Prannoy Roy, Executive Co-Chairman of NDTV Group, pinpoints what needs to change in the realm of news channels on Indian television
It's wonderful to see how far India's media has come. But there are some worrying trends that need course correction - now, before it's too late.
Proud as we are about our news channels in India, may I list three or four things that need to change:
First, perhaps the biggest danger we face today is the tabloidization of our news. Every advanced country with a developed, mature media has a wide spectrum of news - from credible and serious journalism to the tabloid - in England, from The Times and The Economist to the Sun and the Mirror; in the United States, from The New York Times to the New York Post; and in television news, from BBC and CNN to Fox News.
But in India there is this dangerous slide to one end of the spectrum. Why has every news channel - English, Hindi or Regional - turned tabloid? Why are we trying to emulate Fox News? And why does every news anchor want to be another Bill O'Reilly?
Among leading Hindi news channels, almost 25% of the TRPs comes from Astrology "News", and another 25% from saas-bahu serial news, and some highly graphic crime news. I have heard a woman anchor on one Hindi channel saying, "break ke baad aapko ek Rape dikhayengey" (after the break, we'll show you a rape").
Tabloidization is the death of good journalism. But I don't blame our anchors or journalists for this tsunami of tabloid news. I also strongly disagree with the widely held hypothesis that blames the Indian viewer - Indians love tabloid sensationalism ... Indians have base, tabloid tastes. So if our anchors are not to blame, and it's not about viewer preferences - why is India becoming "no country for honest journalism"?
Many feel that the advertising fraternity must carry part of the blame. The advertising pie is distributed based entirely on numbers - many in the advertising fraternity tell me that our media buyers are essentially eyeball-chasers (the media equivalent of ambulance-chasers).
While our advertisers and media buyers are as skilled as those in the West in their media modelling skills, for some reason they have not created methods that enable them to evaluate news on factors others than just numbers of eyeballs.
This is not the case in developed media markets. The circulation of the London Times is 400,000 - while the Sun has five times that at 2 million - and we all know that Fox News has three times the viewership of CNN. Yet, the advertising rate for The Times is much higher than for the Sun, and the advertising rate for CNN is much higher than for Fox News.
Do the eyeballs justify that? Of course not. But the advertisers and the media buyers place a premium on the 'quality' of The Times journalism and its credibility.
Unless we model quality and credibility into our advertising rates, and not go just by the eyeball count, we shall go headlong into tabloidization - with no place for news that is at the serious send of the spectrum.
The day advertisers in India distinguish between tabloid news and serious news like it's done all over the world, India will see the growth of better quality media and an end to the mushrooming of eyeball-chasing tabloid TV.
Second, I like to use a phrase we coined at NDTV: it's called the "Heisenberg principle of journalism". The original Heisenberg principle, crudely interpreted, suggests that as you get closer to a target or object, you yourself change. The 'Heisenberg principle of journalism' states that if you head towards the sole objective of eyeballs or sensationalism, the very nature of your own journalists and journalism tends to change. Also, it is well known that if a journalist gets too close to her or his sources, the nature of the news changes - some call it quid-pro-quo journalism.
As journalists we are not "insiders" - we are not to be on first name terms with politicians - we don't go to the same parties.
Third, Indian media today lives and thrives in what I call a "punishment-free" environment. We can say what we like, defame whoever we like, make false accusations against whoever we like - and nothing happens to us. Our defamation cases take 20 years to settle - and even then, the verdict has rarely punished any media house.
The result is we are getting slack - forget research, we don't even need to check our facts, we don't care if we wrongly defame anyone - the bottomline is we are dropping our standards. If this decline in quality continues, three years from now, Indian media will have no credibility left.
We need tough defamation laws, and we need verdicts to be decided quickly (not 20 years). With possible punishment hanging over our heads, we will be more careful with our facts, be more thorough in our research, and only then will we retain credibility and the trust of our viewers and readers. Let's push for a change voluntarily - take the lead and set an example.
Tougher defamation must come from our courts and our legal system - not the government. There is absolutely no role for the government in the media - no role at all.
Fourth, I refer to the Internet in India, and not net-neutrality, which we must fight for and preserve at all costs. The issue I wish to raise here is the Danger of Anonymity and an unrestrained Internet.
It's clear for example that, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others are aware of the dangers of anonymity in certain areas that might cause a threat to their own society - like paedophilia, cyber bullying, and terror threats - and have rightly put in safeguards to screen their content for these dangers.
But are these same sites as aware of the dangerous consequence that a different kind of image or message has in developing societies like India?
An organized surge of anonymous messages against a particular religious community or caste can lead to - and has led to - violence, panic and death.
Those who send these messages are never caught because they hide behind the anonymity of the Internet. A provocative message on Twitter in a sectarian confrontation can erupt into riots.
Maybe it is time to bring the Internet a little closer to the responsibilities that all other forms of media face. Perhaps it is time for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to become sensitive to messages that are dangerous or, by taking advantage of democratic freedoms, are actually harmful to democratic societies like India. We have different situations and different flash-points to those in America or other countries of the West, and we have a responsibility to address them before they incite sectarian or communal violence.
Let me be clear: we are not arguing for a complete ban on anonymity on the Internet. What we need, perhaps, is a law that permits the piercing of the veil of anonymity only when a serious crime is committed -- the very last resort. And, once again, it must be the judiciary, not the government, that should decide when this can be done - and ensure it is done only in the rarest of rare cases.
So we, the media in India have so much going for us - we have democracy in our DNA, we can, and do, question everything, we are at the cutting edge of new technology that bypasses government controls and frees our wings, our media is more vibrant than anywhere in the world - let's not throw it all away and commit hara-kiri as we are pretty good at doing. As journalists, let's not chase profits without purpose, let's not forget the Heisenberg principle and turn into insiders, let's voluntarily accept legal discipline when we defame and fail to do our research - and let's embrace the new world of the internet with imagination, and leverage that democracy in our DNA.
(Edited excerpts from remarks presented by Dr Prannoy Roy at the RedInk Awards in Mumbai, where he was presented the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Mumbai Press Club)
Prannoy created a whole category of intellect, industry, communication: Uday Shankar
A large number of people who came to television were drawn by the personality, the charisma and the opportunity or the potential to contribute because of what they saw through the eyes of Prannoy Roy.
There are very few people who can retire -- at some stage I hope he will -- but there are very few people who can retire with the satisfaction that they created not just a legacy, but a whole category of intellect, a whole category of industry, business, communication.
I don’t know how to describe the things that Prannoy did. This country had only Doordarshan and nothing else... this country had no reference to what modern, professional television communication could be... and in came Pronnoy with his vision, with his content, with his production and everything, and set these standards and thereby saved us almost two-to-two-and-a-half decades of the growth curve, the learning curve that all of us would have necessarily had to go through in order to get to a level of professional television communication, professional television journalism.
So when people like us came to try our hand at TV, we had a reference point. We had The World this Week, we had NDTV, we had Prannoy Roy and we had his brand of journalism. And the sheen of that brand of journalism has never been dull. His legacy lives on, and in that legacy lives on a hope.
Prannoy, this country and this community here is proud to call you its own.
(Uday Shankar, CEO, Star India, was speaking at the RedInk Awards in Mumbai)
