Getting it wrong deliberately?

Journalists are supposed to search for information, put it in context and if it has layers of complications, then interpret it without taking sides. That is quintessential journalism because benefits accrue to the reader who pays to buy the newspaper. The trend that is noticeable these days is the preoccupation of journalists with the need to spin, twist or as the British image builders said during Tony Blair’s days when war against Iran was successfully advocated, sex it up.

Here is an example of such a story in the Daily News & Analysis (DNA) on September 8, 2010 by members of its reporting staff: it said, in effect, that the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM)’s commissioner, Swadhin Kshatriya "blamed the ‘influx of outsiders’ for the mounting environmental woes of the city." It was a point he made in the preface to the Environmental Status Report on the city for 2009-10.

The number of such ‘outsiders’ was put by Kshatriya at 75,000. This is what he said, as quoted by the newspaper: "For example, in the BMC’s A ward, every single day 75,000 outsiders are added per sq km. This large number stretches an already over-stretched system to breaking point." This claim, of course, is not anything new for everyone knows that three business districts -" the Fort, the Nariman Point and the Ballard Estate and areas abutting them are in the A ward.

Where there is business, there are jobs and where employment is to be found, people congregate there from other parts of the city, just like people from other parts of the country flow to any city where livelihoods are available. What Kshatriya said was correct when he said 75,000 per sq km are added every day. The slip surfaced when he failed to say to "the day-time population". It has to be remembered that Mumbai and the metropolitan region’s residential areas have developed along a linear pattern and North-South commute in the morning and in the reverse direction in the evening adds to the infrastructure woes of the city, poor and inadequate as it is.

Though the newspaper "confronted him" -" it is the claim made in the text -" Kshatriya "defended himself" by saying he was referring to the "floating population that comes to South Mumbai and it’s from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region as a whole. This does not refer to migration from other states".  Anyone who knew the city’s geography and demography -" a requirement of any journalist reporting on the city -" would have understood that the civic manager was right but his error was in not being clear in what he wrote.

However, the newspaper fell prey to the temptation by asking if he was compelled to write what he did because the Shiv Sena, a nativist political party rules the city’s civic body. He defended himself -" all bureaucrats -" one wishes it were true in all cases, with all officials, with respect to all political parties -" are "neutral". The newspaper went further to sex-up the story, and twisted it out of context, by asking everyone who had a political axe in the city to pitch in with a comment. Shiv Sena "sees" this comment "as a "vindication of its position," the newspaper said and had the party’s leader in the civic body say "we have been demanding that the onslaught of outsiders (sic) needs to be stopped".

The next stop was the opposition Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) whose spokesperson "attacked the Shiv Sena which has ruled the richest civic body in the country for 15 years".  The Congress, however, was a little wary and wanted a consensus across party lines to deal with migration."

As if that were not enough, Raj Thackeray was sought out and his view was put up prominently as an along-side box where he says,"Just coming out with reports will not suffice. Slums are mushrooming by the hundreds every day. If droves of people continue to move in, it will not only affect the environment, but also lead to a collapse of systems. Injustice against sons of the son will increase". It seemed as though Kshatriya, the commissioner was talking about 75,000 migrants being added to one ward of the city every day!

If you note the choice of words -" outsiders, on which the newspaper leveraged the entire story -" and the comments sought by the newspaper, it becomes evident that the lure of sexing it up was too strong. The front page banner headline said it all: Look who’s attacking outsiders now... BMC commissioner. It is possible now to foresee what could happen. Everyone would attack the supporters of outsiders and the opponents of migration to Mumbai. That additional day-time population of 75,000 per sq km meant a serious failure of planning, especially when from the time of Independence, committees have cautioned against linear development of the city which remains unheeded even today. But that was not the issue getting any attention!

If only the newspaper and its staff had understood the city’s problems better and learnt to portray it in right perspective, the city would benefit. All it gained was a headline to confuse the city with,  and stoke up the anti-migrant sentiment. A similar mischief by the media, both print and television network, with Raj Thackeray, was noted on this portal on September 16, 2008 when he compared Amitabh Bachchan’s love for his native Uttar Pradesh to Raj’s own pride in Mumbai as criticism of the former by the latter.

 Like Kshatriya, Raj too explained it in a press conference telecast live by a channel and others had the bytes but they stuck to their misinterpretation which Raj Thackeray found was a useful, even if self-limiting instrument to make limited electoral gains at least in Mumbai as a party that had broken away from the parent Shiv Sena.  Which brings me to the conclusion: media can and do often go wrong. More often than that, the media deliberately, wantonly, go wrong.  This is an antithesis of restraint; it is provoking a new debate where no room existed in the first place.