Last week, some newspapers reported an unusual case of theft where the victim chose not to call the police. Rs 2.5 crore in cash had apparently gone missing from a safe kept in the New Delhi headquarters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). There were no signs of forced entry into the room where the safe was kept. The safe lay unlocked, without the cash. Yet, the political party that sees itself as a contender for the seat of power at New Delhi did not do the obvious thing when you find a large amount of money missing: file a first information report with the police. Instead, the case was reportedly handed over to private investigators. Since then, nobody has heard anything more about the theft. And, interestingly, the media has not cared to stay with the story, or quiz BJP leaders after the initial questions were met with non-committal knowledge disclaimers.
A similar lack of media interest was seen last month when the William J Clinton Foundation released the list of its donors. A few dailies front-paged the development, highlighting how Indian companies, organisations, businessmen and politicians had donated between $25,000 and $5 million to the Foundation. Amar Singh, a member of Parliament and general secretary of Samajwadi Party (whose donation was in the $1-5 million range), dismissed his name in the list as a mistake, while opposition political parties demanded that the government disclose whether the donations made by Amar Singh and others had received the necessary remittance clearance from the Reserve Bank of India. A fortnight later, the issue of donations to the Clinton Foundation has disappeared from the media. There have been no convincing explanations from the donors, nor has there been even routine media follow-up, let alone any investigative report.
Similar indifference on the part of the media was in evidence when, in October 2005, the Volcker report on Iraq's oil-for-food programme named as many as 119 Indian companies (including some well-known ones like Reliance, Ranbaxy, Cipla, Tata International, Godrej & Boyce and Thermax), which had either knowingly or unwittingly paid kickbacks to the Iraqi regime. The media descended on K Natwar Singh, who was further exposed by the Pathak inquiry, but the others on the list barely faced any questions at all. Nor, it would seem, did the government bother to go into possible breaking of Indian laws.
The same media that dropped these scandals like hot potatoes will do saturation coverage for 24 hours and more of a boy who has fallen down a well, and spend a great amount of energy, money and broadcast time on other such episodes that have a low intensity on any Richter scale of news breaks. The high-voltage stories get little sustained attention, to the point where it is not just that questions are not answered, they are not even asked. Companies hide behind bland statements, and no one tries seriously to break through the PR cordon.
It is necessary to ask what has made the media willing and indeed eager to look the other way, almost as if embarrassed, when a scandal breaks, and to focus instead on minor or frivolous issues. Is it that the investigative spirit has died because past campaigns exposing corruption have led to no successful prosecution of the guilty? Or that the rich and powerful now live in a world where they cannot be questioned? Or that newspaper publishers want nothing than advertising sheets, while the journalists have been co-opted?
