 "paid news-money")
Last week, Arvind Kejriwal, convener of the Aam Aadmi Party, accused media houses of being sold to political parties and said that heavy amounts had been paid to promote the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial nominee, Narendra Modi. If his party came to power, Kejriwal said, he would have the matter investigated and the guilty sent to jail. There was furore all around. Media houses were up in arms. Political parties, ranging from BJP to the Communist Party of India, came down like a pile of bricks on Kejriwal.
But the question that got sidestepped is: are large sums of money changing hands to buy favours from the media ahead of the country's most high-decibel general elections? According to the Press Council of India, paid news can be described as any news item that is viewed or read by public that is essentially an advertisement published as news in return for money. The council had in 2009 set up a sub-committee headed by K Srinivas Reddy and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta to bring out a report on tackling the menace of paid news in India, which was later buried in its archives. Members of the Press Council were vehemently opposed to the report naming media houses and also asked the sub-committee to bring down the report from 36,000 words to 3,600 words.
"By 2009, it had become apparent that the institutionalised practice of a quid pro quo between powerful corporate entities and the media had seeped into the political milieu as well. Candidates standing for political office began to appear in excessively complimentary content, which appeared as news in newspapers as well as television screens in numerous parts of the country," says Guha Thakurta who prepared the report to the Press Council of India. "In states like Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, the phenomenon became blatant. The Election Commission tentatively estimated that the market for political paid news was in the region of Rs 500 crore and that up to 40 per cent of a candidate's expenses were spent on publicity," he adds.
"It is only during times of elections that the issue of paid news gets attention. But the fact is, paid news is a structured industry and an enormous amount of money is collected by media houses 365 days of the year. It is as rampant today as it was a few years ago and nothing has been done about it," says P Sainath, rural affairs editor of The Hindu and one of the first to raise the issue. The Hindu had published a series of articles in 2009 which showed how Ashok Chavan, then chief minister of Maharashtra, had splurged on paying off newspapers.
While the Election Commission had in 2010 cracked down on the menace of paid news by media houses and also set up a poll expenditure monitoring wing to check the practice of paid news and other abuses of money power in elections, a draft law that prescribed suspending the licence of publications that publish paid content as news or analysis is still pending before the government. No action has been taken so far. Today, even as a crisis looms over the credibility of the media houses and India's democratic practices, a case is pending before the Supreme Court in which Chavan has challenged allegations of having paid media houses and the government has claimed that the Election Commission had no right to disqualify a candidate even if his accounts were found to be improper. If the court rules in Chavan's favour, the powers of the Election Commission will be seriously undermined.
This time, the Election Comm-ission has written to media houses and editors seeking their support in ensuring that the menace of paid news is curbed. The concern this time seems to be with the television medium as compared to the print medium in 2009. Last year, during the elections in Delhi, the Election Commission had set up a team that would observe content on television and radio and report suspicious news. While the media's credibility may have seen an increase in the last year as Edelman, an independent public relations firm, points out, newspapers are ranked higher than other media in terms of credible news, which throws concern over electronic and visual medium.
"The real problem today is not paid news. Paid news can eventually be seeded out from the system. But the concern is using television and newspapers to push across political agenda at the behest of the owners. The practice of paid news happens in certain sections of the media and collusive crony journalism is spoiling the media's reputation today," says Rajdeep Sardesai, editor-in-chief of CNN-IBN. Sardesai also maintains that his company has zero tolerance towards paid news and has instructed his sales team about the policy. "There is no doubt that there are examples of politicians and political parties striking deals with channels and newspapers. But that should be showcased as sponsored features as is done globally," adds Sardesai.
Last year, NDTV appointed jurist Soli Sorabjee as an independent ombudsman to address concerns and complaints. "The problem is the media in India lacks integrity and is filled with hypocrisy and duplicity," says Sainath. He says that media houses only cry foul when they are attacked, citing freedom of expression, but at the same time, they do not want to be treated as commercial institutions. "One of the big challenges in curbing the nuisance of paid news today is the inability to check media houses due to technological developments, the globalisation of media conglomerates and the trend of certain suppliers and creators of news (public relations practitioners, advertisers and interest groups) in getting closely involved with the working of media organisations," says Guha Thakurta.
Newspapers, meanwhile, have been busy clarifying their stand on paid news in the country and have published editorial comments on the same. In January this year, after The Times of India had come under scathing attack over its coverage of the Aam Aadmi Party, the paper issued a statement that said: "We will support Modi, Rahul (Gandhi), Kejriwal and every other politician every time they do the right thing. But no one should expect a blank cheque from us. Our sole allegiance is to our reader, not to any politician or party." Similarly, The Hindustan Times said that the newspaper did not believe in paid news. "Our news is news, got by the hard work of our network of journalists across the country. Our advertisers pay us to advertise on our pages. The two - news and paid for advertisements - are distinct. When our advertisers want to run an advertorial, we insist that it be labelled clearly as such for all to see."
And as the menace of paid news is likely to re-invent itself in new forms, following the stringent norms laid out by the Election Commission, India's media houses have a challenging task in front of them to ensure that their credibility is not lost in times of profiteering.
