Hindustan Times
Indian papers need to change
As you may know, Britain is currently in the grips of a political crisis. On 5th June, six ministers resigned, the ruling Labour party was routed in the European Parliament elections, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown clung on to power by a thread.
The whole drama was played out on television and then reported extensively in the next day’s newspapers. I am going to reproduce a few things that the newspapers said on 6th June.
“Peter Mandelson was the man accused of betraying Gordon Brown, now he is the one who is saving his political life. The Prince of Darkness has been Gordon’s only ray of light in the past few months. The sinister minister has become the acceptable face of the government…”
Or how about this one: “Our Prime Minister emerged at 4.45 pm yesterday with that strange smile plastered on his face.
‘I am here to be totally candid, to accept my responsibility, and to set out what I intend to do,’ he announced. Well, if this is candid, then I’d hate to see shifty. There were even a few blatant porkies in there, such as when he claimed he never ever wanted to move Alistair Darling as Chancellor. To that, many would say just one word: ‘Balls.’
So he’s taking responsibility. But then, as he explained, it’s not his fault.”
Strong stuff? And where do you suppose it appeared?
No, not in any fringe publication but in that pillar of the establishment, The Times.
The commentary in more irreverent newspapers such as The Guardian was even more devastating. Nobody bothered to pull his punches or to treat the Prime Minister with massive doses of respect. Instead, all the papers told it as they saw it.
Imagine now that this crisis had occurred in India. How would our papers have covered it? Most would have written straight reports recounting news that everybody knew anyway because the whole country had watched TV.
There would have been virtually no analysis. And even those people that carried behind-the-news stories would have stuck to a boring, super-respectful style. Ditto for the columnists. How could any editor possibly allow a columnist to make fun of the Prime Minister?
That’s one reason why Indian papers seem to me to be in terminal editorial decline. In England, they have worked out that people get their news from TV or the Internet. They read newspapers for colour, for insight, for quality writing and for the kind of stuff television cannot provide.
The way the British press covered the June crisis is a good example. The papers ran relatively brief and straightforward news stories summarizing the action for the two or three people who had missed the details on TV. And then, they provided pages and pages of commentary, background, profiles, analysis and opinion.
You judged each newspaper not on how it reported the news but on what it made of the story.
In India, alas, we are caught in several traps. One, most newspaper editors still pretend that television does not exist and are caught in a time warp. Two, nobody bothers with analysis. Three, we believe that good writing belongs in magazines and not in newspapers, so most newspaper copy is written in the most boring fashion. And four, we suffer from an overdose of cringe-making respect for politicians even when most of our readers have already written off the political class.
Think about it. Each time there is a political crisis, we are glued to our TV sets. But do we ever learn anything new when we look at the papers the next morning?
I am prepared to accept that there are exceptions. During the last election campaign, the HT under Sanjoy Narayan, tried to be innovative in its coverage and encouraged analysis and opinion pieces.
But the rest of the press played it straight. And was largely irrelevant as a consequence.
(16 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
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(4.75 out of 5)
Indian Reply:
June 24th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Two points.
I agree with one of the comments that news should be covered only as news. Period. There should be no colouring of news, no subtle meaning infused by the reporter / writer, no allusions, no fictional statements appearing as questions.
Second – You make a good point on analysis. I think on this front most of Indian media fails. Our media analyses generally seems to be driven in the direction of preconceived notions and that is really bad. Eg. Manmohan is a LSE graduate and ergo all his economic policies will always be good. The economic policy should and be only and only evaluated based on its own merits and not on MMS’s background. Analysis should be based on factual data and research and this is terribly wanting in the writings of our columnists / opinion makers. One cannot pass of something merely saying that it is in “my opinion” if it is not based on facts.
Third – A lot of opinions and articles need deep understanding of subjects – for eg. law, constitution, energy security (eg. during nuclear deal). This is aproblem area because a lot of them seem to be trained in journalism which is good but do not have a grasp of the subject they are covering and anyways do not bother to research it. For eg. – No media house and I repeat no media house did a good job or articulating all the pro’s and con’s of the nuclear deal. Some took a positive stance and some others a negative. But most could not understand the nitty gritty of hyde act, 123, NSG, etc. The point is not whether the deal is good or bad – but whether the media put forth a thorough and detailed analysis. Most were commenting in the lines “India and U.S. will forge a deep relationship, apartheid will end, MMS is intelligent and hence the deal has to be good, BJP started it and now is opposing for politics and hence the deal is good, etc).
Fourth – I think the indian media is pretty good at panning the BJP, though you are correct that it is relatively much more softer towards the congress.
My two cents.
[Reply]
Indian Reply:
June 24th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Oh and one more point.
There is also the issue of style and substance.
1)Style – The british are generally cynical and have the habit of being critical and satirical about everything. You see it in their tv shows, their compere’s, their writings and even the tour guide in London’s “hop on hop off” bus service. Not sure, if we necessarily want to copy that. We can rather have our own style and if that means being a little reverent, so be it.
2) Substance – If the british media are generally good at the quality of analysis, investigations, reporting, etc. then that is something to think about. I have already commented on this above.
Thanks for the patience!!
[Reply]
Deepak Reply:
June 24th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
While I agree with Vir that there should be significantly more analysis of news in the newspapers, it need not be as irreverent as the British papers.
[Reply]
Prabhakar Deshpande Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Indian Journalism is Cowardly.
Everyone knows politicians are crooks, corrupt to core and callous about citizens.
Yet journalists kow tow to them.
It takes courage to call spade a spade, a crook a crook.
And there is no scarcity of crooks in India.
Only scarcity of courageous.
Advani said of emergency – “They were asked to bend, but they crawled”.
Emergency is over, journalists in India still crawl.