Decay of Fourth Estate

“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” Malcolm X

Access to information is an important attribute to a healthy democracy as it not only ensures that citizens get correct and timely information to help them make informed choices, but also keep elected representatives under check with objective criticism. Until mid-80s when we did not have 24X7 television and fewer newspapers, what was reported in media was plain and simple event-based news. Today we have nearly 75,000 newspapers selling over 100 million copies a day and nearly 700 satellite channels (including close to 100 news channels). And, yet, there is less news and more opinions and media is often accused of providing a biased point-of-view on issues and selectively covering what they perceive to be the news. Has this ‘Check & Balance’ protection in the form of Fourth estate granted to citizens been considerably diluted over the past 25+ years?

Increased literacy levels and commercialization of television saw rapid advances in both print and electronic media during the last decade of 20th century. Today, with over 160 million homes having television sets covering almost 2/3rd of the population, India is the third largest TV market in the world. One major impact of the changing media landscape was that it attracted business houses resulting in concentration of print media in hands of a few large business groups. This also prompted the government to introduce a regulatory body to act as the industry watchdog and thus, was born Press Council of India (PCI) in 1978. Main objectives of PCI were to help media maintain independence; build a code of conduct in accordance with high professional standards and to maintain high standards of public taste. PCI was also empowered to censure errant newspapers and news agencies.

With the emergence of internet, news creation and distribution has been greatly influenced by new technologies and affected readership habits. Advent of internet also prompted the government to introduce Information technology Act in 2000, to guard the citizens against cyber crimes and provide protection to consumer’s confidentiality. But, as media coverage widened in India with rapid technological advances and new readership interfaces, the quality of reporting declined. Increased competition among media houses to gain readership/viewership encouraged them to cast aside ethical practices, which caused a downward spiral in its quality standards. Also, with coalition formations at the center (and increased combativeness between the two major political alliances) becoming the rule rather than exception, government interference in media became the order of the day. Media houses fell over each other to please the party in power in order to get a bigger slice of the advertisements sponsored by it. In this, Congress party displayed its uncanny ability to manipulate the media to its advantage and over the years built a relationship of mutual benefit with media houses. Slowly but surely it degenerated into ‘Paid news’ & the death of ethical journalism. Consider this short conversation published recently in New York Times, which captures the menace of Paid news very succinctly:

“If you give us business, we will cover you, but if you don’t give us money,” one reporter said with a pause and a shrug. “Well, we will still cover you.” To Shefali Misra, a candidate from the upstart Aam Aadmi Party here, the threat was clear.“They’ll smear me if I don’t pay,” she said grimly after the reporters left.”

The government woke up to this deepening malaise and set up a committee and a report was tabled in parliament in May 2013. The report berated the government for failing to rein-in the scourge of Paid News and was highly critical of a ‘Toothless” PCI and highlighted the futility of self-regulation. How ineffective various agencies were is summed up in this statement of President of Editors Guild, quoted in the report “As an association what can we do? We can only put moral pressure. We have no legal powers against our members.” Since, the report held both the government and media guilty of promoting Paid news, it was not surprising that the report received scanty coverage in press and was promptly buried in the archives. Meanwhile, public too was becoming increasingly aware of how the media was squeezing money out of political parties, who in turn were using the media to improve their electoral prospects. In this backdrop, where mainstream media is perceived to be disconnected from public, discerning consumers, particularly in large cities, have started turning to Social Media(SM) for trustworthy news and honest opinions on current issues. Ever increasing popularity of online news and independent blogs like NitiCentral , Centreright India , Mediacrooks , Yugvani and several others is a testimony to this. Even Narendra Modi’s comment soon after polling ended on May 12th, “We have to profusely thank social media – it has caused the downfall of manufactured lies and half-truths at a nascent stage” tells a lot on loss of credibility of mainstream media.

With Narendra Modi charting an unprecedented victory for BJP and soon to take over as Prime Minister, future prospects appear quite worrisome for mainstream media houses which ran a relentless slander campaign against Modi for 12 years. Fear of facing a large income stream (government advertisement) getting cut-off is uppermost in their minds as it may prove a death knell for many of them. It is also likely that many of the stringent proposals contained in I&B Ministry’s Standing Committee report (which was headed by Rao Inderjit Singh, formerly a Congress party MP and now a prominent BJP MP from Gurgaon in Haryana), may be introduced to strengthen editorial integrity and fact-checking mechanism, both of which will further erode their already depleting margins.

Meanwhile, rapidly growing mobile technology, wireless networks, affordable smartphones & e-readers are giving mainstream media a run for their money. These Social media platforms are providing powerful tools to connect and enable the reader to access constantly updated, interactive news in real time as also entertainment.

To conclude, unless media houses restructure their business models, bring ethical journalistic practices to win back viewer/reader confidence, mainstream media will continue to ‘bleed’ and loose readership in favour of online media. Simultaneously, government will have to follow a ‘Hands-Off’ policy in news reporting and guarantee autonomy from official regulation to enable media to serve public good. Government should also refrain from rewarding the media from distorting news and make PCI more effective.

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