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.
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