Missing: 407 million news consumers

The results of the general elections last week have answered a question that has bothered me for some years now. Going by the Election Commission of India data, 642 million Indians voted in the 2024 general elections. Of these, 36.6 per cent, or about 235 million, voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been running the government at the centre for 10 years. 

Switch on many of India’s roughly 400 news channels. It would seem as if these 235 million people are the only audience for news. Assuming they all watch television, the voters for the ruling party are less than a third of the total TV audience of close to 900 million. (Broadcast Audience Research Council data)

Move to newspapers. If you flipped open some of the large national newspapers, especially in English and Hindi, it would seem that the likes, dislikes, and opinions of these 235 million Indians are paramount. This number is just over half of the 421 million people who read a newspaper, going by the last Indian Readership Survey.

Note that many people might be doing either or both — reading and watching

TV. Therefore, there is significant duplication of these numbers.

If you take a look at the numbers — of voters, media reach etc — for 2014 and 2019, the absolute figures vary. But the trend of news media catering only to one set of consumers is constant. This writer has commented on it earlier. (“Why is Indian News Media Servile?” Business Standard, February 14, 2018)

What has puzzled me is why 407 million people, who vote for other parties, have been completely ignored for almost a decade now. And if you consider the entire population of the country — even after ignoring children under 14 — the narrow approach of news channels seems even more bizarre.

This has created a huge information gap. As voters or non-voters, many of the opinions we form — on what is happening around us, which school or college to go to, on health, on civic, national or international issues — are influenced by how much information we have. And mainstream media, with its phenomenal reach, is the single biggest source of this information.

However, for almost a decade now, we have heard only one story out of the many that a diverse country like India has to offer. Very few stories that conflict with those told by mainstream media are ever seen or heard, say about rural distress or India’s jobs crisis. When stories countering the popular narrative do emerge, people are often surprised or in disbelief.  For many years now, the whole country has been subject to the confirmation bias of one set of news consumers, creating an information vacuum that continues to grow.

But nature abhors a vacuum. Not surprisingly, several people, brands and platforms rushed in to fill the gap online — where entry barriers are not as high as in TV or print. This picked up speed after data prices crashed in 2016 and continued to drop leading to an exponential growth in consumption of all things online.

According to Comscore, more than 523 million Indians used hi-speed bandwidth to watch videos, read, see entertainment, or news online in January 2024. Here, the domination of one demographic is missing. While the online arms of large newspapers and news networks do much of what they do offline, there are hundreds of thousands of hyper-local, local, international websites, YouTube channels, short video apps and individuals, offering a range of opinions and information. Most are small in reach, ranging from 5-25 million followers. However, put them all together and they seem to have filled the gap, somewhat.

That is why many of these individuals or news sites  — Ravish Kumar, Dhruv Rathee, Alt News, The News Minute, The Wire, The Quint, Newslaundry, Scroll, Khabar Lahariya, and many others across languages —  were being celebrated as the results of the general elections started coming in on June 4.  It was as if they swung the election in favour of other parties. 

That, however, is incorrect. Most of these organisations and people simply set out to present facts and perspectives in a news ecosystem that has become homogenised into one lump. Whether you agree with them or not, they were at least speaking from outside an echo-chamber that has been appeasing only 17 per cent of India’s population — the special 235 million. In a country as diverse as India, the more voices there are — on the left, right, centre or otherwise — the better it is. Every group needs to be represented in the discussion happening around society, economy, regulation or politics. These independent voices emphasise the role that media plays in a democracy.

With any luck, this election will push mainstream media to recognise the other Indias as viable news consumers. There is a moral argument for doing this too. However, since most media owners might not be swayed by that, let us stick to the business one. Media brands chose to ignore a large market for almost 10 years. In the process, they lost credibility with a large swathe of Indians. Others came in to claim those consumers, who have now spoken. Time then for mainstream media to listen to them too.

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