Have the Assembly Election Results confirmed the irrelevance of the Main Stream Media?
- In Politics
- 07:51 AM, May 23, 2016
- Hariharan Iyer
In this election season, like other election seasons there are takeaways galore. All of them are ‘key’ takeaways. Times of India has 10 of them. Zee News offers 9, Firstpost and Swarajya Magazine 5 each, Financial Express a handful…you need a truck, perhaps a 40 ft. container, to take them all.
Lost in this maze, are two takeaways, real key takeaways: One, the irrelevance of the mainstream media and two, strong leaders are emerging despite adverse press.
Irrelevance of the Main Stream Media
Of course, this is not a new message. It has been delivered with mind-numbing regularity by the Gujarat electorate since 2002. However, a weak, scam-ridden UPA, for its own survival, allowed the media to assume a larger than life role. Instead of being just a messenger, media became a scriptwriter. For example, it decided that the cash-for-vote clip should be edited out of the national scene; similarly, the National Herald case should be held in suspense till the court took cognizance of the matter. In fact, its importance rose to a crescendo when a news anchor acquired a say on the cabinet formation!
But then, as the Lok Sabha elections approached in 2014, there was a growing realisation that UPA would not make it to the 3rd term. Though MSM did not blatantly acknowledge it, there was a subtle acceptance of its waning clout. At best, the channels and newspapers lowballed the likely performance of NDA in their opinion polls.
But this somewhat sane behaviour was short-lived.
Polls to the Delhi Assembly in February 2015 revived its losing morale. A small turf. Immense Media penetration. A close-knit middleclass electorate in whose scale of integrity, the media were many notches higher than the corrupt politicians. A place where cocktail circuit discussions rather than cold facts influenced decisions. A setting which helped media promote an out-of-work bureaucrat who had a dismal track record of ruling the territory for just 49 days as an angel. Who is more competent to solve core issues like corruption and inflation was pushed aside. Non-existent controversies like attacks on churches were invented. ‘Minorities under siege’ became the theme. And Arvind Kejriwal won 67 of the 70 seats.
Bolstered by the success in Delhi, media approached Bihar elections 10 months later. A large state with 243 constituencies, 6.68 cr electorate and complex caste calculations, Bihar was vastly different from Delhi. But the opinion polls, which predicted a close fight between Nitish’s Mahagathbandhan and NDA offered the niche media had been looking for. All that Nitish needed was a marginal push, a diversion, which would consolidate the votes of fence sitters. Dadri presented them the opportunity in late September 2015, days ahead of the elections. Intellectuals—the Sahitya Academy and other winners—who are the national level parallels of ‘cocktail circuit’ discussants in Delhi lent their support to media. ‘Minorities under siege’ and intolerance themes were recreated. The much-needed diversion was provided to the voters. And Mahagathbandhan won with comfortable majority.
Two successes in quick succession—media could not keep its feet on the ground. It assumed its UPA days were back.
Look at the media coverage of West Bengal elections for confirmation. This piece in The Hoot explains the brazenness with which ABP took on Mamata Banerjee and how the fellow media houses lent their support to it. Another report in DailyO says that in West Bengal Mamata’s fight was as much with ABP as with the Left and Congress combine. What was the fight for? A piece of land worth Rs 500 cr, which ABP wants to exploit commercially and Mamata wants to take back the land. Against this backdrop, is ‘corruption doesn’t matter’ (The reference obviously is to the Sarada to Narada scams) as suggested by many online and offline papers a key takeaway?
It is not my point that there was no corruption or that it should not matter in an election. And it is not my case that Mamata deserves the victory that she has got. All I am pointing out is, the voting public has come to accept that there is nothing like a corruption free party or candidate. It has its own corruption scale, which it uses to assess the accuser and accused and chooses to go by the one who is less corrupt. In other words, media’s lack of credibility and low integrity blunted its attacks on Mamata.
That explains why Sun TV’s motivated coverage, despite its mammoth viewership, could not stop Jaya from ascending the throne. Agreed, Sun TV’s political leanings are apparent and the voters massively discount its reports. But even the neutral media took a subtle slant towards DMK. Much was made out of Stalin’s Namakku Naame tour. More than being a success, the tour offered an alibi to the media, which was otherwise too embarrassed to be seen as supporting a scam ridden DMK. To a media, which was used to projecting Rahul 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, etc., Stalin 2.0 was an attractive caption. His temple visits got immense media coverage. Rarely did anyone question whether there was U-turn in DMK’s atheist ideology.
Another initiative of DMK, which was used my media to project an impression that it was ahead of Amma was its social media strategy. But all these covert support fell flat. Why? Because the electorate applied its scale of integrity to the parties in the fray and found that the alternative they were trying to project subtly, viz. Karunanidhi, was much more appalling.
So, the media is back to its May 2014 position. Irrelevant. And what made this possible?
Emergence of strong leaders
Congress’s inability to produce charismatic leaders post Indira Gandhi resulted in the media assuming undue clout. When coalition governments became a reality in the late 1990s, media’s pre-eminence became inevitable. Media realised soon enough that if it had to project what a leader was not, then it could ask for quid pro quo. Its relentless effort to prop up Rahul failed from the word go, but it did not stop media from extracting its price from Congress—a news anchor of a not-so-popular channel got a chance to recommend a cabinet berth for a regional party’s nominee. Similarly, Delhi government’s disproportionately high media budget was in fact the price media extracted for supporting him in the Assembly elections.
And when someone chose to challenge its domination in 2002, media could not swallow it. It still is not able to, as Madhu Kishwar points out in this clip. Modi has proved over the last decade that he does not need the media. He created a successful social media strategy, which has accentuated the irrelevance of MSM. Now it is the media that needs him for its TRPs/ circulation—a situation which prevailed till Indira Gandhi’s time and which prevails all over the world today.
It is difficult to agree with the ways of Jayalalithaa. But the fact is she is another leader who has grown despite an unsympathetic media. Media’s indifference when she was manhandled inside the assembly premises was legendary. Both regional and national media chose to ignore the legitimate questions on the authenticity of the video on Karunanidhi’s arrest. In today’s world of sting journalism, this is totally unacceptable. The sexist remarks DMK’s speakers make on her during election meetings rarely find a mention in the media. But she has withstood all these calumny.
The latest to join this list is Mamata Banerjee as she faced a hostile media during the recent elections and won.
Jaya and Mamata have to blame themselves for the adverse media they get. Much of what media says about them merits attention. Nevertheless, they represent a trend— the emergence of a new breed of media-independent leaders.
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