The nation needs to know

Why is the Indian news media going down the tube?

Madhuri Dixit dancing to "TV pe breaking news hai mera ghagra," (My skirt is the breaking news on television) in the 2013 blockbuster Yeh Jawaani hai Deewani was the epiphany. How did we come to this? When did Indian news media the voice of the underdog, thedoer of right things in popular Hindi cinema become a bawdy song in a red-light area.

That really was the nadir for Indian journalism. You could argue that there have been many low points, before and after. Like earlier this year when several news channels deliberately showed doctored footage of the Kanhaiya episode to get audiences to react to left-wing politics as anti-nationalist rhetoric. When the Election Commission keeps pointing to instances of paid news. In 2012 when two Zee News editors were accused of demanding Rs 100 crore from Naveen Jindal. Or when a union minister referred to journalists as 'presstitutes' and got away with it. The song,one among dozens of moments in popular films that now routinely lampoon news media, is just a punctuation mark.When popular cinema starts stereotyping you it sticks for generations - look at politicians.

Things haven't got better since. In 2016 media trust fell by a full 7 per cent, from 70 to 63 per cent, among the general public in India. Like the rest of the world, we trust news from search engines, friends and family more than that from journalists, says the annual Edelman Trust Barometer report.

And yet India is one of the worst places for a journalist. In the same year, in a ranking of press freedom by Reporters Without Borders India ranked 133out of 180 countries, behind Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Palestine. Read Subir Ghosh and Paranjoy Guha-Thakurta's book, Sue the Messenger, to know of the investigative stories that get stifled by poor laws, spineless media owners and aggressive advertisers.

So are Indian journalists an untrustworthy, inept lot. Or are they a hard working bunch cracking stories that lead to them being abused, silenced or killed.

What is truth?

The truth is not an either/or response - because cause and effect, symptom and malaise are now so mixed upand things have been spiralling out of control for so long - that everything is a blur.

More than 300 news channels, almost 15,000 newspapers and thousands of websites should make the Indian news market a case study - of the world's largest democracy discovering the joys of freed up media. It isn't.

Television news is a series of polarised catfights with anchors becoming spokespersons for various political parties. Arnab Goswami's accusatory, judgemental style, on display at 9 pm every night, is a bestseller going by Times Now's audience and revenue numbers. (Goswami declined to be interviewed). English news television has become "A very vulgar dance of opinion and agenda, in a highly polarised, magnified echo chamber," says Raghav Bahl, founder Quintillion Media. It isn't as if things are better on Hindi, Telugu or Tamil news channels. "There is a coarseness in public debate and the media reflects that," says Rajdeep Sardesai, consulting editor, India Today Group.

You could argue that print has kept the quality flag flying. But some newspaper groups have done irreparable harm to the genre by taking money for editorial coverage or to cover parties and events. Then there are private treaties under which both print and TV companies give media space in exchange for equity in a company - an arrangement fraught with ethical conflict.

Online, supposed to be the harbinger of change, has disappointed because, "a lot of the new websites are about opinion not news," points out Mukund Padmanabhan, editor, The Hindu. Then there is native advertising - ads designed and written as editorial content. These bring a bulk of the revenues for many of the websites and apps that young people rely on for news. Online, also houses the monster called social media. Says Rohit Chopra, associate professor, department of communication,Santa Clara University; "The rise of social media plays a huge role in this vicious polarisation (of news). The very effective use of social media by the Hindu Right leading up to the 2014 elections and after has set the template for this, particularly the strategy of using trolls to promote a point of view and shut others down."

Anti-social media

Uday Shankar, CEO Star India was the founding editor of Aaj Tak, which he ran for four years and later CEO, Star News (now ABP). He reckons that the, "Quality (of news media) going down is a symptom not a cause. If the input is pathetic, the output will be pathetic too. Even if everyone was upright and morally correct the quality of news in this country won't improve because what we have is a crisis of talent and business model." Shankar has pointed to the two key reasons for the collapse of news quality; the third is the rise of social media.

Till about a decade back things were going well. In 2002 foreign direct investment and in 2005 foreigninstitutional investment was allowed in print. Newspapers were expanding fast and soon TV joined the fray.Much of this was welcomed as the need of a robust, functioning democracy. In 2000 India had 9 news channels with over one per cent share of TV viewership; in 2008 this went to 67 and 8 respectively, says TAM Media Research data. The pressure of filling 24 hour news channels and getting audiences faster pushed many Hindi channels to flirt with heavy doses of judgemental, opinion-based content. In 2008 the scales, tipped, arguably, with the coverage of 14 year old Aarushi Talwar's murder. It was a classic case of trial by media with theories being thrown about carelessly. One news channel actually carried a dramatised version of events which painted the father as the killer. Were these trained journalists?

There were other factors at play. Of the 122 news channels in 2011, about half were owned by a random clutch of real estate barons, politicians, state governments and religious bodies, a proportion that has possibly remained the same. These had no intention of running a journalistically-strong news organisation that made money. They simply wanted to use the channel as a tool of influence or fear. In a high-cost business, the coming of this set of players,that did not expect returns and did not want to sell out,put the serious firms in a pincer between capital, revenues and costs.

News TV, a high operating cost business, is starved of pay revenues thanks to warped price legislation and a cable sector that is largely controlled by political parties and their affiliates.Its ad dependence and the consequent race for maximum eyeballs at minimum costs inevitably meant a decline in standards. "To function well a free press needs walls between editorial and advertising/commercial. Over the last few years the walls have become porous and then came down," says Paritosh Joshi, CEO, India TV.

More than 800 million TV viewers, 300 million newspaper readers and over a 170 million smartphone users should add up to a thriving, profitable market with a range of good to tabloid options. Except for the top few newspaper groups and four news broadcasters, no one makes money on news in India. So the market is going completely tabloid.

The final straw came with social media. "About 30 years ago if you tried to mix opinion and news, in that limited circulation world, your rant would reach a million people at most. The last ten years has seen a complete amplification of audience reach via TV, magnified by the net and social media," says Bahl. It creates ghettoes where say Donald Trumpor Brexit fans talk only like-minded people. Their decisions to vote on critical national issues are based on flawed, at times false and misleading facts and analysis. And "Mass media spends too much time looking at social mediaand decides what to do. Social media is not going to discuss agriculture, science or technology," points out Sardesai.

Getting the mojo back into media

The solutionsmore than a dozen experts, editors and analysts offer fall in four broad buckets.

One, acknowledging the problem. Media owners react to any talk of declining quality by putting their heads in the sand. There is an absolute refusal to discuss ways out, talk of giving teeth to autonomous institutions or of forcing the bad firms to behave. Note that media is largely self regulated in India. So fixing its quality issues rests with the industry. Some steps are being taken though. For instance on April 23 this year the executive committee of the Editors Guild of India decided to update the Guild's nine year old Code of Practice for Journalists to take into account 'contemporary concerns,' says its president, Raj Chengappa.

Two, making the business work so that edit can be free and that means pushing for pay revenues."More and more people are willing to pay for serious content like The Economist orNew York Times. There is a correction though it is nascent," thinks Padmanabhan. In India Malayala Manorama for instance sells at high Rs 6.50. As a result pay brings in over 40 per cent of its revenues and gives it the editorial backbone it needs, says director, Jayant Mathew.

Bahl points to another thing - "In banking or other sectors you can raise FDI. There is no mandated equity structure which perpetuates a monopoly like in media. That is why you are seeing media being sold to corporate houses, because media firms can't raise capital and scale up," says he. Other experts say that mandatory transparency in media ownership - putting everything about ownership, funding, costs and revenue online regularly - would force a lot of bad capital out.

Three, work with the government to push for giving the Press Council of India punitive powers and also to have a more actionable, transparent law for sedition and defamation. "More than any regulatory threat what you have seen in Chhattisgarh, when the state plays a vindictive role, is worrying," thinks Bahl.

Four, training, processes and institutionalising good journalism. "Can we reward good journalism, create symbols of what is possible," wonders Sardesai. Maybe quality can be promoted by the refusal of serious voices in Indian journalism to be drawn into the abuse-driven, discourse-devoid world of social media. For example Ravish Kumar, senior editor, NDTVhas been off Twitter since August last yearafter being trolled. "There needs to be an urgent conversation about the debased culture of trolling in the Indian online space. This is a global problem, but Indian trolls, especially those on the Hindu Right, are widely recognized as being especially vicious, violent, and misogynistic," says Chopra.

Will Indian media owners have the vision and the courage to do what it takes?

Dr Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of research, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

Is extreme polarisation in news media normal in a democracy (the US for e.g.)?

Partisan polarization is at the margins of most media environments, including that in the US. We should remember that Fox News and MSNBC have limited audience share compared to ABC, CBS, NBC etc. European markets with long traditions of partisan newspaper journalism are as polarized as the market in the US.

Does it happen at a certain stage of the democracy's evolution?

There are two main routes to partisan polarization. The first is the political route. Some news media are closely affiliated with political parties or movements, and privilege their views. The second, the business route is more about product differentiation. In a very crowded media market, individual channels need to find a way to stand out. Having a very clear political position is one way to do that. When politics leads to polarization, it is because proprietors want it, when product differentiation leads to polarization, it is because there is a market for it. In some countries, media become polarized because political blocks are spoiling for a fight, in other cases, media become polarized because society is polarized.

What can be done in markets where polarisation becomes the termite eating away at the quality of discourse?

It's not at all clear that polarization is bad for the quality of discourse. It all depends on what you want. Some people argue disagreement is the heart of democracy, other seek a common ground. Arguably, a functioning public debate needs both robust disagreement and a basis of commonly agreed facts.