Author: Raja M
Publication: Asia Times
Date: May 18, 2004
URL: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FE18Df05.html
It's official: the world's largest-circulated
English daily has been involved in some shady business. Exposing a long-known
trade fact, a leading Mumbai English tabloid, Mid-Day, last week published
the "rates" for purchasing editorial features in the Times of India. The
Times has not issued a denial, and the rogue rate card seems to be the
latest indicator of rotting media ethics and tolerance in India for corruption.
For sums ranging from US$45,000
to $66,000, the Mid-Day story alleged, one could buy a news feature plugging
their business, get interviewed (the business owner supplies the questions
and answers themselves) and have their picture published on the much- scorned
Page 3 of the Bombay Times, the city supplement of the Times of India.
In the United States or the United
Kingdom, uproar would have erupted after the expose. But the Times of India
(TOI) was not even pressed to explain the allegation to its 4.5 million
estimated readers, or to any regulatory body. Instead, some attempted to
defend the indefensible. Shobhaa De, novelist and acidic columnist, incredibly
called the TOI move "brave" and the "future of journalism", never mind
the reader being taken for a ride, if not criminal fraud, with no distinct
boundaries marked between news and advertisements.
In a brazen display of contempt
for the basic tenets of journalism, the "service"' meant that the clear
divide between advertisement and editorial was blurred for a negotiable
price. The Times of India is already infamous for often plugging its own
businesses, such as its search engine and web portal, in its news pages.
The demarcating line and supposed
safety valve against legal complications is a microscopic "m" in 8-point
type, like a copyright sign, that the reader is to infer as "Medianet",
a created subsidiary that "buys news features" from publicity-hungry individuals
and corporates. Apparently, the TOI group established Medianet to cut out
crooked journalists and take the cut for itself. Credible media houses
generally sack bribable hacks, but here the media house happily joined
the racket.
Medianet rose up the TOI ladder
so much that its chief keeper, Vinita Mangia, took over as editor of Bombay
Times this month. The move makes Rupert Murdoch's Fox News a glowing paragon
of journalistic virtue in comparison.
Such dubious, if not downright crooked,
business practices increasingly infect the English print media in India
- that usually is never short of pompous posturing. Cutthroat competition
drives the world's most populated print media industry: according to March
2004 figures from the Registrar of Newspapers for India, 8,141 English
dailies appear among a total of 55,780 newspapers reaching 142 million
people, at a growth rate of 23.21 percent compared to the previous year.
Foreign funds and stricter standards
of management could clean up India's largely family-owned media houses
that often hob-nob intimately with political parties and industrial groups.
Successive chief ministers of Maharashtra state often drop in for luncheon
meetings with Times of India top brass in Mumbai. But inevitably, the Times
of India group has also been one of the most vocal opponents of substantial
foreign direct investment (FDI) being allowed in Indian media, even though
it used the just-voted out Indian government's 26 percent FDI cap to hive
off its leading magazines to the BBC.
More foreign marriages such as tie-ups
between India's Business Standard with the Financial Times raise hopes
for better pay scales and professional standards in Indian journalism.
Presently, leading media groups are being accused of running rackets such
as the exploitation of governmental newspaper subsidies: they are alleged
to register new publications, inflate circulation figures, apply for subsidized
newsprint for them, print a few token copies and sell the rest of the newsprint
in the black market.
The manipulation of circulation
figures is also an ongoing practice, as a senior newspaper professional
explains: companies will deliberately increase pages to make the newspaper's
weight more profitable to rathiwallahs (waste paper vendors) who buy copies
in bulk and make more money selling it as waste paper than selling at the
artificially-lowered cover price. Circulation figures get a fake boost.
Such tactics are known and ranted
about in trade circles, with the occasional angry protest or a scathing
editorial moaning about dirty tricks without much effect. Characteristically
unabashed, TOI justified its editorial hawking as "edvertorials" where
the editor supposedly controls the paid content, as against conventional
"advertorials" which the marketing department sells in clearly separate,
marked space and sometimes different fonts.
Founded in 1838 as "The Bombay Times
and Journal of Commerce", The Times of India (called so since 1861) has
consistently starred in many other recent media controversies, the latest
being a run-in with its competitor in New Delhi, The Hindustan Times, over
circulation figures. In a major power shift in the 1990s, the new generation
of marketing whiz kids systematically crushed perceived editorial uppityness.
The TOI management undertook moves
that suggested it considered selling newspapers as requiring the same expertise
as selling toothpaste, and editors and journalists as dispensable as used
tissues. The prompt result from marketing bulldozing into editorial territory
was bright young journalistic hopefuls such as Rajdeep Sardesai leaving
TOI in a huff to carve out successful careers in satellite TV news, with
companies like New Delhi Television (NDTV).
In a peculiar mission to show just
who is the boss, Times of India owners Bennett, Coleman & Co, India's
largest media group, went out of its way to put its editors in place. A
former editor of the Bombay Times and a current columnist told this correspondent
that she was flown to New Delhi, along with other editors in the group,
for the express purpose of being categorically informed that they need
the TOI group more than the TOI group needs them.
Under such remarkable working conditions
and tactics, the TOI hit new profitability but also steadily plunged to
new depths of editorial disrespect . During the India versus Pakistan cricket
series in March, it reached giddy heights of facetiousness, with lunatic
front page headlines such as the screaming "Karachi Captured" after India
won a match there.
But unlike with toothpaste, respect
for the truth feeds a newspaper's long-term life and TOI is fast losing
respect, despite being ranked one of the world's six best newspapers. With
millions of Indians having grown up with the TOI, its growing crisis of
credibility is like watching an old friend become mentally unbalanced from
an addiction to greed and power.
There's a dark, murky, fascinating
and edifying media story to be told of the rise and imminent fall of the
Times of India, once called the "Old Lady of Boribunder", now being hooted
as the "Sold Lady of Boribunder".
Raja M is an independent writer
based in Mumbai, India
