New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said that he didn’t hold press conferences because of ‘the lack of neutrality’ in Indian media and because journalists now ‘promote their views and ideologies’.
He is not entirely incorrect. But he failed to mention that the ideology promoted by the majority of mainstream media and the one promoted by him are two entirely coinciding circles.
“I am answerable to Parliament. Today, journalists are identified with their own preferences. Media is no longer a non-partisan entity,” he said, even though he has never answered questions in the Parliament either.
“People are now aware of your beliefs as well. Earlier, media used to be faceless… who is writing in the media, what is its ideology… nobody was bothered about it earlier. However, the situation is not the same any more,” Modi said in an interview to Aaj Tak Hindi – a channel considered to be a part of the ‘Godi Media’, a term coined by journalist Ravish Kumar for media houses that only toe the government line.
The prime minister said that a new culture had developed in politics that revolved around media management over the government’s performance. How and why this culture came about under his government’s watch, he did not say. Though he did say this in 2019: “I am not undemocratic. Whether news gets published is not the only thing in a democracy,” to a leading English daily.
The prime minister’s comments on the Indian media’s ‘bias’ have come just two weeks after the press freedom index, released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), on which it ranked 159 out of 176 countries.
“With violence against journalists, highly concentrated media ownership, and political alignment, press freedom is in crisis in ‘the world’s largest democracy’, ruled since 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and embodiment of the Hindu nationalist right,” RSF had stated while releasing the data.
India was also mentioned in its report titled ‘Asia – Pacific: Press freedom under yoke of authoritarian governments’. Here, RSF said that India’s two-rank upgrade was “misleading”, as its scores fell but the change in position was due to worse falls by countries previously above it. India “was pushed up two places despite recently adopting more draconian laws. Its new position is still unworthy of a democracy”, the report noted.
Who owns the ‘biased’ media?
According to data from Statista, the top five English news television channels watched across India in week 10 of 2022, by weekly viewership, were: Times Now, Republic TV, India Today, CNN News 18 and Wion.
Wion, as well as its sister entity Zee news, are owned by Subhash Chandra who is affiliated with the BJP. He was elected to the Upper House of the Indian parliament from Haryana in the 2016 Rajya Sabha election as an independent candidate supported by BJP legislators.
CNN News 18 is owned by India’s richest industrialist Mukesh Ambani – considered to be a close friend of the prime minister.
Republic TV – accused of sensationalist, often communal, reportage – was co-founded by Rajeev Chandrasekhar in 2017, a then-independent member of Rajya Sabha who had political links with BJP and was vice-chairman of the National Democratic Alliance in Kerala. He is now a member of the BJP and a minister of state in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.
Arnab Goswami, the channel’s second co-founder, too has ties with the prime minister’s party. His father joined the BJP in the 1990s and contested elections from Guwahati while his maternal uncle headed the BJP’s Assam unit until 2015.
According to RSF, most of the leading media companies are owned by large conglomerates that are still controlled by the founding families and that invest in a vast array of industries other than media.
BJP National President J.P. Nadda addressing a public rally at Sahu Jain High School Ground, Lauriya (Bihar). Photo: bjp.org
Times Now, owned by Sahu Jain who owns the Bennet, Coleman & Co. group, has been accused of biased reporting with its anchors Navika Kumar and Rahul Shivshankar often promoting the government’s narrative in their shows. Recently, the prime minister sat down with Kumar and another Times Now anchor, Sushant Sinha, for an ‘interview’ where he asked the Muslim community to introspect, among other things.
In his interview on Thursday, shortly before calling the Indian media partisan, the prime minister called the very news presenters sitting in front of him – Aaj Tak’s Anjana Om Kashyap, Shweta Singh, Sudhir Chaudhary and Rahul Kanwal – cowards. In response, all they did was smile.