Government advertising poses threat to newspaper independence in Britain

The biggest advertiser in Britain is not Amazon, Apple or Nike - it's the government, writes Chris Sweeney in RT. How independent can newspapers be if they are so dependent on the government?

On the day of writing (February 10), across six national titles – Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Star, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian – there were a staggering 15 pages of government advertising, not counting any supplements. Compare that to the next biggest advertiser on that day in the same titles.

It was the nation’s biggest supermarket chain, Tesco, who reported a 29 percent rise in profits, with four pages. The next biggest was supermarket Asda, bought recently for £6.8 billion, with one and half pages. Budget supermarket chain Aldi and telecommunications firm TalkTalk followed with a single page.

Sweeney argues that this has taken a toll on the reporting on the pandemic:

The newspaper industry has been asleep at the wheel during the pandemic. No hard questions or investigative reporting was done....

But there was a real cost to the newspaper industry's soft soaping: the UK has the highest number of deaths in Europe, with over 113,500. There were embarrassing gaffes, due to an initial lack of scrutiny. 50 million face masks were ordered that couldn't be used, part of a £156 million contract. That was topped by a Royal Air Force plane flying to Turkey to collect gowns. After a ridiculous standoff, the plane finally flew home, but all of the 400,000 didn’t meet standards and were useless.

The British public have been let down by their news-gatherers. There are routine calls for reporters to hold Boris and his ministers to account, along with the leaders of the devolved parliaments – Nicola Sturgeon (Scotland), Mark Drakeford (Wales), and Arlene Foster (Northern Ireland). But the bad news is that when the hard questions needed to be asked, the government’s advertising honeypot kicked in. Now the newspapers are hooked and need the money, so are they really digging as deep as they can?

Robert Parry, peerless journalist

Robert Parry, an outstanding American reporter, who fearlessly exposed the wrongdoings of those in authority, passed away recently. Our media is quite insular, so his passing went largely unreported in the Indian media.

Parry worked for the Associated Press and Newsweek among others. He was the man who uncovered the Iran-Contra affair in Reagan's time. This involved Israel selling arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages. Some of the proceeds of the sales would be diverted to the rebels fighting the Nicaraguan government. The US could not sell arms directly to arm as there was an arms embargo on Iran at the time.

Parry also exposed how Nixon had struck a deal with the Vietnamese to prolong the fighting so that Humphrey would not win the Presidential elections against him and how the Reagan administration colluded with drag traffickers (of all people). In recent times, he tenaciously questioned the Russiagate affair seeking to implicate Russia in the last US Presidential polls that saw Trump being elected as President.

Parry found himself marginalised in the mainstream US media, which, as everybody knows, works closely with the US establishment and the intelligence agencies to promote the establishment agenda. He had to start his own website in order to carry on with his work.

Here is one tribute to him and here is another.

One journalist paid him this tribute:

I would suggest that it is [an] underlying devotion to the plight of mankind which allowed Robert Parry to become Robert Parry. It wasn’t his connections, his political opinions, his ideas, or even his raw talent; it was the fact that he cared so much. The fact that he couldn’t dissociate himself from the horrors of this world, the evil things humans are doing to one another and the omnicidal trajectory we appear to be headed along. He saw it all, he felt it all, and he let it move him.

This is not typically what you hear about a journalist- from fellow journalists. 

RT: Russia's very effective counter to western propaganda

In the course of surfing the Net some time ago, I stumbled on RT, formerly Russia Today, which presents news and perspectives from a point of view (not necessarily Russian) different from that of the mainstream media.

It's easy to brand it an arm of Russian propaganda but I have found the news coverage sober and balanced and, what's important, it does present a refreshingly different perspective. RT is a must read for anybody wanting to arrive at a rounded assessment of international affairs in the face of the fare dished out by mainstream western media.

FT carries a fascinating interview with its editor, Margarita Simonyan.

Here's a telling quote:

“I don’t see why you have the nerve to think that you know better than anyone how to run the world, and who’s marginal in the world and who isn’t. You’ve made so many mistakes, you’ve started so many wars in the last few years, destroyed so many lives, killed so many people, created so many problems.”

Update: Here's a link to an NYT story on how RT is covering the presidential elections in the US. Its' worth pointing out that RT's correspondents and contributors are not just Russian- it hires locals. In the US, it has roped in former talk show host Larry King.

How should companies and their bosses deal with social media?

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella learnt recentlythat just one faux pas can cause serious damage. His comment on women counting on karma to take care of their pay raise raised an enormous storm on the social media that only just settled after he apologised.

Of course, it's important for companies and their bosses to be careful. But slip-ups on the part of bosses is just one hazard that companies face in the social media. They have to face damaging disclosures, strong criticism and lethal photographs. Schumpeter points out that while anti-corporate types have made the most of social media, companies have been slow to adapt. He cites two reasons from a recent book on the subject:

The first is the nature of the internet. It is a beast that feeds on scandal and particularly delights in the flesh of the powerful and privileged. The media world used to be policed by editors who demanded proof in the form of two sources. Now amateurs can post anything they want online (though they may eventually face prosecution) and editors are subject to the tyranny of the click: the more the stories they publish are clicked on by readers, the longer they are likely to survive in their jobs.

......The second is the nature of companies. They are designed to stay in business rather than to be good at defending their bosses from scandal. No matter what PR resources they throw at killing a story, NGOs and prosecutors will always have more stamina. In America no sensible firm will risk gambling on a jury trial when a negative verdict could bar them from doing business with the government.....No sensible company will go to the mat to protect an embattled boss when there are plenty of replacements waiting in the wings. 

The book has useful tips:

 He tells CEOs to restrict the view into their glass houses: to cover the cameras on their phones and computers with masking tape; avoid the “reply all” function on their e-mail; think twice before sending any strongly worded message. He dismisses the idea that corporate social responsibility (CSR) bestows on firms the PR equivalent of a stock of political capital: digital vigilantes will always assume businesses are guilty and can add the charge of hypocrisy to CSR-obsessed ones, as they did to BP after its spill. He warns against one-size-fits-all approaches to crises: the common prescription to come clean quickly and fully sometimes stokes the fire, he notes.

Both the author and Schumpeter are, in my view, mistaken in seeing the social media entirely as some ugly ogre against whom companies must erect defences. Leaving aside scandals, keeping taps on the social media can help companies in several ways. They can identify typical customer complaints, they can get an idea of how they are viewed by ordinary people, they can see how they stack up against competition, they can identify unmet customer needs and they can get useful ideas for re-designing products or coming up with new ones.They can also the social media to convey the company's viewpoint on particular issues or to respond to negative perceptions.

Service-oriented businesses such as banks have been quick to latch on to the potential of scouring the media. Other businesses can learn too. It would be a good idea to pick somebody who understands the company's key businesses well and appoint him or her Head of Social Media. Getting such a person to interact with top management, the PR dept and the marketing heads could turn to be a good investment for companies.

Sheryl Sandberg: how not to say sorry

Sheryl Sandberg charmed the media and got to meeting the PM and the president during her recent visit to India. But the storm created by Facebook's experiment on its users' emotions refuses to die down. One privacy group in the US is reported to have filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission.

I have been trying to figure out what precisely was the violation of privacy involved. I must confess the news reports are less clear than I would have liked. Here is what I read in the Guardian:

The study conducted over one week in 2012 and published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, hid "a small percentage" of emotional words from peoples' news feeds, without their knowledge, to test what effect that had on the statuses or "likes" that they then posted or reacted to.

I guess this is what is being interpreted as an attempt to manipulate the emotions of Facebook users. Another article, written by Geeta Seshu, quotes from the study itself:

The experiment manipulated the extent to which people (N = 689,003) were exposed to emotional expressions in their News Feed. This tested whether exposure to emotions led people to change their own posting behaviors, in particular whether exposure to emotional content led people to post content that was consistent with the exposure—thereby testing whether exposure to verbal affective expressions leads to similar verbal expressions, a form of emotional contagion.

Leaving aside the allegations of violation of privacy, there is the matter of Sandberg's reaction to the episode. Lucy Kellaway, FT's columnist quotes Sandberg as saying that the experiment had been “poorly communicated. And for that communication we apologise. We never meant to upset you.”

Kellaway calls this a "perfect lesson in how not to apologise" and proceeds to spell out why in the most scathing terms:

This was bad on four scores. She didn’t take personal responsibility. She didn’t say sorry for the thing itself. Her “didn’t mean to upset you” was patronising, and worse than that, a lie. The experiment was specifically designed to upset some users, by showing them negative comments. That was the whole point.

Geeta Seshu points that India has 100 million Facebook users, next only in size to that of the US and likely to overtake the US soon. The privacy issues are significant, Seshu warns and she thinks Modi should have raised the issue with Sandberg:

But coming back to India and India’s huge population of Facebook users, in the absence of a privacy law, there is a dire need for much more debate and understanding on how much of our data is up for grabs and how much of control we have over its use/misuse.  

Sadly, our Prime Minister, who should have been more alert to issues of privacy and surveillance, given the disclosure last week that the US government’s NSA had authorized surveillance of his own political party, seems to have looked the other way. 

 

Should we worry about business houses owning media?

Reliance Industries' acquisition of control over Network 18 has generated some comment, albeit mostly on the Net, not the print media. There is concern over the implications of business houses or corporates owning or controlling the media, whether print or visual media. The Aditya Birla group  has a substantial stake in the India Today group and the Tata house controls Tata Sky. As Vanita Kohli Khandekar notes in a perceptive piece in BS, there is little people getting worked up over business groups entering, well, another business. Many of the large newspapers in the country are controlled by those who came from a corporate background.

The point is that as long as there is diversity in ownership, we need not worry unduly. Some business house will support the Congress, another will support the BJP and a third group may root for some regional party. What we need to ensure is nobody dominates, that is, there is plurality and diversity and that all conduct the media businesses in accordance with norms, in others, a regulator that keeps an eye on the media as a whole. Khandekar has valuable suggestions to make:

One, an independent-of-the-government media regulator with powers a la Federal Communications Commission (US) or Ofcom (UK). They set the business rules, keep a check on ownership, prevent the formation of monopolies, stop bad practices and create a healthy environment for free media.
Two, a law that forces any organisation in the news business to publish its accounts and every detail of who owns it, how it is funded, its revenues, and so on at fixed periods, online. This forced transparency will deter the "unsavoury" entrants, reduce hyper-competition and, therefore, the plummeting of standards.
Three, a high-quality, independent, taxpayer-funded broadcaster. If Doordarshan was a world-class news channel, it would force the private ones to aim for better quality like the presence of BBC has done in the UK.

The last point cannot be over-emphasised. I have noted in my blogs that DD has improved quite a bit. (Rajya Sabha TV's Samvidan on Sunday, which is about the making of the Indian constitution, is a model of quality programming). One hopes that under the new government, DD gets the support it needs in order to provide the lead to private players. 

The Dawn on the LOC killings

In contrast to the jingoistic voices heard in the Indian media, particularly TV, the Dawn's edit on the subject is a model of restraint and sobriety:

In fact, the ‘peace process’ is not really there; India cannot put aside the 2008 Mumbai attacks and Pakistan has failed to rein in the militants. The latter are well-armed and well-funded and some of them have brought the two nuclear-armed neighbours to the verge of war twice since 9/11. Here lies the test for the two sides: will Islamabad and New Delhi hand the militants a diplomatic win by shying away from peace? On this point the two sides must be clear. 

....The 2003 ceasefire agreement has largely held but can be further reinforced and made durable given that there has been an increase in LoC tensions since January. And although the level of infiltration into India-held Kashmir has gone down considerably, Pakistan must make it a priority to cripple all attempts made by militants to sabotage peace efforts between the two countries.

Now you know why I am such a great admirer of the Dawn. I hope some day I will get a chance to go to Pakistan. If I do, I will make it a point to visit the office of the Dawn and tell the journalists there how much I have respected and admired their writings over the years. 

Modi in Uttarakhand: the bare facts

Gujarat CM Narendra Modi's visit to Uttarakhand predictably degenerated into slugfest between the BJP and the Congress. When Rahul Gandhi followed, the media tended to portray the two visits as  a competition for photo-ops.

Writing in ET, Madhu Kishwar has a different story to tell. It would appear that Modi was quickly able to mobilise a significant rescue effort targeting principally the large numbers of Gujarati pilgrims but not entirely excluding others. Here's a sample:

Modi arrived in Delhi late 17th night for a meeting with the Planning Commission on 18th when news of cloudburst and landslides was telecast on TV. He held an emergency meeting to take stock of the situation since he knew that thousands of Gujaratis are likely to be among the Chardham pilgrims . Right away, a camp office was opened at Gujarat Bhavan and the Resident Commissioner's team in Delhi was made responsible for coordinating with Gujarati pilgrims.
...On the 18th morning, Modi called Dr Pranav Pandya of the All World Gayatri Parivar to provide space and infrastructure in his Shanti Kunj campus for the relief centre proposed to be set up by the Gujarat government . He chose this campus because of his close knowledge of, and rapport with, this Gandhian institution that can house and feed thousands of people at a short notice.
It has a 2,000-strong community of swayamsevaks on the campus, plus 3,000-odd students of the Dev Sanskriti University. The campus also has a well-run hospital.
On the 18th evening itself, a set of computers with internet connections , telephone lines, television sets and all other paraphernalia required for Gujarat government's relief operation were set up. Therefore, when a team of Gujarat government IAS, IPS and IFS officers came, they could get going within minutes of reaching Shanti Kunj.
Team Gujarat had two officers from Uttarakhand - Assistant Director General of Police Bisht and Forest Service officer SC Pant - who had close knowledge of the terrain to guide both the stranded pilgrims as well as rescue teams on the safest possible routes to take. ADG Bisht went straight to Gupta Kashi from where the rescue operations are being launched.
A team of seven doctors trained in handling such emergencies, led by an orthopaedic surgeon, not only put in place an efficient first-aid service but are also attending to those severely injured.
 

It is open to people to come to their own conclusions on how much of a difference these efforts made, considering the large number of people left stranded in the region.  I do find it surprising, however, that the media did not think it necessary to bring the above facts to the notice of the public. We had swarms of reporters and TV crews in the region but at least I did not find any details of the contribution that Modi was able to make.

Kishwar concludes:

The Congress party is understandably upset because its chief minister has proved a disaster, its party machinery is in disarray, Congress Sewa Dal workers are nowhere in sight, Rahul Gandhi's Youth Brigade is clueless even in routine situations , leave alone know how to face a crisis like the Uttarakhand deluge.

That is the reality of the Uttarakhand relief operation led by Narendra Modi

TRAI's radical proposal for India's newspaper industry

No government has dared to attempt such a move thus far but TRAI is doing it. According to a report in the Hindu, TRAI plans to introduce measures to separate corporate ownership of newspapers from editorial management. This is meant to insulate editorial operations from commercial interests. Rahul Khullar, chief of TRAI, is quoted as saying:

The idea is to create an institutionalised buffer between the corporate owner and newspaper management to ensure the independence of TV channels and the print media to articulate impartial, free and fair editorial policy,” said Mr. Khullar. He, however, admitted that the process was still “in the works”. The “creative challenge” for TRAI was evolving the precise design. 

One needs to be clear what corporate ownership means- does it mean ownership by industrial houses? In other words, would owners of newspapers, who do not have other corporate interests,be exempt from such a measure? One would think so. It should be possible for somebody to own a paper and express himself editorially, as long as he does not have other business interests that might colour news coverage or editorial opinion in his paper.

Khullar also plans to go ahead with restrictions on cross-ownership of media. The rule being contemplated is two out of three: you can own two out of three media,namely, newspaper, radio and TV but not all. Incidentally, I am not clear as to how the newspaper industry would come under the ambit of TRAI. Can anybody shed light on this?

Unusual appointment in the Indian media

Indians holding high positions in MNCs abroad no longer makes news. Foreigners holding similar positions in MNCs too does not make news. But foreigners holding high positions in Indian firms in India still makes news. The airline industry has opted for foreigners (for example, Jet Air) from time to time but I can't think of this being phenomenon being pervasive.

So it's interesting that Hindustan Times has appointed a South African as its Chief Editorial and Content Officer ( in itself a new designation in the Indian media). A foreigner determining editorial content- deciding how the news is to be played and, perhaps, what commentary is appropriate- would mean a completely new perspective on newspaper content. As somebody who welcomes newness, innovation and fresh perspective, I am inclined to believe that this is a positive development, no matter what the eventual outcome (in terms of commercial success) is. So, what do we expect next? A New York Times or Guardian journalist as editor of one of our English papers?

India's TV channels in crisis

India's TV channels are in the midst of a financial crisis which has serious implications for how report news, argues Sandeep Bhushan in a hard-hitting article in the Hindu. Bhushan points out that major industrial groups, such as Reliance, have acquired significant stakes in TV companies. (Even otherwise, one would think that intense competition for advertising revenues would tend to influence news coverage on TV networks). Bhushan spells out the impact:

The most far-reaching is the redefinition of the role of the editor. Increasingly his/her profile not merely entails leading the pack in the TRP race, but crucially acting as the “front” for the promoter in order to provide an appearance of both credibility and acceptability within the industry. The promoter’s line — his whims and fancies, idiosyncrasies and perhaps, most damagingly his political “preferences” — is increasingly the editorial line. It is not my case that this state of affairs uniformly prevails in all TV broadcast networks. But any “insider” will confirm that this is pretty much the picture by and large. 

This has resulted in growing centralisation of newsgathering operations. Editorial monitoring is closest with regard to “political” reportage because it is here that the government of the day can be really hit hard. In my experience of reporting “political” stories it was virtually impossible to generate a story in the field and hope that it got aired unless it coincided with the editorial “line.” “Political” stories invariably emerged from the “top.” Often a reporter may not even have a say in the particular “angle” of a story to which only he or she has privileged access. This has virtually taken the (political) reporter out of the scheme of things in broadcast journalism. 

It is not just the slant to political and corporate news coverage that is worrying. It is the lack of news coverage in the first place. If you want to know what happened in the country on a given day, you would be hard put to find it on any of the private TV channels. Instead, you get slanging matches performed in the studio, often with the same set of familiar faces. Going out and covering and reporting news is costly; it's much easier to get a bunch of talking heads into the studios.

Bhushan urges better protection of journalists, more professionalisation of management and anti-trust laws to counter the present trends. All this is easier said than done. Perhaps, a simpler way is to strengthen public broadcasting so that it emerges as a serious threat to popular channels. As I noted in my blog sometime ago, Doordarshan has improved in a big way and Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV have some very interesting programmes to offer. This trend must be strengthened so that private TV channels and their owners find that better content is needed to retain and attract viewers and hence advertisers. 

 

Financial Times and Economist up for sale?

Well, there is certainly speculation on this account. FT is said to be losing money. The report does not say anything about the finances of the Economist. As somebody who is addicted to both periodicals, I sincerely hope that they don't lose their character if they are acquired. I wonder why Rupert Murdoch is not interested- could it be because of the troubles he has had to face in the UK? Whatever his failings, Murdoch will be gratefully remembered by journalists as the man who has helped preserve two of the greatest titles in journalism, The Times of London and the Wall Street Journal.

I have only one other thought. The FT and the Economist do not lack commentators who advise policy-makers and businessmen on how to get their policies and strategies right. FT has a whole section on Management. The redoubtable Schumpeter of Economist dissects corporate strategies all the time. Are we to believe that the pundits at these journals do not merit attention within their own publishing house? I do remember that some years back, the Economist flew Michael Porter in for a strategy session.  The cynical could say that that doesn't mean much: after all, Porter's own consulting firm, Monitor, is in the doldrums.

N J Nanporia

N J Nanporia, the legendary former editor of the Times of India and the Statesman, passed away recently. I did not see any mention of his passing in any  paper and got to know about it after seeing a tribute in BS by Sunanda K Datta-Ray, himself a former editor of the Statesman. Datta-Ray says he got to know from friends who had seen an insertion for the sale of Nanporia's art collection.

If I am not mistaken, Nanporia, better known to TOI readers as NJN (his column was titled, ''One point of view"), succeeded Frank Moraes and preceded Sham Lal, both legends in their own right. He was half-Japanese (Datta-Ray says he was born in Kobe). How he came to India one does not know but he brought to journalism an excellent grasp of foreign affairs and a command over the language and a style that would have flattered the Times of London.

NJN's finest hour was the Chinese attack on India in 1962. The Chinese army overran Indian positions in the North-East as well as in Ladakh and came within shooting distance of Assam. Nehru made a pathetic broadcast to the people of Assam about his inability to defend them. There was a huge evacuation at Tezpur along with the destruction of official papers and currency notes. NJN, who had forecast China's troop movements with uncanny accuracy until that moment, made bold to say that China would not enter Assam. He argued that China's intention in attacking India was not acquisition or expansion but the humiliation of India in the eyes of the world and especially of the non-aligned movement. It wanted to send out a message that it was numero uno in Asia. That objective had been achieved with the rout of the Indian army and, therefore, the Chinese would now withdraw.

Lo and behold! China announced a unilateral withdrawal in the eastern front to positions it had held before the war. Assam remained safe. Nehru and the rest of India heaved a sigh of relief. The TOI was so proud of its editor's analyses that it brought out the entire lot in a collection after the war. I have heard that the government was so perplexed by NJN's accurate analysis of the course of the war that it had kept him under surveillance for a while, thinking he must be a Chinese agent!

The immediate outcome was that Nehru developed great regard and affection for the TOI editor and NJN became a confidante and advisor of sorts. This close relationship had an unfortunate fall-out. Nehru had always been wary of what he called the "jute press" and its influence on public opinion ( TOI was owned by Dalmia and Jain and Indian Express by Goenka) and he kept tabs on TOI through NJN.

Now, for some reason, a certain friction developed in the relationship between Shanti Prasad Jain and NJN. In a fit of pique, NJN dashed off a letter to Nehru expressing concern over the state of affairs in Bennett, Coleman and Co, which published TOI and other publications. This gave Nehru just the opportunity he was looking for to oust the Jains from management control of the company and appoint government directors to run it. (This was done under the aegis of the Company Law Board).

Later, NJN was to express contrition for his action and he admitted that his apprehensions about SP Jain and suggestion of interference in editorial matters had been without foundation. (He did so in articles he wrote for the now defunct Indian Post,  published by the Singhanias from Mumbai).  He even wrote that Jain had great affection for his stable of publications - it was a different world from the one he had inhabited- and he rather enjoyed the company of his journalists and editors.

This could, of course, not compensate the Jain for the loss of control over the Times group. A few years later, it became known that control would shortly be restored to the Jains.  NJN's position was clearly untenable and he chose to leave the TOI and join the Statesman. (The Economic Times' first editor, PS Hariharan, was also seen to be aligned with the government; he too left to become PRO at the Asian Development Bank). 

Much later, when NJN was out of a job, the proprietors of Bennett, Coleman and Co chose to be magnanimous. He was allowed to write a weekly column for the TOI's Sunday supplement, then edited by Fatma Zakaria (mother of Fareed Zakaria). The column was a great hit. Later, NJN wrote for Outlook magazine.

As editor, NJN had the reputation of being something of a snob and somebody who confined his interactions largely to the assistant editors who wrote for the edit page. One famous story is that at a party in Mumbai, he was accosted by somebody who complimented him on a piece he had written recently. NJN thanked him and said, "And what do you do?" Said the other, "I am your Chief Reporter!"

It doesn't surprise me to learn from Datta-Ray that there was not much of a market for NJN's column in recent years. NJN's sophisticated prose and turns of phrase would be beyond the current crop of readers. I did not think much of NJN's political analysis-at times he gave the impression of having mastered the art of writing 2000 words without saying anything in particular- but as a prose writer, he had few peers in journalism in his time

Media hysteria over power blackout

The breakdown in power supply in the north over two days was terrible. But does it warrant the sort of media hysteria we have seen? I am not conversant with the technical aspects of the situation. But, yes, if technology can spot and cut off excessive demands on the grid from any state, certainly we should go for it. And I take EAS Sarma's point in today's TOI article that we should be investing in maintenance of existing facilities and not just in additions to capacity. These points apart, are there indeed "lessons" to be drawn from the episode, as the media has been making out? I am not at all sure.

Does the power breakdown say anything about our economic growth prospects, as Ramachandra Guha seems to suggest in the FT? Not at all. Is it anybody's contention that if you wish to be seen as a credible economic power, you should not be having breakdowns at all? Well, as the new minister of power has pointed out, the US has had a power breakdown a few years ago and it took longer to restore supply. And don't forget the blackout in New York city a few decades ago and the riots that followed. Are to conclude this renders Sushil Kumar Shinde unsuitable for the Home ministry or for the power ministry itself? Do we judge a minister on the basis of a single episode or do we look at his broader record? Just to clarify, I hold no brief for Mr Shinde either as Home minister or Power minister, I am just posing questions that would apply to any minister.

These kinds of disruptions cause enormous inconvenience and suffering to people and we should do our best to avoid them. But to regard these as proof of national incompetence or a reflection on our future prospects is, to put it mildly, to be getting carried away. The lesson, if any, is one that the media needs to reflect on: every murder does not become a national crisis, every report on corruption does not mean scams are the norm, and every ministerial lapse does not mean the political system has failed.

Incidentally, I have become an ardent fan of Doordarshan news in recent months. You get the news of the day, national and international, without any varnish, and with very few commercial interruptions, and news time is not the usual suspects bashing each other in some discussion on current affairs. The current affairs discussion has a separate slot, and the one in Hindi at 7:30 pm is of pretty high quality, with a whole range of uncommon faces presenting their views- and doing a great job too. Ditto for the discussions on Lok Sabha TV and Rajya  Sabha TV.

Try the national channels sometime, you will find these a refreshing change.

Three golden jubilees

Three well-known institutions, IIMA, IIMC and The Economic Times are currently celebrating their golden jubilees. I happen to have been a bit player in all three. I record my impressions of these institutions in my ET column, A tale of three jubilees.

Paid news

In the last elections, several newspapers are said to have covered election campaigns for a price. This phenomenon of 'paid news' was exposed by P Sainath of the Hindu following which the Press council of India (PCI) constituted a sub-committee to go into the matter.

The sub-committee confirmed that news had indeed been paid for and furnished whatever information it had been able to gather in a report submitted to PCI. Following this, the PCI decided, by a narrow majority, not to make the report public. Mitali Saran has some strong words on the subject in her column in BS:

Concerned journalists on the panel called the PCI a ‘toothless tiger’. They talked about how in the 1980s and 1990s, regional newspapers didn’t pay their reporters a salary, but gave them a commission on any ads they brought in; how corporate management is increasingly sidelining editors; how journalists are given lists of subjects to cover in a target number of column inches.

The PCI sub-committee report, the burial of that report, and the media’s lack of interest in the topic points to a complicity so deep that nobody can afford to turn the lens on themselves. It takes the idea that there are always a few rotten apples in the barrel, and shows that the one you bite into every morning is ridden with maggots. There’s no better reason for you to care.

I have long maintained that two of the pillars of the fourth estate that need strengthening are the judiciary and the media. There are signs of greater accountability being brought into the judiciary. When will the media's turn come?

Subsidies for newspapers?

No, I'm not talking about Indian papers, many of which survive on government ads. The failure of several newspapers in the US and elsewhere in the present crisis has prompted a debate on whether newspapers need to switch to a different business model from the present one that relies overwhelmingly on ads, says an FT report.

In the alternative model, newspapers would be subsidised either by private endowments or by the state. If you regard them as a form of public service, like educational institutions, then such an argument could be made. According to estimates, the New York Times would require an endowment of $5 bn to cover its newsroom costs. The total endowment required for all US papers would be $114 bn.In France, the government is stepping in to support papers by doubling government expenditure on ads- no doubt, a unique form of fiscal stimulus.

Government subsidies for the press are always an uncomfortable matter. As for private endowments, that could create an uneven playing field between papers supported by endowments and those that operate commercially. Besides, as the FT report notes, papers supported by endowments are not insulated from commercial papers- the Christian Science Monitor has closed its print edition.

Another option is charging for the online editions. But other than a few papers such as the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, not many papers have met with success in charging for their online versions. Part of the solution, as the FT notes, must be attacking the cost structures. Newspapers are still not disciplined enough in terms of weighing expenditures on coverage of news stories- Rupert Murdoch must be an exception in the game.

BBC's double standards

Journalist MJ Akbar has lambasted the BBC for its coverage of the Mumbai riots. The BBC is said to have referred to the attackers as "gunmen" or "militants" and shied away from using the expression, "terrorists". BBC had no compunction in referring to the attackers in the 7/11 attack on London as "terrorists", rediff.com reports. Akbar wrote:

When Britain finds a group of men plotting in a home laboratory your government has no hesitation in creating an international storm, and the BBC has no hesitation in calling them terrorists. When nearly two hundred Indian lives are lost, you cannot find a word in your dictionary more persuasive than 'gunmen'.

....You are not only pathetic, but you have become utterly biased in your reporting. Since we in India believe in freedom of the press, we can do no more than protest, but let me tell you that your credibility, created over long years by fearless and independent journalists like Mark Tully (I am privileged to describe him as a friend), is in tatters and those tatters will not be patched as long as biased non-journalists like you and your superiors are in charge of decisions. Shame on you and your kind."

The BBC wrote back defending its position:

The guidelines we issue to staff are very clear-we do not ban the use of the word terrorist, but our preference is to use an alternative form of words. There is a judgement inherent in the use of the word, which is not there when we are more precise with our language. "Gunman", or "killer", or "bomber", is an accurate description which does not come with any form of judgement. However, the word is not banned, and is frequently used on our output-usually when attributed to people. I heard it being used on numerous occasions during our coverage from Mumbai

."

Sting operation on cash-for-votes

Most broadcast organisations have rushed to the defence of CNN-IBN and have criticised the BJP for its handling of the sting operation in the cash-for-votes affair. Readers would know that CNN-IBN has withheld broadcast of the tape. The BJP has said it will not entertain the channel until it airs the tape.

Today's Business Standard has an edit that argues in favour of airing the tape and it also suggests that balance of evidence is tilting against Amar Singh and company:

With the BJP on Monday releasing more information on the link between a certain Sanjeev Saxena, who gave its MPs money to support the government, and Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh — the party alleged that Mr Saxena’s son’s college admission form has Amar Singh’s residence address on it — the circumstantial evidence in the cash-for-votes scandal appears to point in only one direction.

Earlier, on Sunday, the BJP had alleged that mobile phone records showed calls were made from Mr Saxena’s mobile to Amar Singh’s residence when Mr Saxena was at the house of one of the BJP MPs, handing over the cash (how the party got the phone records could well be the next controversy!). The party also said the car that Mr Saxena used was registered at an address that belonged to Amar Singh.

To establish that the two were closely linked, the party showed old SMSs sent by Mr Saxena to journalists, inviting them to Mr Singh’s press conferences. If all that the BJP says is true with regard to telephone records, car identity and college admission forms, there is strong justification for the television channel CNN-IBN to air the sting operation and let the public make up its mind.

Business media boom

This is boom time for the business media and business journalists. A business journalist recently filled me in on what is going on:

Mint, the HT publication, is said to have crossed the 2 lakh mark in circulation. Financial Chronicle of the Deccan Chronicle group is also said to be doing well.

The buzz now is about the entry of Financial Times into the Indian market. This should be cause for worry for its present partner, Business Standard, which has positioned itself in the quality segment. Another foreign entrant that can be expected to pose a threat to Indian journals is Forbes magazine of the US.

TV channels for business news are also proliferating. UTV has launched UTVi, its business channel. The Economic Times is said to be readying to launch a TV channel. The Sahara group has plans for a business paper in Hindi.

All this is great news for business journalists. Salaries have spiralled. Journalism in general and business journalism is no longer an underpaid profession- it has become highly lucrative.