When News is (For) A Mob
“The public is ready to be crystallised into a mob at the whiff of a conspiracy. But since when is journalism an institution built to serve the mob?”
“This is what the public wants.”
Over the last few weeks, every argument against the falling standards of TV news has been met with this rejoinder. I know, because I have made many of those arguments myself. On Twitter, in journalist groups, with journalists I know, ranting at the TV in my drawing room.
It’s a rejoinder, that admittedly, makes me angrier than the actual spectacle of TV news “reporting” on the death of Sushant Singh Rajput. A spectacle where a witch-hunt is being sold as “news” to Indian audiences.
I know it’s not the first time that we’ve seen this spectacle. Similar op-eds, angry letters, and invocation of vultures to describe TV news channels has occurred more times than they should in any functioning democracy. You only have to look at TV news clips from the 2008 Arushi Talwar murder case to see, that unfortunately, we have been here before. Except, maybe Twitter trends weren’t the Editor-in-Chief in a newsroom in 2008.
The reason why the coverage of an actor’s death overtaking every other vital news story in the middle of a pandemic, soaring unemployment, crushing economy, and a public health crisis feels like a betrayal – more so than other times – is because of this sentence: “This is what the public wants.”
It’s an argument that has been brandished by top editors in the country again and again. As if by saying this, they are conjuring a protective shield against questioning on their journalist ethics, and human decency.
“It’s what the public wants, look at the TRPs. What can we do!”
What you can do, respected editors, is find another name for the job you do.
The public is a mob hungry for sensationalism. In India, even a misogynistic one. This is not news. You don’t need an analytics algorithm or TRP numbers to tell you this. The janta will always want drama, sex and sensationalism. It’s a collective, ready to be crystallised into a mob at the whiff of a conspiracy.
But since when is journalism an institution which is built to serve the mob? That the top editors of TV news channels in India would bow down to the demands of a fickle mob is a dereliction of duty. If journalism is now defined as a profession where we only serve up a version of truth which is palatable to the larger public, then to put it bluntly, we’re screwed. Forget the death-knell, bring in the funeral feast.
There’s another reason, however, why this cop-out by self-appointed vanguards of Indian journalism rankles. It’s a slap in the face of those few good journalists who still have the moral courage to choose truth.
Good journalists like the one I met in Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. I was covering the UP elections, feeling comically out of place, and in the offices of Ghazipurnews.in. “Yeh kal ka edition hai.” I was pointed out to a screen, where I read what news looks like in a small town. News of a rail accident, a girl who made her district proud, what the local MLA is doing. Or Andaman Chronicle which I read cover-to-cover on a trip to Port Blair because it was the only newspaper available. It didn’t matter, because in a span of few pages, I knew all I wanted to know about what was happening on the island. It was news, for those on the island, which mattered.
For all its flaws, and there are many, the purest form of journalism exists in cities and towns far away from Delhi and Mumbai. It’s when news, in local newspapers and websites, is simultaneously a record of the life of people, and a truth-teller. It’s also, ironically, where many award-winning journalists get their expertise from – before they become “stars.” It’s where journalists routinely risk their lives to report the truth, because they had to.
“So, what is the solution?”
I don’t know. I only know this: the thing about mobs is, they can’t be reasoned with. TV news, in a Frankenstein-esque turn of events, has become that which it has chosen to worship – a mob. No number of editorials, and especially this essay, will convince anyone with any power in a TV newsroom to identify the zombie in the edit meeting.
But you can resist the mob. By supporting the few good journalists left, by switching off the TV news and, by paying for good journalism.
Maybe by doing so, over time, those who want to only serve the news that the “public wants” would be left looking at themselves in the mirror. A mob interested in anything but the truth, “journalists” who are anything but journalists.
Links of the Week:
Jane Fonda makes me less afraid of growing old. In fact, I actively look forward to it now. All I want is to be this fearless and badass when I am 83. This interview by Hadley Freeman in The Guardian is a revelation.
“Oh, it’s the most exciting thing in the world, to keep learning!” she says. “It’s one of my mantras: it’s more important to be interested than to be interesting. I feel like a student and that’s really good. All these young people are so good at knowing what to do and not to do, what to say and what not to say, and they provide tremendous insight. I’m just learning so much every day and it makes me so happy. It’s a whole new chapter.”
How coronavirus has shattered India’s economy — a piece I wish we had read in the Indian media, but ah, well. Jeffrey Gettleman does a fine, and essential story in the New York Times, anyway.
“This is probably the worst situation India has been in since independence,” said Jayati Ghosh, a development economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “People have no money. Investors aren’t going to invest if there is no market. And the costs have gone up for most production.”
Sorry for more Rhea-SSR news, but I found this look at the online cult behind the toxic mob by Nidhi Suresh in Newslaundry fascinating, and horrific.
“She should be hanged,” said Singh Dheeraj, one of the group’s five administrators. “But then again, in our country, it took very long for even Afzal Guru or Yakub Memon to be hanged..."
Dheeraj is a final-year engineering student in Faridabad. He agreed to talk to me over a Facebook Messenger call only after he confirmed that I’m a “nationalist”. “I’m against anti-nationalism,” he told me. About being one of the admins of the Facebook group, he said, chuckling: “I have not told my parents or friends. They will think that I am not focusing on my studies.”
What we all need more of — a stranger’s kindness. This lovely piece by Rachel Martin in The Atlantic was both harrowing, and reassuring. (You’ll see what I mean.)
“I turned around and saw my son Wyatt sitting down between two boulders in a fast-moving stream of water. I yelled at him to get out. He yelled back something that I couldn’t hear, and then he disappeared over the edge.
All I remember from the moments after is screaming, over and over, like a prayer, “Jesus Christ, somebody help my son!” But I didn’t even know what help he needed, because for several seconds I couldn’t force myself to look down.”
That’s it from me this week!
Here’s something I realised this week that threw me off — because the relentlessness of 2020 remains unmatched when it comes to despair, we haven’t had the time to mourn what our life could have been. So, if you feel the need to take some time off from *gestures at everything,* I hope you are.
As always, I’m a “Reply” away. Just don’t write in with conspiracy theories, the news is enough for that.
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