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