The search for news media

The pathetic state of India's news media - particularly news TV - leaves it at the mercy of international media and a few Indian brands that have the capacity to cover a story like the pandemic

Dainik Bhaskar’s factual reporting of the pandemic has been winning a lot of praise. Among other stories, it reported the floating dead bodies in the Ganga. Hundreds of its reporters have scoured municipal records, stood outside crematoriums, hospitals and on the riverbeds where bodies were discovered. Their reports indicate deaths are 5-10 times more than the official figures.  

A report earlier this week in The Economist backs that. It quotes two surveys to conclude that the number of Covid deaths in India were around two million or are five to seven times more than the official count. That is twice the number of people who died during partition in 1947. This level of under-reporting impacts how we react to the pandemic, our ability to predict the next wave and how prepared we are for it with oxygen, medicines, hospital beds et al. 

Besides Dainik Bhaskar and a handful of other Indian newspapers like The Telegraph, foreign brands such as The New York Times, BBC and CNN, have been doing some of the best reporting on the pandemic out of India. Much of this would be nice if it wasn’t so ironical. 

Dainik Bhaskar, a national newspaper is winning (well-deserved) kudos for doing, read this carefully, “its job.” Indians trying to understand the true impact of the pandemic are turning to foreign publications, which have just a handful of reporters in India against the hundreds any major Indian newspaper would have, for accurate reportage. 

This, then, is the real disaster for the “world’s largest democracy.” The pathetic state of India’s news media — particularly news TV — leaves it at the mercy of international media and a few Indian brands (online or in print) that have the courage, expertise and the money to cover a story like the pandemic. 

When and how did we reach this state? And what can be done to change it? 

Many of the top publications today, Malayala Manorama, AnandaBazar Patrika, The Hindu, are veterans of the Indian freedom struggle. These were financed by benevolent businessmen. Whatever their colour or leanings, most newspapers, the only news media in India for decades, did a good job of reporting facts and informing our decisions as citizens, consumers or human beings. Many African and South Asian countries, that got independence around the same time, slipped into dictatorships or Army rule. India remained a largely peaceful democracy. This was in large measure due to a free press.  

What changed from the 1990s was the liberalisation-fuelled growth of news media. This was wonderful for a country that loves to debate, argue, question. Every major daily began launching editions outside its home state. From nine in 2000, news channels went to 39 in 2005 to a world-beating 383 currently. 

But without a policy framework or any decent self-regulation, this led to three things. 

One, the other business interests of owners clashed with the need for good journalism. While this happened earlier too, editors were powerful and stood up to owners. Also, several owners found that it made business sense to be anti-establishment, so the market balanced itself out. 

Two, the colour of money and ownership changed. What dodgy money did to the film business in the 1980s and ‘90s, it did to the TV news business at the turn of the millennium. Huge amounts of capital from real estate, cable, and political affiliates brought in people with an eye on propaganda or influence peddling, not journalism. This continued with the growth of online.  

Three, a crazy level of competition and an abject dependence on ad revenues made for a deadly cocktail. The need of 383 news channels to fill 24 hours and reach the maximum eyeballs has led to a horrific plummeting  of standards. Indian news channels are world famous for their screechy invective. There is no reporting to speak of. 

Add the new IT Rules notified earlier this year. They make it more expensive and cumbersome to report and bring the state too close for comfort — especially for budding, solidly journalistic news sites. The pandemic has been the last straw decimating both the top line and sales. 

Newspapers reach 421 million people a month, news television over 600 million and digital news about 454 million. Seventeen of the top 20 online news brands are from legacy media brands such as NDTV or Express, going by Comscore India data. They have continued to dominate this list. Many command way over the average time spent on news. 

Therein lies the first hint of a solution.  On-demand reading (Business Standard online), hearing (Spotify) and watching (Netflix) has given wings to pay revenues. India now has an impressive 58 million OTT subscribers. While most people pay for DTH, cable and (a token) newspapers, just about a million pay to read online news. Publishers are now trying to push that number. The idea is to get at least half their revenues from pay, freeing them from the need to cater to the lowest common denominator. That will mean more money is pumped into journalism, reporters, specialists, training and analytical tools. 

This leads to the second hint of a solution — involving people in the news they consume. It is a bit like making people aware of the dangers of junk food (dodgy TV channels and compromised newspapers/websites) and the benefits of healthy food. Readers who pay for news are naturally more involved and demanding and will help push up standards.

Does that mean that readers who do not pay should get algorithm-driven, misinformation-laden news? That is what happens. Perhaps involving them a little more in the news-gathering process, a bit like The Print is doing, might make them appreciate the effort and expense it involves and therefore why news needs to be pay. 

There are regulatory solutions, like tweaking ownership rules to dissuade dodgy capital, freeing up Doordarshan and creating a safe atmosphere for reporting. But those need a stronger, more mature democracy. That in turn needs a much better news media, bringing us right back where we started.  

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