A sting operation by a news channel showed that opinion polls are rigged by the firms conducting them. The exposé was given coverage in many news channels and newspapers. The sting operation was lauded as great journalism by some politicians. But the companies that manipulated opinion polls were being used by politicians and political parties. Should the matter end with the unmasking of these companies and the people who ran themIJ They are the lesser criminals in the racket of opinion polls.
The bigger criminals are the people who paid them to get opinion polls rigged. Where was the money to distort opinion polls coming fromIJ In the enthusiasm to praise the channel that exposed the opinion poll makers, it was not commonly noticed that its investigative journalism had done the easier, smaller job of revealing the identity of the smaller culprits. Real investigative journalism would be to go further and reveal all the people who gave money or used other tactics to rig opinion polls in their favour. Would any media house go ahead and do thisIJ
I will not attempt to answer this question. How can IIJ Will the world believe me if I say the media will never do real investigative journalism because they are dishonest and crookedIJ Do I have the proof to say thatIJ Of course, the media in India are doing a great job, fired by honesty and honesty alone. They can never be biased. How can they beIJ After all, they are being run by people steeped in honesty who have no reason to run biased coverage. So the people of India get to know only the truth through the media. Nobody has the right to question the media unless he has solid evidence against them.
Well, I have no evidences to prove our media do anything wrong. But I just dreamt up a story. I will share my story with you. It is about a fictional country and its media. I make it very clear again — the media in the story I tell below are not real, they are pure imagination. If anybody connects this fiction with the media in India today, it is purely his judgement and only he is responsible for it.
Here goes... There’s a country where common people know only very vaguely and faintly that the people owning and running the media have their own financial, political and social interests that they will necessarily protect while doing investigative journalism. They don’t know in concrete and specific terms the identity, pursuits and interests of the owners and financiers of the media. The media can sell their news in a free market only if people have faith that they are reasonably unbiased and genuine. Common people believe that the media are doing their job with a fair degree of honesty.
Media houses will lose credibility and saleability in the market if the people buying and using their coverage come to know that the people selling them news have stakes in keeping it biased. The fact is that in this country journalists are not the people giving news. They are just the public faces whose talent for spinning, colouring, distorting and manipulating media products like news, views, analyses and facts covering various issues is used by owners and financiers of media houses.
At times journalists also become partial owners of media houses after long years of close collusion with owners and backers. A journalist gets to know a lot of dirty secrets in proximate alliances with owners and backers that become necessary to execute their unholy agenda. It is best then for him and the owners and backers if he becomes a part owner and backer too. At times an owner who has never done any active journalism in his blessed life serves as the topmost journalist in his media house because that portfolio best serves the journalism his house does to serve him.
In this fictional country, the real content and intent of the coverage is decided not by journalists but by people who have all kinds of nefarious stakes in the operation of the media. Journalists just use their linguistic talents to execute the designs of the people who hire and fire them — the owners and financiers of media houses.
At regular intervals the nation is served pieces of investigative journalism to keep it believing in the media and their commitment to truth. The real motive of this investigative journalism is not to catch the real culprits, the big, big ones actually running the dirty show involving the biggest crimes against the nation. Investigative journalism cannot touch these real, big culprits because among the things they do to protect themselves is control the media through fear and favour.
A bit of fake investigative journalism that catches a few small wrongdoers suits the media houses and those who run them. It keeps public faith intact so that the media can continue this merry game and serve the criminal interests of the people owning them. Very fine use of the intellect and language is needed to get all this done. That’s where journalists with talent come in. They are paid well and command respect and following among common people as intellectuals with deep insight and knowledge.
This image serves them well in being sophisticated, evolved tools in the hands of their masters. Journalists in this imaginary country are mostly people from the middle or lower classes and it is a great thing for them to have become successful journalists. They live with dignity, their family gets a decent lifestyle and they think they have finally done it — live the middle class dream. All this is perfect for the people using their powers over the word, written and spoken. Journalists should feel great about themselves — that will keep them going in the business of selling news. And society should feel great about journalists. Society must respect and take seriously the people it believes are the neutral and unbiased messengers of the truth. In this fictional country, the frightening truth about the real media — the owner media behind the journalist media—has never been really known by common people. This country has evil piled upon nasty evil but the innumerable devils doing all the evil can never be caught because they control the four estates. You see, this country is a democracy complete with the four estates.
In this country, there is no evidence against the evil media. And nobody can say anything against the media because well, there’s no evidence against them. Quite a depressing story. But no bother, it can be dismissed as pure imagination. The one thing common between this fictional country and our India is that in both nobody has proved till now that the media have any filth. That commonality can be dismissed as pure coincidence. If anyone doubts my claim that the devilish media inhabit only my fiction and not our reality, he is free to not dismiss them till they are somehow actually cleared.
amitshekhara@gmail.com