Media Games

6 May 2019

(Honest disclaimer- It has been more than a year since I stopped watching any news on TV, and I am trying to develop a taste for ‘Editorji’ an app based news media headed by Vikram Chandra.)

The thing about our Post Truth world is how each of us feels that this is a unique situation. It is as if we are in silos, unknown to us, each of us is facing the same fate as individuals, our right to free expression and our right to truth are at war, in the name of expression truth is under suppression and it is this mangling of truth that has made our societies and our family and friends circles so divided. Many in USA and in India will find this similar, familiar ring to it is almost going unnoticed, that post the last round of elections, we are unable to discuss political differences or leadership differences. The lines of divide has become chasms so wide that fording them over is not an option. It is almost like George Bush Jr was addressing us as friends and family, ‘you are either with us or against us’!

So this surfeit of news sources, with Google playing God in the background means that with a bit of web tooling and design skills, you can create a back up for your version of truth, and there are now a clear set of channels and websites which take on the onerous tasks to disprove assertions and prejudices, sifting the chaff from grains of truth! But it is not every one’s cup of tea, reverse image search, fact check, source code check and that sort of thing that makes you certain that what you hear and what you read are factual. The worst victim of this is history and the dead! Now there are no guarantees, that is why Dr Manmohan Singh who had glibly said that history will be kind to him, has woken up during the last five years, has been far more voluble and outspoken about his record, that some political commentators, including my self, feel that if he had done all that he did in run up to 2014, the Congress party or the country’s political scenario would not have found itself with such a lopsided view! After seeing the mauling that Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru received through WhatsApp University and ‘Postcard’ and some like websites which are backend for this university, as early as 2014 I had felt that India needed drastic overhaul into how she was fed information. May be we need a ‘https’ or lock insignia or such thing to denote those authentic information which is verified historical record? But what could one say or do, when Vivek Agnihotris write reimagining history, like he did last night with a claim that Sonia conspired to make Rajiv PM displacing Sanjay! If by philosophical slant or ideological lens your view of truth or historical fact itself is seeking an alternative to the existing narrative, then what to do?

Republic, Times, Sab, TV 18, India, Indiatoday, I really don’t think any TV was an exception to jingoism, to Pakistan bashing, more because it was a shadow boxing substitute for Muslim targeting. Like wise cow veneration or the feeling that Hindus are slighted or how Gandhi-Nehru family destroyed India, distorted her heritage and trapped her into mediocrity were all fed into the context of secularism, pandering to minorities and left wing socialism. As Mr Modi put it out yesterday- Naamvadi, Vaamvadi and Kaamvadi, ( Family Name Dynast, Leftist socialists, Merit based) is a perspective that is actually shared by India’s new middle class, a class that has been the direct beneficiary of Nehruvian socialism, be it the IITs, network of higher learning, or the public sector megaliths and private sector that benefited from being a mixed economy!

In Ukraine the TV Channels won the election for Zelensky who was himself like Ms Smriti Irani, a TV serial star. Only in the run up to the Presidency, he actually played the role of Ukrainian president! (clues for Ms Irani to send her career trajectory upward?) Critically analysing the climate in Ukraine, one gets that feel that channels in that country are as biased as channels in India, spewing select information bordering on propaganda to advance a particular line of political thought. US too has its concerns, with already Fox News and its sister concerns who are known news pedlars, shrinking the space for independent well informed newscasting! So Columbia Journalism Review seeks an ombudsman for TV news.(https://www.cjr.org/analysis/ukraine-election-us.php)

For me the question is simple. If Mr Modi has hurt the sentiments of his opponent by speaking impolitely and incorrectly about his late father, he did so because many of us want it. For decades we could not do such a thing, spew out our frustrations, our prejudices as we deemed fit, and now under Mr Modi we have a vent and the vacuum to do as we please! It is a supply and demand situation, and I would like to go out on a limb and say that we were asking for Mr Modi and significant number of Indians feel genuinely that Mr Rahul was asking for it when he got what he did from Mr Modi! Likewise, I feel that the ground for labelling Mr Rahul ‘Pappu’ began during the UPA days, perhaps by overzealous supporters of Dr Manmohan Singh who feared him replacing the incumbent midway through the second term. The RSS always knew and Mr Modi always appreciated that Mr Rahul was the one danger to their supremacy, and as events unfolded, they have been proved right. Did not Kauravas feel that any concessions to Pandavas was death knell to them? So what was wrong in seeking a Congress Mukt Bharat?

We as citizens, voters and adult franchisees need to own up. We cannot keep blaming a shrill Arnab Show, a suave Tavleen Column, a patently genuine looking True Indology post or a sly Shefali Tweet for misleading us or misinforming us. These feeders are simply our own creations, feeding from our prejudices and our penchant views! There are no media games or mind games out there, there is only us and our incompetencies to handle our prejudices! If it proves anything at all, as analyst, again I stick my neck out to say this- Democracy may not be the cup of tea we citizens can have! We appear less than equal to its tasking, less than willing to involve ourselves as ultimate stakeholders! We use the chaos democracy offers as a medium to hoist our collective failures on! That is our true media game!

Indian examples of fakery!