Thanks to The Hindu’s expose of Maharashtra Chief Minister (CM) Ashok Chavan, the media’s dirtiest secret is now out in the open — the concept of advertisement masquerading as news. What The Hindu found was that, while the CM had spent just Rs 5,379 on advertisements in newspapers, several top Marathi dailies ran the same “news” stories extolling Chavan’s virtues — verbatim! Naturally, The Hindu concluded this was surrogate advertising — it put a value to what this “news” would have cost had it been printed as an ad, and concluded that the CM had violated the Election Commission’s ceiling of Rs 10 lakh for assembly poll expenses. A few days later, Mint followed this up with analysis by media monitoring agency Tam Media Research which showed election advertising in Marathi newspapers had fallen by around a fifth compared with that in 2004 elections. Once again, this seemed to confirm that politicians were paying newspapers to carry news items, not ads, on them.
The trend of paid news got a fillip when Bennett Coleman & Co — the publishers of The Times of India and The Economic Times — began a separate “private treaties” division where, in return for free advertisements, the group picked up equity in various companies. Nothing wrong with a straightforward barter deal, except, since Bennett Coleman benefited if the company’s share prices went up, there was always the possibility that the newspapers’ selection of news might be tilting in favour of the private treaty companies. There have, on occasion, been leaks of emails allegedly written by editors of group publications asking colleagues to find ways to improve coverage of private treaty firms. While Bennett Coleman denies any pressure to tilt the news, it is obvious the move has caught the advertisers’ fancy since several other media groups have also set up similar divisions, though by different names.
And this is where the problem lies. How do you resolve the issue — while the Press Council of India (PCI) plans to take up the issue in its next week’s meeting, what can the PCI do when some of its bigger members themselves are under a cloud? As for the Election Commission, which the PCI has invited to the meeting, the chances of it being able to prove anything are slim. In any case, the issue goes far beyond whether Chavan has breached the ceiling, it is now about whether readers can trust the news if even a small part of it is paid for. While most journalists can pin-point the newspapers that carry paid-for news, identifying the solution is not as easy. It is too much to expect advertisers not to deal with these newspapers, since such “news” clearly benefits them. A solution, however partial, lies in The Hindu kind of exposes which let readers know what they thought was news was actually an advertisement. If bodies like Sebi are to ask newspapers about some of the more blatant plugs carried as news, that would help, but the danger here is of the government using this as an excuse to censor the media. Till then, it’s caveat emptor as far as the readers/viewers of various media groups are concerned.