[Reader-list] Advertising, Bollywood, Corporate power

[Jeebesh]

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Advertising, Bollywood, Corporate power

http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article108458.ece?homepage=true



P. Sainath



Issues today have to be dressed up in ways certified by the corporate  
media. They have to be justified not by their importance to the public  
but by their acceptability to the media, their owners and sponsors.





That the terrible tragedy in Pune demands serious, sober coverage is a  
truism. One of the side-effects of the ghastly blast has been  
unintended, though. The orgy of self-congratulation that marked the  
media coverage of just about everything since January is now in pause  
mode. Maybe the flak they copped for their handling of the November  
2008 Mumbai terror blasts has something to do with it. But there is,  
so far, some restraint. At least, relative to the meal they made of  
the 2008 blasts.

Otherwise, through January and early February, the media stood up  
bravely for freedom of expression and some other constitutional rights  
you've never heard of. They slew the demons of lingual chauvinism and  
worse. And they're just spoiling for a fight with any other enemy of  
our proud democracy. Just so long as they can keep Bollywood in  
central focus.

Every issue is now reduced to a fight between individuals, heroic,  
villainous or just fun figures. So the complex issues behind the  
shunning of Pakistani cricketers by the Indian Premier League are  
reduced to a fight between Shah Rukh Khan and Bal Thackeray. (As one  
television channel began its programme: “Shah Rukh stands tall. His  
message to the nation ...”). The agonies of Bundelkhand are not about  
hunger and distress in our Tiger Economy. They are just a stand-off  
between Rahul Gandhi and Mayawati. The issues of language and  
migrations in Maharashtra are merely a battle between Rahul Gandhi and  
Uddhav Thackeray. And the coverage is all about who blinked first, who  
lost face.

The devastating rise in food prices (let's skip the boring factors)  
and the mess in agriculture are a face-off between Prime Minister  
Manmohan Singh and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. The pathetic  
squabble within the Samajwadi Party is virtually a television serial.  
A blow-by-blow account of Amar Singh's valiant bid to retain his  
honour against Mulayam Singh's yahoos. (Indeed, some Hindi channels  
have begun using the language of theatre to report it — Act II, Scene  
II. And there was one programme which Mr. Amar Singh ended humming  
verses from his favourite film song). The Bt brinjal story had mostly  
only one villain — Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. He had no  
visible adversary unless you pose the humble Brinjal as the hero. But  
that won't work for television. The other, more sinister heroes in  
this media story preferred to function from behind the scenes, plying  
newspapers and channels with faked data and false information. Hell  
hath no fury like a powerful corporate scorned, as the Minister is  
learning.

Issues? The same media that passionately fought for freedom of  
expression for a month from mid-January had billed the 2009 Lok Sabha  
poll as one without issues. The country was actually burning with  
them, but they didn't make good television either. More accurately,  
the dominant media hadn't the slightest intention of covering them  
with any sincerity. The story of rising food prices remains one of the  
worst reported — no matter how much space it has been given. Sure,  
there have been exceptions — as in the case of some outstanding  
reports on Bundelkhand. But they've been just that. Exceptions.

If these last six weeks have been about freedom of expression, we have  
neither. Or, at best, a twisted freedom and a tortured expression.  
There is little freedom for thousands of journalists in the corporate  
media and the few editors who still believe we ought to be doing a  
better job of informing the public on the key issues of our time.  
There's very little freedom for readers or viewers, too. For days on  
end, it didn't matter which television channel you switched to, it was  
SRK on all of them. When that movie drew to a close, the 'Rahul Gandhi  
storms Sena den' film was released and sustained. A visit of some  
hours produced days of footage. But with the end of Mr. Gandhi's visit  
to Mumbai, it was back to Shah Rukh Khan. Of course, viewers had the  
freedom to choose, which sets us apart from totalitarian states. They  
could choose any channel, from among many, to watch SRK saying exactly  
the same thing, at the same time. And they will be free to choose  
again when the figure is Amitabh Bachchan or Aamir Khan.

If what we've watched on critical issues these past weeks is  
expression, we're through scraping the barrel. We're drilling holes in  
its bottom.

Many corporate-owned media houses have sacked hundreds of journalists  
and non-journalist staff since late 2008. Hundreds of other  
journalists have suffered wage cuts. Of course, the ‘right to know' of  
readers and viewers does not extend to this information. Why scare the  
poor lambs? And how can you tell them the truth about that while  
everyday crowing about the once-again booming economy? It might lead  
audiences to ask that dull, boring question: “If things are so good,  
why are you axing so many people?” Answering that means revealing the  
interests the corporate media have in the fate of the stock market. It  
means talking about their need to keep the shares of the companies  
they are linked to (or have heavily invested in) afloat and buoyant.  
That is regardless of how rotten they are within. No matter how their  
own shares in those companies were obtained. And no agonising over how  
unethical the means used to keep them heated. This was in part behind  
the fatwa issued by some newspapers to their staff banning the ‘R'  
word last year. Recession is what happens in the United States. In  
India, it was a slowdown — and it's already turning around  
brilliantly. The hundreds of sacked and ruined staff have little  
freedom to speak of. Even the professional communicators within them  
cannot tell their own audiences their story. Cannot tell them they  
were laid off, let alone tell them why.

Leave aside escaping a recession, India Shining is back. The cover  
story of a leading weekly gushes over the fantastic ‘rural resurgence'  
that is, in fact, saving all of us. Farmers are doing just great.  
Drip, micro-sprinkler, and other micro irrigation, the stories in it  
suggest, played a major role in this hidden-from-the-human-eye  
revival. This resurgence is seen more in urban media than in rural  
India. And the proliferation of such stories across the media spectrum  
reflects, in part, the strenuous media efforts of a major Maharashtra- 
based company. A corporate group that spends a fortune on propaganda  
and whose interests in this line of irrigation are pushed by some of  
the most powerful members of the Union Cabinet. Oddly, stories such as  
these come out even as the government's own projections for growth in  
agriculture are dismaying.

The main ‘rural resurgence' story hit the stands the same day the  
National Crime Records Bureau officially brought the 2008 data for  
farm suicides on to its website. The 16,196 suicides that year brought  
the tally of farmers' suicides since 1997 to 199,132. That's the  
largest single, sustained wave of such suicides ever recorded in  
history — anywhere. Guess nobody told them about the resurgence.  
Farmers in 2008 did know of that year's loan waiver, but it didn't  
stop large numbers of them from taking their lives.

The ‘rural resurgence' story comes after any number of the  
government's own committees, commissions and reports suggest that it  
revise poverty figures upwards. Whether it's the Suresh Tendulkar  
committee, the BPL Expert Group, or earlier the National Commission  
for Enterprises in the Unorganised sector. Or a U.N. study which  
reports that 34 million more Indians remained poor or joined their  
ranks in 2008 and 2009, because of the ‘slowdown.' That is, 34 million  
more than would have met that fate prior to the 2008 crisis. It  
matters little if Census data show us that 8 million cultivators quit  
agriculture between just 1991 and 2001. (That is, on average, well  
over 2,000 a day, every day for 10 years.) Or that the 2011 Census  
just months from now will show us how many more have fled agriculture  
since then, un-seduced by the rural resurgence. Never mind the facts.  
One giant private irrigation company stands to make its already huge  
fortune bigger. Good for growth.

The ABC of Indian media roughly translates as Advertising, Bollywood  
and Corporate power. Some years ago, the ‘C' would have been cricket,  
but that great sport is fast becoming a small cog in the large wheel  
of corporate profit. (In the IPL, the ABC of media converge, even  
merge.) And, of course, everything but everything, has to be  
bollywoodised. To now earn attention, issues have to be dressed up  
only in ways certified by the corporate media. They have to be  
justified not by their importance to the public but by their  
acceptability to the media, their owners and sponsors. The more  
entrenched that ABC gets, the greater the danger to the language of  
democracy the media so proudly claim to champion.