the media is losing credibility in the eyes of the public, such an exercise would actually contribute to political education that is sorely needed in this country.  Rather than doing general polls, news organizations should consider specific surveys of their own readers to assess what they think.  The results might well surprise them.

We know, for instance, the position the readers of The Pioneer would take.  But what about The Times of India, of The Indian Express?  Or The Hindu?  Readers do express themselves through letters when they either support or oppose a paper’s editorial position on a political issue.  But would they want a newspaper to endorse a particular party openly and suggest that it is best suited to run the country?

No newspaper is neutral on political issues. Therefore, it would be interesting to debate whether newspapers stating their political leanings openly, constitutes a step towards being a more mature democracy.  Needless to say, this has nothing to do with paid news, where the size of the budget of a politician bends the newspaper’s preference.