Although journalism in Hindi has come a long way, the problem is that it still has a long way to go, especially when compared to English media, a British legacy that still persists. Noted senior Hindi journalist Punya Prasun Bajpai, who heads the No. 1 Hindi TV channel, Aaj Tak, told me in an interview on the telephone that Hindi journalism should not be compared with that in English because reporting in English began on a professional note at the very outset, while Hindi journalism in India began later and also under a lot of pressures, some of which (such as ‘lower budgets’) still exist. He notes none of the TV channels have money to run their own bureaus in all 28 States of the country, forget the thousands of cities and villages, news about which go unreported. As a consequence, he says, editors and reporters form a habit of depending on news agencies and Google to get information, instead of getting it by first-hand reporting.
This lack of training is clearly evident when these so-called journalists get out and ask questions. Their journalism ends once they get a statement of affirmation or denial and show no interest in taking it further by asking questions about that statement. So, in other words, their journalism ends, where actually it should begin.
TV channels, he says, don’t even have enough money to train reporters by sending them to the field to cover events. So the budding reporters, who are fresh from college, have to learn about journalism by spending all their time in the classrooms. That has created a vicious circle, says Bajpai, in which journalism has been reduced to a mere exercise of quickly gathering and then disseminating raw information, without processing it and without putting it in proper perspective.
While paying tribute to the most famous and principled Hindi journalist SP Singh in various newspapers and magazines on his death anniversary last month, some of his colleagues have been complaining that consumerism have led to what they called ‘the trivialization of journalism’ in India, with more and more reports being just ‘puff pieces’. They argue that more space in Print and electronic media is being used for writing about food, fashion and lifestyle rather than serious social and communal issues. They say liberalization has almost forced the media to treat and target their customers as ‘consumers’ rather than ‘citizens’.
But they also express satisfaction that because of journalism in Indian languages coming of age, the dominance of English language media has been reduced. They note that Hindi television in several regions of the country gets more advertising than English channels. Unlike in the past, they say, Hindi publications and regional publications now dominate the readership figures in India. They note that the growth of Hindi newspapers like Dainik Jagran and Hindi TV channels run by major media houses are the crucial signs of a slow awareness among Indians that Hindi is the language of the common man whereas English is the medium of the ruling class. Some noted Hindi journalists contend that with Hindi journalism acquiring deeper roots in the Hindi belt, it is developing a new language, a new style and even a new grammar that is purely Indian.
But senior Hindi journalists like Santosh Bharatiya are concerned about the dwindling credibility of the Hindi media. In a recent article, Bharatiya points out that when the Press Council of India held some newspapers accountable for stoking the riots triggered by the Ram Mandir demolition and Mandal Commission report by way of irresponsible reporting, most of them were Hindi dailies.
Bajpai contends that the main problem stemmed from the basic conflict between ‘branding’ and ‘credibility’. Branding, he says, has no concern about credibility because it is totally revenue-oriented. So credibility is losing out to branding and as a consequence, managers in the media have started dictating to editors. This has also triggered a nexus between the non-journalistic powers in the media and political leaders. He notes how even TV editors are jumping onto Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bandwagon when it comes to the drive to clean the holy river Ganges. But he says if journalists like late Surendra Pratap Singh were in charge of newsrooms, they would have also told reporters to investigate and then expose those ‘dirty’ politicians who have acquired luxurious farmhouses and villas on the banks of the Ganges from Gomukh to Ganga Sagar.
Bajpai also contends that corporations are now penetrating the media in the same way as they took over the country’s politics. Corporations have started using the media’s credibility to convince people that their business ventures will benefit the common man. He talks about how coal-mining companies are now showing TV news clips to people to convince them that mining coal in their regions will ultimately lead to development and benefit them.
So where do they see the Indian media 25 years from today? The consensus seems to be that as the English media would try to be globalized, Hindi media will become more localized and will completely penetrate villages and by that time, hopefully, almost everyone in India would be literate.
But the need of the hour, they say, is to enforce rigorous professional standards, to constantly hone the newcomers’ notions about journalism, to encourage far more serious reporting on governance issues, and that of upholding media freedom to report in the face of tough brow-beating by the government of the day.
(Author/news analyst Ravi M. Khanna is a former South Asia bureau chief of Voice of America, who now freelances from New Delhi.)
Feedback: ravimohankhanna@gmail.com
