Wherever in the netherworld he prowls, Joseph Goebbels must certainly be awed by the masterful practitioners of his art in the mainstream Indian media. He purveyed the hypothesis that “the truth was the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State”; that there is “no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content”.
His square-moustachioed overlord appended the injunction that to be potent, propaganda should appeal to the meanest intelligence among those it seeks to reach and should never acknowledge even an iota of right on the other side.
How well did our media absorb the fascist dicta In the ten years of Modi’s creeping authoritarian rule when mainstream journalism and propaganda joined forces and became indistinguishable from one another! Both traditional print and electronic media, instead of acting as a check against the abuse of government power became the primary instruments of the abuse.
To use a computer analogy, the mainstream corporate media served as the mainframe of Modi’s tyranny, manufacturing and processing fake news and hateful propaganda that appealed to the darkest instincts in the human mind. It became the hub for the dissemination of propaganda and misinformation!
The Reporters Without Borders (RSF) collective, recognising the pivotal role of journalism in protecting democracy has emphasised that ‘journalism is the main vaccine against disinformation’. In its World Press Freedom Index rankings, compiled every year, India has slipped from 140th out of 180 countries in 2013 – bad enough – to an all-time low of 161 in 2023.
The precipitous decline has been attributed to media takeovers by oligarchs close to PM Modi and his stranglehold over the narrative through fake news, misuse of laws to terrorise journalists, and through his army of trolls who have waged appalling hate campaigns against anybody who questioned his authoritarian style. But what has been lost sight of in that critique is the spinelessness of the mainstream media through it all, which is the theme of this lament on Indian journalism.
There is no denying that autocracy is inhospitable to journalism. We experienced this during the Emergency when the press was under siege. More than 250 journalists were arrested including the redoubtable Kuldeep Nayyar. Many foreign correspondents were banned from entering India and accreditation of numerous reporters were withdrawn; besides, the recalcitrant media outlets were starved of advertisements. And yet I maintain that there was a huge difference in the response of the media then when compared to now.
The Emergency clampdown was brutal, in-your-face and took no prisoners whereas Modi’s regime used the much more subtle and effective approach of imposing a creeping, insidious authoritarianism behind the veneer of democratic functioning. Existing laws were manipulated to intimidate the media and dissenters were branded as anti-national by equating the regime with the nation.
Extreme deterrent punishment was the exception rather than the rule. And yet, the press during the Emergency was less dishonourable and did not grovel before authority in the depraved manner it has in the last ten years. By and large, the journalists at that grim time were cowed and sullen but certainly not the whooping lickspittles of today.
LK Advani accused the press during the Emergency of “choosing to crawl when asked to bend”, but has since watched apathetically as a dysfunctional media, exhibiting the most shameful toadyism, not merely crawled but became cheerleaders and facilitators of the tyrant. Too many in today’s media have a lot to be ashamed of!
The peaceable, non-confrontational tradition demands that one avoids specifically naming and shaming individuals who are culpable and instead, limit oneself to calling out their doings that are unacceptable. But in a situation where certain elements in the media embedded with the regime waged war on truth and facts for the last ten years with the evil intent of shoring up an authoritarian, one has a bounden duty to call them out.
This is imperative, especially because their ‘non-biological’ idol still holds the reins of government, albeit considerably shrunken, and lest we forget, they too are still around, less cocky and almost apologetic in tone and demeanour, though there are still the arrogant oddballs who continue to spew arrant nonsense.
In the full-scale assault on journalism by journalists in the last ten years, there are a few who stand out for their unmitigated desecration of the journalist’s calling. Leading the charge is our Indian counterpart of the infamous former Fox News host, Tucker Carlson who is busy these days in singing hosannas to Vladmir Putin.
Our homegrown Carlson clone, the TV anchor who can claim copyright on the phrase “the nation wants to know”, is the most strident propagandist for Modi and toxic Hindu nationalism, spouting falsehoods and hate by the minute, incapable of reasoned argument.
About Carlson and his ilk, the inimitable Christopher Hitchens had once made an indecorous but telling remark: “If you give him an enema, you could bury him in a matchbox.” I’ll leave it at that!
Last year, soon after its formation, the INDIA Alliance decided that the bloc’s representatives would not appear on the “hate-filled” shows of 14 news anchors across nine major national channels. Anyone who has watched the programmes of these blacklisted journos would straight away apprehend that they are unabashed BJP zealots out to demonise the Opposition, spread hate against Muslims, evade debates on key issues like electoral bonds or unemployment and brazenly propagandise for the Modi regime.
Their primetime debates are a noisy slugfest where the dissenting view is shouted down or muted. These guys have been identified and named but tragically, their acerbic style has spurred the mushroom growth of kindred copycats. Today’s journalism is chock-a-block with such amoral loudmouths who have sold their souls to Modi and his regime.
In the final phase of the recent Lok Sabha election, amidst the frenzied ‘400 paar’ hoopla, Modi indulged his retinue of adoring journalists with a blitzkrieg of carefully manicured interviews – as many as 64 such exchanges in April and May. Millions of viewers were subjected to an interminable public relations exercise of overweening hubris on the one side and craven veneration on the other.
In a nauseating display of delusional grandstanding, Modi used these interactions to give full vent to his imagination, spouting falsehoods, making misleading claims, getting emotional about his mother, projecting omnipotence and even drawing up a visionary roadmap to 2047. Without exception, the awed interviewers asked only ‘softball’ questions that were clearly from a predetermined script.
But something went terribly wrong! I am convinced that the hyped two-month long love affair between Modi and the ‘godi’ media was a deadly embrace that turned out to be the kiss of death for the Modi cult! Here’s how.
Disarmed by the fawning obsequiousness of his questioners, Modi went berserk, making unhinged statements that he will never be able to live down: ‘the day I do Hindu-Muslim, I won’t be fit for public life’; the world did not know about Mahatma Gandhi till Attenborough made his film; his two corporate henchmen took tempos full of currency notes to the Opposition; he interceded with Netanyahu to pause the war in Gaza during Ramadan; and the faux pas of faux pas when he affirmed his own immaculate conception! As the Bard would have said, Modi was hoist with his own petard, the Vishwaguru image now in tatters!
Print media by and large also chose not to ask probing questions which needed to be asked all the time.
The burning crises in Kashmir and Manipur were covered mainly through government handouts, thereby exposing the reader only to the government’s propaganda. Investigative journalism had been all but given up.
Major scandals such as the Pathankot RDX mystery, Pegasus, Rafale, Electoral bonds were buried by deliberate neglect. There was the occasional censure but in the main, most newspapers were chary about taking on Modi directly, submissively acquiescing in his falsehoods, corruption and missteps in policy.
One had to turn to fact-check sites such as Alt News to get the true picture, a sacred responsibility that the mainstream media had abdicated. Alt News did a magnificent job in debunking the regime’s misinformation aimed at vilifying the Muslim community, despite paying a heavy price. One of the editors, Mohammed Zubair spent a month behind bars allegedly for “hurting Hindu sentiment” but in reality, for calling out Modi and his bigots.
While the mainstream media operated as the Modi regime’s most potent propaganda and campaigning tool and as the tyrant’s cheerleaders, it was the outliers – the alternative media that helped unveil the distortion, lies and half-truths purveyed by the regime and thus helped rescue Indian democracy.
I have in mind the independent digital websites like The Wire, Scroll and Newslaundry and Newsclick and Caravan magazine, whose editors dared to exercise the sacred right to free speech at great personal risk and did what the Godi media failed to do, i.e. present a coherent, truthful picture of the political and cultural landscape and the regime’s frontal assault on democracy.
They provided a platform for voices that would otherwise not have been heard; for instance, Karan Thapar whose marvellous, probing interviews with leading opinion-makers deepened the viewers’ perspective and understanding of the grim situation under the Modi regime, thereby striking a bludgeon blow for democracy.
Every episode provided an object lesson on how to conduct an interview – a far cry from the simpering interactions of the Godi media with the Vishwaguru.
In the same category of outliers, I include journalists who, unwilling to compromise their moral principles, quit mainstream journalism and independently ventured into social media, harnessing YouTube to reach their audiences – Ravish Kumar, Ajit Anjum and Abhisar Sharma, to name a few. This roll of honour cannot but include the brilliant social media activist, Dhruv Rathee who did as much, maybe more than anybody else to expose the rot in the system during the Modi years. (For a better understanding of the critical role played by independent journalists, I would recommend Aakar Patel’s piece of August 6.)
Allow me to conclude with two statements of Modi which are relevant to the subject being discussed: I) “If I am judged for my work, many myths about me as an autocrat or otherwise would become clearer. I feel false propaganda will not last and truth will ultimately prevail.” ii) “social media is reducing social barriers. It connects people on the strength of human values, not identities.”
Unwittingly, the Vishwaguru was prescient and got it right! A few good men exposed him for the authoritarian that he was and the fake propaganda that his regime purveyed. And it was mainly social media that they used to show that humanism was what matters and not the communal identity politics that he has purveyed all his life!
(Mathew John is a former civil servant. The views are personal)
