Journalism in India witnessed a generational change
long before politics did. Which was just as well, for the press was fast losing
such appeal as it had, thanks to the uninspiring leadership provided largely by
a bunch of superannuated editors, when the whiz kids came long and saved the
tottering institution.
Not that the old fogies gracefully bowed out as the
new generation arrived on the scene. Like the senile political leaders who
refused to quit even after the nation’s leadership passed into younger hands,
many outdated editors have clung to their chairs, seriously hampering the
competitive ability of their newspapers in the process.
Yet, winds of change have swept large areas. One has
only to look around to see the wonders wrought by the new generation of editors
where they have secured effective control.
Newspaper organizations where younger elements hold
sway are easily distinguished by their vitality. Those still in the grips of
decrepit leaders are as easily distinguished by their insipidity.
The impact of the new journalism practised by the
new generation has been significant. It has had a beneficial effect especially
on the younger readers who find it easy to vibe with journalists of their own
generation.
In Calcutta, under the dynamic leadership of M.J.
Akbar, who had earlier made a mark as editor of Sunday, The Telegraph, a daily
newspaper which is not yet three years old, has caught the imagination of
youthful readers, while The Statesman, with more than a century behind it, is
steadily if slowly slipping into the ranks of the has-beens.
In Bombay, every one of the numerous periodicals of
the hoary Times of India establishment is struggling hard to hold its own in
the face of severe competition from sprightly young journals run by sprightly
young people.
Bad journalistic leadership is not the only problem
facing ancient institutions like The Statesman and the Times of India: they
bear the twin yokes of bad editors and bad managers.
Indian Express, where the light of new journalism
shone briefly, has long since gone back to its original position as a newspaper
devoid of a discernible personality. The Indian Express men who were happy to see the
back of Arun Shourie had the shock of their lives when they interviewed
candidates for editorial apprenticeship shortly after the plucky Executive
Editor’s departure. Asked why they aspired for careers in journalism, the young
men replied they wanted to be investigative journalists like Arum Shourie. They
believed that Arun Shourie had invented investigative journalism with the same
fervour and sincerity with which the whites believe Christopher Columbus
discovered America.
The work of the young editors qualifies for
recognition as a revolution, if only a minor one. It is interesting to find out
how this revolution came about. Exponents of theories of revolution hold that
certain objective conditions must exist before there can be a revolution. If
this is accepted, it should be granted that those who created the objective
conditions must also get some credit for the revolution. By this reckoning, the Mulgaokars and
the Nanporias and their professionally
surviving soul mates deserve some credit for the changes sweeping Indian
journalism.
In a scathing indictment of leaders of the press for
their role in the Emergency, the Information and Broadcasting Minister in the
Janata government said that when they were asked to bend they chose to crawl.
Lal Kishen Advani was not being uncharitable. Actually, the editors were willing
to crawl even without being asked to bend. More often than not they crawled to
please the newspaper tycoons, less often to propitiate the political bosses.
The liveliest changes have occurred in the
periodicals. This is the segment which first came under the sway of the new generation.
This is also the sector where its influence is more extensive.
The vicissitudes of the Illustrated Weekly of India
merit passing attention because it has been an arena where different schools of
journalism have contended, not all at once but one after another. A pioneering
venture in pictorial journalism, it achieved considerable popularity under a
talented Irishman, C.R. Mandy. Its professional decline started the day Mandy
left. Not long afterwards, it started declining businesswise too.
The Weekly touched the nadir under A.S. Raman, who
sprawled before godmen, got himself photographed in the act and splashed the
pictures in the journal. There was now no scope for further downward movement.
It was at that stage that the Bennett Coleman management brought in Khushwant
Singh, a rank outsider. He came up with a sex and politics formula which was to
spawn a new journalistic style in which leching and politicking co-habit.
On the political side, looking at India through the
fragmented spectacles of Western education, Khushwant Singh saw a host of
castes, languages and regions. He took them up one by one in series after
series – the states of India, the castes of India etc etc. On the sexual side,
he covered a wide variety of activity from bottom pinching to copulation among
wild animals.
The Weekly’s circulation climbed, encouraging
Khushwant Singh to pitch in with increasing doses of his tried and tested
formulations. It looked as though he was inexorably moving towards the ultimate
series in sex-and-politics journalism: how they do it – statewise, castewise.
But that was not to be. Bigger things beckoned him. He left Bombay and the
Weekly for Delhi and a daily, with a nominated Rajya Sabha seat thrown in.
M.V. Kamath, who stepped into Khushwant Singh”s shoes,
found that they pinched him. The continuous fall in the Weekly’s circulation
caused him a good deal of frustration which gradually crystallized into
anti-Tndiraism. He couldn’t push up the circulation of the journal but found it
worth his while to pursue Indira-baiting, which had become the most profitable
avenue open to frustrated journalists.
New journalism of sorts came to the Weekly when poet
Pritish Nandy assumed the editorship, working his way down from the post of
director of publications. He knew that controversies help sell journals and
pursued controversies with vengeance of a kind which only editors desperately
seeking to boost circulation are capable of. When he could not find
controversies he went about manufacturing them. He achieved a measure of
success, enough to earn him a position way above Kamath even though many rungs
below Khushwant Singh, before the reading public got weary of the artificial
controversies which he kept slamming on them.
If the main virtue of new journalism is that it is
no respecter of people, howsoever eminent, its main weakness is that it is no
respecter of facts either. It is not bound by the old-fashioned theory which
holds that “facts are sacred, comment is free”. Many juvenile practitioners of
journalism have been quite willing to take liberties with facts so that they go
nicely with the comment they wish to offer. They have been able to get away
with it because their victims often could not invoke such remedies as the law
of libel because their reputations were not such as would survive the ordeal of
judicial hearing or public scrutiny.
One victim of Nandy fought back, challenging him not
in the courtroom but at the bar of public opinion. He could turn the tables on
the editor because he was not a politician with something to hide but a public
official with a proud record. The man
who had survived the Weekly’s attempt to besmirch his reputation is Dr. V.
Kurien, hero of Amul.
Anil Dharker, in an interview, confronted Nandy with
evidence of distortion of facts and figures and mutilation of a chart in the
Weekly article by Claude Alvares which had sought to run down Kurien. Nandy’s
sheepish explanation of his unprofessional conduct is perhaps the most
disgraceful defence ever put up by a cornered editor.
New journalism differs from the old in that it does
not confine itself to the limited role of informing. It aspires for, and has
achieved demonstrably, the power to create as well as to destroy. Abdul Rahman
Antulay is a living testimony to its power to destroy and Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale
is a dead witness to its power to create. The role of the press in the Antulay
affair is well known because the press has been ready to trumpet it. Its role
in the Bhindranwale affair is not equally well known because it has been
reluctant to own it up.
It is firmly established that Bhindranwale was
discovered by the Congress (I) in the heyday of Sanjay Gandhi. The Bhindranwale whom Sanjay found was a
semi-literate country priest with no pretensions to national fame. His
transformation into the high priest of Sikh nationalism was a feat which was
accomplished by the media, not the Congress (I). Week after week, day after
day, the national media waited upon Bhindranwale to interview and photograph
him. His pictures and the pearls of wisdom cast by him before them filled the
columns of daily newspapers and newsmagazines. Bhindranwale thought he had the
nation at his feet.
Though Bhindranwale carried guns and spears, his
most effective weapon was the press. For month he and the press operated a
highly successful mutually beneficial partnership. He got all the publicity he
wanted. The press got the sensational stories with which to push up sales and
haul in profits. The contribution made to Bhindranwale’s cause by the
practitioners of new journalism was no less than that of the Sikh youths who
roamed Punjab with their fingers on the trigger.
If new journalism has spurred action in some areas
it has inhibited action in some others. In the incredibly backward village of
Erumanaickenpalayam, near Salem, in Tamil Nadu, where tradition enjoins upon
the women of a community to remain topless, one family dared to defy custom and
allow its female members to wear the blouse. There were some skirmishes between
the reformists and the traditionalists which, when it got to the press, assumed
the form of Blouse War.
A news agency report brought to light the
Erumanaickenpalayam developments, and a horde of lensmen and penmen from the
citadels of new journalism descended on the village looking for topless
females. The immediate consequence of the invasion was to put an estoppel on
the zeal for reform of the minority.
One man who has been amazed by the growth of new
journalism is Russi Karanjia. Himself the whiz kid of an earlier generation, he
had fathered tabloid journalism. He made Blitz India’s grievance newspaper. The
image came to so sharply etched in the public mind that all those who had
grievances thought that they had only to go to Karanjia to secure redress. What Karanjia found galling was that while his own
adventures in investigative journalism had only earned him the title of
Muckraker, the latter-day purveyors of documents proffered by disgruntled quarters
won recognition as heroes and qualified for international honours.
Whatever the failings of new journalism, its
practitioners must get full credit for having enlarged the area of press
coverage. They dared to bring under scrutiny areas which the old-generation
editors did not care to look into – as, for instance, police atrocities. If
their vigilant eyes have ignored certain other areas – for instance, corporate
injustices – it is because they know which side of their bread is buttered and
who butters it.
Even when new journalism is deficient in content, it
often succeeds through skilful packaging. When it finds its McLuhan he may
well declare that the package is the product. India Today, which has led the way in packaging
journalism, has now a challenger in Frontline, the newest member of The Hindu
family with which it is almost impossible to associate anything new or modern,
although it was almost always the technology leader in Indian journalism. It is a safe bet that if Aroon Purie and his
boys were in the baby food industry they would have devoted their talent and
energy not to make their product an adequate substitute for human milk but to
market it in containers as attractive as those of human milk.
What new journalism practitioners lack by way of
professional experience is partially at least made up by their youthful
enthusiasm. Yet, as products of spurious Western-style education, which is in
great demand, their forte is the capacity to imitate rather than to innovate.
That explains why India Today looks too much like a certain foreign
newsmagazine and The Telegraph looks too much like a certain foreign daily.
The new generation in journalism has much in common
with the new generation in politics. Both are essentially urban in outlook and
share the same enthusiasm for getting to the 21st century. A major area of difference between the two is with
regard to their relationship with the masses of India. The new generation
politician is obliged to take note of their presence once every few years,
when elections have to be gone through.
The new generation journalist does not have to bother about them because
they don’t read anyway.
The new generation journalist’s total urban
orientation has led to his preoccupation with glossies. Consequently the
once-lively tabloid journalism has suffered a decline. The tabloids which were
the enfants terrible of Indian
journalism at one time are now mellow and middle-aged. Inquest is the only new
tabloid to have hit the national scene in a long time. May its tribe increase.
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This article appeared in the Anniversary Number of Inquest, a weekly
published from Kochi in 1985. Its Editor, V. Venugopal was my colleague in UNI. Inquest and the tribe did not last long.
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