No, my dear young lady, contrary to what your parents have told you, journalists are not "fanning the flames"

On November 25, I received this message on Facebook:

• [REDACTED]
  

  
  

  All these reports pointing to increase in Hindu extremism. What is your take? My parents insist the media is fanning the flames but I can't believe it.
  
  MY RESPONSE:
  
• 

  11/30, 1:45pm

  Ramesh Prabhu
  

  
  

  Many people, when they refer to the "media", they are, I think, referring primarily to TV news channels.
  
  Take the Aamir Khan episode, for example. If you were watching our 24-hour news channels the day after his comments were reported, you would think this episode was the most important news of the day. But that is the nature of the beast, as Rajdeep Sardesai described it during his talk at our seminar a few years ago.
  
  There were no flames being fanned. It's just that the debates, which become especially raucous on Arnab Goswami's prime-time show, gave the impression that the whole country was talking about this incident.
  
  By way of contrast, take a look at how two leading newspapers reported that same Aamir news item (see photo below). These are the front pages of The Times of India and The Hindu, which I was reading when on holiday in Yercaud last week.
  
  
  

  

  
  
• 11/30, 1:49pm

  Ramesh Prabhu
  

  
  

  But, yes, there are problems and there are difficulties.
  
  Some of the issues that plague journalism today have existed for a long time, for example, the pressures brought upon editors and their staff by the owners.
  
  Some are new, like the MediaNet phenomenon introduced by The Times of India.
  
  Some challenges are specific to today — social media has helped to amplify many issues, I believe, because it's so easy now to "shout from the rooftop" and be heard by all your "friends" and "followers".
  
• 

  11/30, 1:50pm

  Ramesh Prabhu
  

  
  

  Good training is part of the problem — do go through this article I wrote some time ago for a Pune-based magazine: "Media education: From course structure to quality of students, the challenges are immense"

  
  

  
  

  

  THE READING ROOM: Media education: From course structure to quality of students, the challenges...

  
  
• Monday
• 11/30, 8:05pm

  [REDACTED]
  

  
  

  Thank you Ramesh sir for taking the time for an elaborate reply... Your reply puts a lot of things in perspective.
  
  A lot seems to have changed as far as Indian TV channels are concerned in the 10 years that I have been away. But again it's the same everywhere — the TV news in the States is very sensational too!
  I find myself on the other side of the Hindutva issue than the rest of my side of the family. And I get judged a lot but I guess that's par for the course!
  
  *****
  "Indian mainstream news media has a strong culture of protest"
  JUST TO GIVE MY READERS ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE, here are three points I have excerpted from a piece on the Aamir Khan episode published by The Hoot, a New Delhi-based site which was set up to scrutinise the media in India:
  
  First and foremost, Indian mainstream news media has a strong culture of protest, and we are lucky to have such a news media despite claims of creeping corporate control. The culture of protest is much stronger than what we see in western democracies....
  
  Second, the news culture in India suggests that any value-framing of good vs bad in a news story will privilege victims, and should. This is what we would expect from any news media that speaks truth to power....
  
  Three, despite this predisposition, most journalists try to be fair to all sides in political debate over policy....
  
  Read the article in its entirety here: "Aamir's 'alarm' and media bias".

We in the media like a good laugh at ourselves, don't we?

BUD HANDELSMAN

CLIVE GODDARD

JOEL MISHON

JIM SIZEMORE

LES BARTON

MIKE BALDWIN

RAY LOWRY

NICK BAKER

• From the "Media" section in The Mammoth Book of The Funniest Cartoons of all Time, edited by Geoff Tibballs

The Wall Street Journal comes down hard on the "rotten state of India's media"

Ajit Mohan, writing on the WSJ website, couldn't have been more critical of the Indian media. Both print and television journalism get it in the neck. Here's a sampler:

Fragments of news, a significant portion lazily strung together from press agency clippings, are what a careful newspaper reader can sift out between a series of full-page advertisements peddling products, and images of women (usually of non-Indian origin) in different states of undress (in their defense, savvy editors must be acutely aware now that many of their readers prefer to get their titillation from their English-language newspapers than from other sources.) If there is any original reporting at all, it is always a bit unclear if a government agency or a private company has sponsored the report, or whether it is just another unpaid favor that has been granted by the editor. 

Frighteningly, the situation is even worse on television channels. Most news channels just do not do reporting anymore. What counts for reporting is usually a small snippet of a roving ‘journalist’ talking to a few randomly chosen individuals on the streets of Delhi and Mumbai for their take on the big controversy of the day. This then segues to what has become the preferred format of all channels: a panel of six to eight ‘experts’, usually spokesmen of major political parties mixed with out-of-work politicians, newspaper and magazine editors, and the day’s representation from the roving celebrity class of lobbyist-PR agent-commentators (whose reason to be on the panel is never quite clear), ranting at each other while struggling to have their screeching voices heard above the incessant screaming of the anchor. All this while the viewer struggles to keep up with the multiple, disjointed layers of scrolling headlines perennially sliding on the screen below the screamers.

This is a severe indictment surely. It's time to do some soul-searching, perhaps. What do our journalists have to say?

Commitscion Faye D'Souza (Class of 2004), who's an assistant editor with ET Now in Mumbai, offers a lucid comment:

I see the author’s opinion as an extension of the angst felt by several of the upper middle class ‘Thinking Indians’ we meet at dinner parties. It’s true, news has been converted into easy-to-consume, quick-churn packets of "fast food", in some cases compromising investigation and thorough fact-checking in the process.

But it is also true that the very people at dinner parties who complain the loudest are also the consumers of this information. When was the last time any of them read a long-format journalism magazine like Tehelka that puts out well-researched analysis that often runs into several pages? Aren’t we all watching the television shows we claim to detest so vehemently?

When you watch a show you lend eyeballs, which translates to TRPs, and strong TRPs encourage channels to continue putting out these shows because you as a customer seem to want them.

News, today, is a business. Newspapers and channels need to pay salaries and cover overheads as well. I think we should ask ourselves why we watch what we watch. And would we pay good money to watch a toned down, mellow, balanced news show? (Remember here that none of the money you pay your cable or DTH operator reaches the producer of the content.)

Maybe a not-for-profit news organisation is the answer. It would give Indian consumers an opportunity to sample objective journalism and decide for themselves what they prefer.

But for the sake of argument, let’s use Doordarshan as an example of what happens to content when it does not face the pressure of the P&L [profit and loss] statement. Do you think the news on DD is wholesome journalism? I bet you are unable to answer that question because you haven’t watched news on DD lately?

 It really is a chicken and egg situation. Consumers watch and read what’s handed to them because they claim they do not have a choice; content producers continue to churn out the same quality because they believe that is what consumers want.

I also would like to point out that this blog has generalised the lack of conscience across the media. I beg to differ on the stand that we are all the same.

Another Commitscion, Ayushman Baruah (Class of 2008), who is the principal correspondent of InformationWeek in Bangalore, also weighs in:

I agree that Indian media, both print and electronic — especially electronic media — rely on "superficial journalism" and there is no in-depth reporting. There is certainly an absence of analysis.

Some of it is perhaps because even in journalism schools we are taught how to report and never to analyse. The analysis in print is limited to the edit columns and in news channels, if at all, is limited to a brief "editor's take". I have seen this difference even in business reporting between InformationWeek India and our US edition. While we report, they analyse.

But there is, as well, some ambiguity in my mind about the extent to which reporters should analyse, and most important, how much of that analysis is fit to print.

Do television and print journalists have differing views? Your feedback is welcome.