Alive For Go-Ahead Men : A Delhi Press Magazine

The role of the Election Commission of India (ECI), in curbing booth-capturing, intimidation of voters, and other kinds of electoral fraud, has won accolades from the public. India’s elections, which in mid-2009 brought 415 million voters to the 1.18 million ballot units in 834.944 polling stations and were mostly peaceful, may be one of the wonders of the world.

However, it is widely understood that, last year, the free, fair and democratic attributes of these elections have been compromised as never before. There was large-scale, illegal and scandalous use of money-power – which, to a considerable extent, involved recycled, dirty money, garnered through corruption in executive and legislative offices.

Recently, an article appeared in a leading daily, which claimed that there was extensive and brazen participation of a section of the media in Andhra Pradesh. Allegedly, journalists earned about Rs 350 crore through editorial coverage sold to candidates during the recent Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. It is said that some political candidates even recorded the expenditure, incurred in purchasing editorial coverage, in their official doc- uments submitted to the ECI.

No wonder, a speaker at a media seminar in Hyderabad recently characterised the trend as a “Cash Transfer Scheme” – from politicians to journalists.

Earlier, this trend allegedly prevailed between the politicians only.

Thus, we had the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accusing the Samajwadi Party (SP) of indulging in bribe to protect the Central Government, when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) faced a no-confidence motion from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the BJP.

It is a welcome sign that some newspersons drew the attention of the ECI on this new-fangled cash transfer scheme in Andhra Pradesh.

The Press Council of India has constituted a 2-member committee to inquire into the matter.

The grapevine in media concurred with the writer of the above article. It was further alleged that the Assembly elections saw the culture of ‘cover packages’ explode across the State. In many cases, a candidate had to pay for almost any coverage at all; issues did not pose a problem.

If any candidate was not inclined to dole out to some scribes, the candidate’s name was blacklisted in their columns. This made the smaller parties pale into insignificance and there was no or very little coverage of candidates with inadequate assets and resources.

Apparently, during the Lok Sabha elections, a section of the media were offering "low-end" coverage packages for Rs 15 lakh to Rs 20 lakh. “High-end” ones cost a lot more. And the rates for Assembly elections are even higher. “It is not new,” say a few scribes. However, the brazenness of it is quite alarming.

The deals were many and varied. A political candidate had to pay different rates for ‘profiles’, ‘features’, 'interviews', ‘analysis’, ‘commentaries’, ‘events’, ‘achievements’ and what not.

With the channels, it was ‘live coverage’, a ‘special focus,’ or even a team tracking you for hours in a day.

Let alone bad-mouthing your rival, this ‘pay-per’ culture also ensures that the newspaper, magazine or channel will not tell its audiences that you have a criminal record.

The sources in the political corridor said that, as many as 50% of the MLAs just elected in Maharashtra, have criminal charges pending against them. Interestingly enough, some of them featured in adulatory ‘news items’, which made no mention of this while tracking their record.

Media-politics nexus

The writer, who traced the nexus between the politicians and media, said one rebel candidate in western Maharashtra calculates that an editor from that region earned Rs 1 crore.

The concerned editor, according to him, gleefully pointed out that the rebel candidate has won by defeating the official candidate of his party.

It is indeed disgusting and disturbing to note that the money game has moved from the petty personal corruption of a handful of scribes to the structured extraction of huge sums of money by some media outfits. Some small publications rely solely on ‘Supplements’ to whet their appetite.

It becomes easy for them to release supplements in this mediasavvy world, to pamper the politicians, industrialists, tinsel world and cricketers. Even if a supplement costs more than a crore, people with enough resources are happy to gain mileage from publicity. Visual media sensed it and, in the name of ‘bonus’, ‘prime-time’ and a few other spots, they mint money by projecting the big shots in a fine-tuned manner.

Of late, ‘news items of your choice’ is gaining more prominence. For instance, if any entrepreneur or film actor or sportsman is willing to spend extra money on his publicity, the writer from the daily or the magazine will help you draft your material. In some cases, it is the other way round, as many, including some lawyers and police officials, are ready to draft the material concerning them, instead of relying on their versions.

Some of them even insist on going through the report before it appears in print. Readers could find several ‘news items’ of exactly the same size, in the same newspaper, on the same day, mentioning very different things, as they were paid-for propaganda or disguised advertisements. It is a regrettable fact that some publications are compromising their ideology to generate revenues from advertisements.

At times, during page make-ups, news becomes a casualty at the expense of advertisements. Such publications are ready to sacrifice their editorial coverage or lead page for the sake of advertisements that bring in cash.

There are a few significant exceptions, of course. Some editors tried their level best to balance their coverage and even ran a ‘news audit’ to ensure that. Often, some journalists with access to politicians were expected not only to feather their nests, but also to generate profit for the media houses.