Filthy Lucre & Indian Media

The invitation, from 'Media Watch', a newly minted penniless outfit of people deeply concerned about the state of media in India, was for a talk on 'MEIDA MATTERS'. (Their spelling.)

The speaker: 
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, left-leaning media maven

A couple of hundred people turned up. Most of them from the host school of mass communications. It turned out to be a master class. In a melodramatic outpouring that lasted about an hour, Paranjoy shared with us some of the things that he said were bothering him and that we should be wary of.

Paranjoy's big concern is the increasing role of money

His erstwhile employer TV18, operator of the channels CNBC-TV18, CNN-IBN, Colours etc., is now controlled by the Mukesh Ambani Reliance group. That is somehow not good for TV18, for media at large and for the country.

The India Today group, operator of the channels Hedlines Today, Aaj Tak etc. is now to a large extent owned by the Aditya Birla group. That is somehow not good...

The ND TV group is independent but highly connected to the establishment - witness Barkha Dutt in the Radia tapes -  and that is somehow not good...

Paranjoy flew business-class to Bangalore

The Pioneer is sponsored by the Sangh Parivar and that is somehow not good...

The Hindustan times is owned by the Birlas and wired deep into the establishment - witness Vir Sanghvi on Radia tapes - and that is somehow not good...

The Times of India is independently owned, but it is also wired deep into the establishment. The fact that Arnab Goswami ceaselessly hounded Suresh Kalmadi and A. Raja, and yells and screams nightly at the hapless Manish Tiwari or the idiotic Digvijay Singh does not fit this hypothesis so we will not go into it. But whatever it is, it's somehow not good...

Paranjoy arrived in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes

The Dainik Jagaran, has succeeded financially beyond anyone's expectations and they are now shamelessly siphoning out money earned in media operations to other businesses and that is somehow not good...

The Deccan Chronicle on the other hand has failed miserably, both in media operations and dumb forays into other ventures, and will now have to be bailed out by injection of funds earned by other people in other businesses and that is somehow also not good...

The list goes on, shareholdings, directorships, matrimonial linkages etc. and finally,

Doordarshan is really the pits for it is a pathetic mouthpiece of the establishment, which controls the purse strings, and dictates content and stance. This can't possibly be good...

Paranjoy stayed at a five-star hotel

Hobbled miserably by success and by failure, and by money - internal, external, too much, too little - Indian media is down in the pits and headed deeper. Unfortunately, and with scarcely hidden glee, even Paranjoy does not have a solution.

Meanwhile, it is all very lucrative for Paranjoy, thank you. A media star, he rakes it in off media twice. First when he makes paid appearances on TV or writes for the press. Second when he makes paid criticism of his paymasters or goes on all-found junkets to do what he does best - talk. 

The problem is real and we do need checks and balances but solutions will probably be found by people who do not feed at the same trough.

The Kudankulam Saga

With frightening ease the establishment has managed to confine the Kudankulam discourse to a local problem that concerns only a few illiterate villagers who have some very personal and trivial concerns. Spiced up a bit by 'foreign' funded NGOs, out to divert us from our shot at greatness and superpowerdom.

Civil society at large, the 'professional' intelligentsia as also the scientific community have been lulled into acceptance of a totally fake assurance that safety is not an issue.

Over the last few years public pronouncements have been of the type where the prime minister says he has full faith in the nuclear scientists of the country. This is followed a few days later by some employee of the Department of Atomic Energy, which controls all activities nuclear, saying he has full faith in the prime minister.

Not to be outdone Abdul Kalam pipes up shortly thereafter to the effect that he has full faith in the prime minister and the nuclear scientists of India, and that he has satisfied himself that all available state-of-the-art safeguards have been built into our nuclear power plants.

Therein lies the rub. State-of-the-art isn't good enough.

As we lathi-charge and fire tear-gas at the Kudankulam villagers, another voice opened up yesterday. In a prime editorial-page piece in the Hindu titled "The Real Questions", one Rahul Siddharthan, employed by a DAE funded outfit, came out strongly against scaremongering and suggesting that 'an independent safety regulator" is needed to reassure misguided, ignorant and ill-informed people.

Siddharthan does not present any personal credentials to show that he knows whereof he speaks. He cites instead an eminent authority on the subject, one George Monbiot, a zoologist, author and journalist. Said George has converted recently from 'neutral' to 'pro-nuclear power' because, hold your breath, no one died as a consequence of the Fukushima disaster.

The fact that radiation fallout forced the evacuation of about 160,000 people surrounding the plant and left about 132 square kilometers as a no-go zone, some of it uninhabitable for decades does not merit mention.

As I finished reading this mischievous work designed to misinform and obfuscate, Sajal Lahiri, the noted International Trade economist and Japophile,  posted a BBC news report that the Japanese have decided to totally phase out nuclear power.

Do we know something they don't or is it vice versa? If we do, we should capitalise on that by selling that knowledge to Germany and Japan.

Snippet: The other expert Rahul Siddharthan cites is Randall Munroe, the creator of the web comic XKCD.

Previous: Nuclear Business Opportunity
First:  The Nuclear Mess

Todd Akin, Crossfire & Arnab

Seeing an effete Pierce Morgan struggling on CNN to moderate a two-woman debate on the Todd Akin instigated "legitimate rape" topic, I wondered if many people remember Crossfire, a faux debate programme that was a keystone of CNN programming for long starting in the nineteen eighties.

The format was very simple. Two loud, fast and ferocious debaters. One liberal the other conservative. One hot political topic of the day. No moderators. No hold barred.

Rather unlike Krishi Darshan

At that time an open debate in a mass medium between extreme schools of thought was unknown in DD land where everything was an extreme grey.

Crossfire ran for over 23 years, with some minor changes, and boasted of a number of eminent hosts, who went on to play key roles in the American political space.

The most striking of these was Pat Buchanan, who later worked with Nixon, Reagan and Ford, as their policy wonk and speech writer.

Others notables were Geraldine Ferraro, the first female VP candidate for a major party and Lynn Cheney, a VP candidate aspirant in 2000 who, in another first, lost the spot to her husband Dick. 

The death of a long distance runner
The 2004 presidential race and its coverage also spelt the death of the 23 year old Crossfire at the hands of comedian Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show.

Invited to the show as a guest, Stewart gently skewered and roasted the show and its hosts mercilessly. The demolition, a TV classic by now, and well worth a watch, can be seen here.

CNN was virtually left with no choice but to cancel the show. Today, American TV is still replete with loud, deeply partisan anchors and speakers, and saner voices are generally drowned.

The birth of Arnab Goswami 
Meanwhile we have landed Arnab Goswami, Barkha Dutt et al who preside nightly over political and social discourse on TV. Louder than early Crossfire, only more shrill.

They are unable to express an informed opinion or take an intelligent stance. Nor are they able to control, far less moderate, their motley crew of often ill-informed, ill-prepared or inarticulate guests.

One wonders how and when they can be laughed out of existence. Also whether we might be better off getting on to a "two able and well-informed debaters with or without an equally competent moderator" format.

Snippet: Krishi Darshan, a DD programme aimed at the farmer marches on as the longest running TV show in India.