The 'Quint'essential 4th Pillar in Your Pocket

 

Hi folks! Been quite a long time since I've posted anything. Brain cells were stuck between piles of unfinished assignments, a vicious cycle of deadlines, and constant frustration. So channeling my inner frustration towards the 'Humble', 'Calm' and 'Logical' Indian Media I'd be writing about how the fourth pillar of democracy is shifting from your drawing room Television screen to the 6” screen in your pocket along with the state of Indian Television Media and how it is responsible for it. So, without any further ado let’s dive in…

Since the afternoon of 8^th October after Mumbai Police commissioner Param Bir Singh announced that his department was probing allegations of “fixing” television viewership ratings against Republic TV and two other channels, a war broke out for who is worthy of claiming ownership of the Fourth Pillar of our “Democracy”. Quoting ‘The Wire’, “Soon, NDTV 24×7, Times Now, India Today, CNN News18 and ABP News went hammer and tongs after Republic TV, its Hindi sister channel Republic Bharat, and Arnab Goswami, the group’s chairman, editor-in-chief and majority shareholder.”

It led to Arnab Goswami threatening to file a defamation suit against the Mumbai CP and several media houses. Blaming others for something he has been doing for months and years himself, classic Arnab. Whether Arnab got a taste of his own medicine or not remains a completely different issue and is supposed to be learned in the chapters of Journalism Ethics and Toxic Patriarchy. What matters now is how the prime source of ‘news’ for a middle-class Indian who measures the Intelligence Quotient of a person by their ‘spoken English’ has just resorted to being a competition to Ekta Kapoor’s daily soap operas and other ‘masala’ entertainment shows. (Ngl, Arnab is funnier than Kapil Sharma :P)

All this while, when Rajdeep Sardesai was busy calling out Arnab Goswami on India Today and Aaj Tak, being the 'cringe' boy of the class, as usual, shouting ‘Republic ki chodi pakdi gayi’, there were some people belonging to the media fraternity laughing at these bums and gaining viewership from their idiocy as well. Online media houses like 'The Quint', 'The Wire', 'ScoopWhoop' etc. wrote a couple of articles about this or made a video depending on their mode of communication and enjoyed their popcorn while focusing more on issues which mattered.

For the last few years, the surge in the viewership/readership of these online media outlets has gone anywhere but out of notice. Be it the number of subscribers to their YouTube channels or the number of followers on their social media pages, what stands out more is the interaction they've been able to set up with their readers, audience, or even trolls. 'Republic TV' may claim to be 'the people's voice' but we all know whose voice it is and who is our real voice. The rise of Quint, for example, translates to around 24 million monthly unique readerships for their website as of August 2019.

Although there have been more ingredients to prepare the biriyani of their success, the aloo and mutton have been the beginning of the decline of the Television media and real journalism by the Online media outlets.  The Television media has always conducted media trials based on their inclination regarding the benefits they’d reap with that sort of an outcome in real life. The SSR-Rhea Chakravarty case is just a new feather added to their ‘crown’. How the media demonized the Talwars in the Aarushi Talwar case, or even innocents being accused of the Malegaon blasts in 2008 is often forgotten.

Television Media has mostly been persuasive or tried to be influential in deciding how the outcomes of events of national interest would look like based on their own or their investors' interests. This, often is because, most media houses are owned by people belonging to or close to a certain Political Party. For example, Zee News is owned by Subhash Chandra, who is a member of the Rajya Sabha, representing the BJP or NDTV, owned by Pranoy Roy and Radhika Roy, whose sister is a member of the CPIM or even Republic TV owned by Arnab, who, let’s just say, is the biggest fan of Modiji. This has been a kind of a déjà vu for the world of journalism. The persuasive logic used by newspapers across Europe during the Second World War or during Stalin’s time in Russia or even in China proved to be dangerous with regard to the outcomes it had across their area of circulation. After this, the definition of news was changed to be 'Information based on facts and not personal opinions and it must strive to put public interest and truth above self-interest and assumptions.’

Online media outlets have stuck to this definition and have presented us facts and have left the opinion-making part to its readers. Other forms have failed journalism and have turned into modes of communication for advertising, spreading propaganda, or being the mouth-piece for certain personalities. But this wasn't the case always. Recently, (thanks to ScoopWhoop again) we all saw a video clip where our dear Arnab was seen calmly questioning Ravi Shankar Prasad about issues that mattered back in the late 90s. (Maybe he was having his millennial existential crisis at that point, who knows?) 

That credit goes to Arnab Goswami here as well. Being a big fan of Bill O'Reilly and Fox News, he brought the Fox News model of making propaganda profitable to Indian television to compete with other news channels and even entertainment channels. From shouting to the face of politicians and influential people who were never treated that way to questioning them daring questions, Arnab showed the way and was the torch-bearer for modern television journalism. Arnab capitalized on the demands of the English-speaking and Politically 'opinionated' middle class and took on politicians and bureaucrats on his show and that provided the common masses with a sense of catharsis.

The sadder part is, that this model was a hit in India and hence resulted in huge ratings for Arnab’s show. Being influenced by his methods each media house started having their version of 'Arnab' because all it took was a news anchor jumping all around the news studio and screaming at the top of voice to the face of the panel on issues which had ‘masala’. So, issues that mattered to public interest faded away from the television screens, and what replaced them were topics of 'India vs Pakistan', 'Hindu vs Muslim' or the news just ended up being a rat race for who could break a news before anyone else. This did worse and omitted the gatekeeper from the system which used to check the postman before. The fact-check, which is supposed to be done at ground level, has gone missing from the LEDs-turned-cathode ray tubes media.

On the other hand, independent journalists like Faye D'Souza, based on their investigation and well-spread network of sources, have developed a massive reader-base over their social media handles. Recently there was an incident where she got the news slightly wrong. It was claimed that a mob had beaten up the manager of a Tanishq showroom in Gujarat based on the 'Love-Jihad Communal harmony' saga when, in reality, they'd not. She had the guts to correct herself and accept her mistake and even went on to apologize for being complacent in checking the reliability of her sources. Such humility and truthfulness towards the profession has been missing since the late 70s or 80s when the newspapers, after the 'Emergency Situation' under the then Indira Gandhi regime was over, lived up to the true meaning of Journalism.

All these factors along with the exposure of Indian masses to American and the rest of the West through the Internet and even Television have been important in the growth of these pages. The exposure to the information through the web or even through movies or tele shows about how things work across the ‘7 samandar’ have helped us more than the Communist Manifesto ever could. Be it Labour rights, work culture, gender equality, or basic human rights, everything has been influenced by Western pop-culture to some extent. This has been of great help to these pages initially, where they used these pop-culture references in their articles/videos to convey various important messages.

Although, the TV media houses are much bigger than these Social media pages or online Media outlets but to think about how these pages have grown over the past few years is somewhat extraordinary and remarkable at the same time. What we need to do is to be mature as an audience and consume anything which is being served to us carefully and appreciate the efforts of the ones who are trying to rebuild the fourth pillar of our already crumbling democracy.

Gauri Lankesh didn’t give up on her life for nothing…

“I will do what I can and I will say what I should. These intolerant voices find strength in our silence. Let them learn to argue using words instead of threats.”

Do share your opinions in the comments section below. Thanks for reading. Stay Safe :)