By Rajiv Shah
When I received an intimation that well-known journalist Rajdeep Sardesai was to speak at the Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA) on February 2, my instant reaction was: I know what he is going to say—his views are quite well known; he wouldn’t be saying anything new. Yet, I decided to go and listen to him to catch his mood at a time when the media, as he (and I) knew it, is changing fast due to the availability of new technological tools that were not accessible even a decade ago.
Introduced as a friend of the late Achyut Yagnik, a journalist-turned-activist with a strong academic bent of mind—whom I consider my friend, philosopher, and guide—Rajdeep was called to deliver the first Achyut Yagnik Memorial Lecture. Organized by High Court advocate Anand Yagnik, his son, Rajdeep spoke on Media, Politics, and Democracy in India.When I received an intimation that well-known journalist Rajdeep Sardesai was to speak at the Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA) on February 2, my instant reaction was: I know what he is going to say—his views are quite well known; he wouldn’t be saying anything new. Yet, I decided to go and listen to him to catch his mood at a time when the media, as he (and I) knew it, is changing fast due to the availability of new technological tools that were not accessible even a decade ago.
Known for plunging into the most adverse atmospheres to capture the prevailing mood and elicit opinions from hostile crowds—even at the risk of being manhandled—Rajdeep, ironically, got a very friendly audience at AMA, who applauded his strong anti-establishment stance.
He talked about the circumstances in which NDTV, where he worked for 11 long years, was taken over by the Adanis; how its previous owner, Prannoy Roy, was harassed with Enforcement Directorate raids ahead of the takeover; how most of the TV media has been “bought over” by top corporate houses; and how the sedition law has been misused against journalists Siddique Kappan and Prabir Purkayastha, who were detained and jailed under this draconian law. He also pointed out that it is not just BJP governments at the Centre and in the states, but even the Tamil Nadu and West Bengal governments—under non-BJP rule—that have acted in a similar manner.
Even as he blamed the overall intolerant atmosphere that has come to prevail across India vis-à-vis the media, sitting at the end of the jam-packed auditorium, I found those around me agreeing with him on almost every point. People would whisper, nod, and clap at each and every instance that he cited to prove his argument.
Indeed, Rajdeep said exactly what the audience seemed eager to hear—except at one point, when someone asked him a sharp question: If the media is under siege, what is the solution? His answer was straightforward: It’s not the job of the media to find a solution; its job is to tell the truth “to those in power.”
I am sure many in the audience—who mainly seemed to consist of left-of-the-centre individuals, including civil society activists, academics, and lawyers—wouldn’t have liked this answer. Indeed, the idea that the media shouldn’t just tell the truth but also offer solutions prevails quite widely in society, including among the type of audience that had come (or was invited) to listen to him.
I thought that the notion—it’s not the media’s job to find a solution—needs to be emphasized, especially to a like-minded audience. After all, journalists are not experts or policymakers; they are meant to reflect reality as they see it. They are “quick historians,” to quote M. Chalapathi Rau, editor of National Herald during the Nehru era. At the same time, they are supposed to state what the establishment seeks to suppress, to paraphrase what the writer George Orwell said.
Be that as it may, while Rajdeep was quite explicit in stating that the media today is forced to operate in an increasingly hostile environment—something that needs to be reiterated—I was somewhat puzzled when he suggested that gone are the days when the media wasn’t under corporate control, and journalists were allowed to report reality as they saw it, taking down notes with a pen in hand.
Everyone knows that The Times of India, where Rajdeep said he began his career in 1988, has always been known for its pro-establishment stance. If The Times of India was (and is) owned by a media baron, the same was (and is) true for other newspapers: The Hindustan Times, for instance, was “owned” by the Birlas and was equally pro-establishment. These two newspapers virtually “ruled” Delhi when I worked at Link newsweekly in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
No doubt, whether in India or the U.S., most media—both journalistic and social—remains under the tight control of corporate entities, which seek to tighten their grip even further. However, thanks to the internet, people no longer depend solely on established media outlets to learn about what’s happening around them. Indeed, Rajdeep seemed to overlook the fact that we live in an era of information explosion, in which corporate monopoly over information has been broken.
Of course, misinformation has drastically multiplied, with what Rajdeep called “WhatsApp University” spreading falsehoods. But who doesn’t remember how two powerful corporate-owned Gujarati newspapers spread misinformation fueling the anti-Muslim riots in 2002, and there was no way to contradict them? Surely, there was no WhatsApp then.
Today, thanks to social media, there is an immense possibility of countering misinformation—something that was not possible, say, during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, when rumors spread like wildfire that a “train full of dead bodies” was on its way to Delhi, inciting the mob to attack Sikhs even more barbarically. Now, even ordinary people can contradict such misinformation through social media.
Indeed, as far as the media is concerned, I believe there is a “solution” in the form of alternative media. I wonder why Rajdeep didn’t mention The Wire, Scroll, or Alt News, which, even at a very nascent stage, are striving to bring the truth to the surface. Moreover, there are countless blogging platforms where people continue sharing their news and views—an option that didn’t exist in the so-called “good old days.”
While Rajdeep seemed to believe that YouTubers cannot replace traditional media, the fact remains that those bearing the torch of alternative media are indeed using YouTube to disseminate the truth. In fact, I regularly receive YouTube links from Rajdeep on WhatsApp featuring his interviews on India Today. Isn’t he a YouTuber too?
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