Arnab and Barkha's 'media war' is phoney
The brouhaha over Arnab Goswami’s rant suggesting gagging of "anti-national" (read anti-government media) and Barkha Dutt’s stinging riposte begs the question: Is Arnab the first, or the only bully Indian media has seen?
Another question needs to be asked here: Has Indian media always, or ever, been democratic? Have powerful editors and journalists promoted a democratic spirit and encouraged media’s right to ask uncomfortable questions to the government?
The answer is a big no.
Indian mainstream media has always been pro-establishment. It has unfailingly shielded the powers that be and the governments-in-power’s bidding.
Leave aside the Emergency. One may argue that it was an extraordinary situation. The mainstream media crawled on all fours. The media crawled when it was merely asked to bend due to the fact that it was media’s habit to bend during all times - normal or otherwise.
We've always had a media deeply embedded in the power structure defined by Nehruvian consensus. The press, the barons and editors were proud to be embedded, to be decorated as the fourth estate of the fledgling Indian democracy.
Where was the voice of dissent in mainstream media? Go through the microfilms of the mainstream newspapers at the Nehru Museum and Library, and see if you can find a bold voice of dissent. See if you can find a strong voice meaningfully challenging the prevailing political, social and cultural order.
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| Neither Arnab Goswami nor Barkha Dutt has any interest in challenging and seeing reordering of the prevailing order. |
Dissent was confined to writing what’s called "balanced", "objective" and "impartial" editorials. It was confined to occasionally, and perfunctorily, calling for measures to satisfy the needs of the marginal and neglected sections of the society. Not to overhaul a system that was brutally skewed in favour of the haves, and completely against the have-nots.
Look for reporting on atrocities against Dalits - then called harijans and adivasis - you will find none. Look for stories on lives of poor and disadvantaged in rural areas - none or rare.
Does it mean there were no atrocities? There were no khap panchayats and honour killings? There were no rapes and crimes against women?
All these things were prevalent, and in a far more blatant and open manner. In fact, they were more brutal and oppressive. Did any mainstream newspapers send reporters to report and write on how the other half lived?
By the way in India, this marginalised section was over three-fourths of the population, not the other half.
Only the press didn’t know, rather didn’t want to know. Asking hard questions to the government would have meant challenging the existing post-Independence order.
Who could do that? And why? The press and the State were on the same page.
Sometime in the 1970s, The Statesman introduced what was called "rural reporting" - basically a few column inch of space once in a week or so. It appeared as though India was all-urban, so the need to also represent rural in then newspaper.
The newspaper also once had a reporter to report on civil liberties. As if the cases of violations of civil liberties were few and far between, and hence, the need to record some of them.
The fact is that the press was for the rich and powerful, of the rich and powerful, and by the privileged. The government of the day was beyond all reproach and challenge; the State was sacrosanct.
Arun Shourie brought about some amount of irreverence in the mainstream reporting in the late 1970s. He challenged the powers that be - the Indira Gandhi government - in a manner, which scandalised mainstream editors.
The established editors of those days felt someone from outside the fraternity had landed on the BS Zafar Marg to subvert the established cozy relationships between the press and the power.
But there is a twist in the tale too.
The Congress and large section of the media also accused Shourie of working at the behest of right-wing, pro-American and obscurantist forces that were out to destabilise well-established Nehruvian consensus. And could the CIA be far behind where there was right wing?
Most of the star anchors, journalists and commentators who are baying for Arnab’s blood today would have asked for Shourie’s blood those days. Because Shourie had challenged the existing order on which the press thrived.
Shourie’s mimic of Arnab on YouTube is as interesting and incisive as it’s funny. But the fact is that Shourie was no less shrill and crude in his writings than Arnab. His long, front-page monologue style commentaries in The Indian Express were fellow editors’ and journalists’ nightmare, which were though readers’ delight.
To Shourie's credit, he did send Express reporters to rural areas to expose atrocities against the poor and marginalised.
Later, Shourie got too involved in New Delhi's power politics to carry on, which led to his ouster. There was a huge sigh of relief on BS Zafar Marg, and also on Raisina Hill.
The mainstream media and editors have always discouraged reporting which questions the prevailing social and cultural order. The order that perpetuates the corporate-politics-media nexus against the poor and the dispossessed.
Neither Arnab Goswami, nor Barkha Dutt has any interest in challenging and seeing reordering of the prevailing order. One is calling for trial of a section of journalists. The other, subtly, and sometime not so subtly, ensures gagging of the other section.
It’s a phoney war between two privileged stars of media in which common people have little stakes. The dominant media narrative, as always, is anti-poor.