What ToI edit won't tell you about Arnab and media ethics
On Monday, Times of India carried a lead edit signed by its editors (unnamed) which sought to explain the recent controversy (discussed, as far as I know, only on Twitter) arising out of the different coverage of the JNU standoff in the group’s different media properties.
The print papers, both ToI and Economic Times, have, in their reporting and editorial coverage, gone after the government for what they claim is excessive use of state force against students who are charged with raising anti-India slogans on campus on February 9. Times Now, led by Arnab Goswami, on the other hand, has taken the opposite stand. On his nightly show, Newshour, he has been going hammer and tongs after the students themselves, criticising the violence inflicted on, say, Kanhaiya in Patiala House Courts, but ultimately hewing to the line that freedom of expression was abused in JNU on February 9.
In what looks to be a face-saving exercise couched in ideals of openness, Monday’s lead edit sought to reconcile the combatant forces within the group’s ranks. Titled “Federalism in Structure, Pluralism of Views,” the edit says: “The Times of India Group is a compact – an agreement that its many units, including its flagship brand, The Times of India, will chart their own destinies, while remaining a part of the collective. These entities, including ToI, need only to subscribe to a couple of overarching principles defining the federation: Break no laws, and do not secede.”
The edit adds: “Otherwise, they are the masters of their individual domains, encouraged to carve out their own distinct identities and never required to follow one centrally determined ‘line’. Their freedom of thought and action is unlimited. This unique model is absolutely unparalleled in any disparate media company across the globe.”
The piece goes on, rather excessively in my view, to situate its stance in Indian philosophy, particularly anekantwad, "appreciation that truth is a land that can be approached from multiple paths.” It sounds suitably sublime, and appearing as it does on the newspaper’s voice page, it gives the reader the impression that he is safe hands journalistically.
If only! When the Times starts bloviating on values and ethics, we need to start getting careful. No, I am not talking about the newspaper having led Indian media down the rabbithole of native advertising. Neither am I talking about its sly reimagining of the media space itself, with pages upon pages of ads taking up the not merely inside pages but the front page — a space of some sanctity even in our hardened times. I am not referring to its willingness to put every member of its ecosystem – from the masthead to the page layout – at the service of the advertiser. And no, I am not talking about those massive pullouts that fall off the main paper like dead skin, their heavyweight in sharp contrast to the slenderness of their offerings.
I am not talking about any of that, but if you like, a great introduction to all of the above can be had through this excellent profile of Samir Jain, the vice-president of the Group, in The Caravan. All I am getting at it the editorial policy itself, which Monday’s lead edit so gamely packages.
A few years ago, ToI started the "View/Counterview" column on its edit page, in an effort to present varied opinions on the burning issues of the day. After Arun Shourie criticised this move to reduce a newspaper’s edit page to the level of a callow school debate, the paper switched to "Times View" and "Counterview". The Times View was the paper’s opinion and went without a byline. The Counterview was written by a member of the staff who disagreed with the "house line". The arrangement continues to this day.
I am reminded of that contretemps in this latest instance. If every offspring of the Times Group can have an independent line, what, pray, is the parent’s line? What does the behemoth itself stand for? When ToI plugs Aman ki Asha, while Arnab takes Pakistani generals to the cleaners on his show, where should we imagine the Group’s sympathies lie?
It is possible that the Group does not wish to bother with tiresome debates around house line and ethics, and that its hand was forced by the editorial team at ToI. Vineet Jain, managing director of the Group, (in)famously told the New Yorker in a 2012 profile of the Jain brothers: “We are not in the newspaper business, we are in the advertising business.” Since the proprietors look upon the paper instrumentally, they may not feel the need for the Group to take a stance.
It would have been easy to explain this discrepancy if the Times were an arms’-length owner like Pearson, the education company that owns The Economist, or Nikkei, the Japanese media giant that now owns Britain’s Financial Times. No one expects Pearson to have an opinion on Brexit or Jeremy Corbyn. But the Times Group, with the Jain brothers’ close stewardship of every aspect of the business, is not in the same league. (Some of the less salutary ramifications of this arrangement have been broached in the Caravan piece cited above.)
What the Times Group’s indifference to editorialising at the group level means for our media landscape can only be speculated upon. It remains the brightest star on the firmament, with "over 11,000 employees and revenues exceeding $1.5 billion," as per Wikipedia. ToI is the largest-selling English broadsheet in the world and Times Now is the number one channel in the TRP stakes.
On evidence of Monday’s lead edit, it can be said that for all its deft marketing initiatives and ad-selling eagerness, the parent group cannot completely ignore the reality of running a media operation. That said, given the Group’s predilections, it may well have been no more than an attempt to scratch a persistent, irritating itch.