Opposition can choose to boycott TV anchors but a list paints a target on journalists’ backs

Illustration: Soham Sen/ThePrint

Has INDIA made a brilliantly defiant move by announcing a boycott of 14 prominent news anchors who they accuse of “partisanship and hate-mongering”? Or is it an indefensible misstep, a shot fired in anger whatever the justification? Will it help the opposition bloc’s cause or the BJP’s?

The first answer to all these and other such questions has to be a question instead: Who is a journalist? What is the definition of a journalist today, and who determines whether someone is truly a journalist or not?

This argument isn’t about the track record of any of these TV anchors. As far as I am concerned, I am among the growing number of Indians who no longer see the primetime TV ‘debate’ as a news product. Many still watch these. Some to see their favourite anchors bash the guests they detest from the ‘other’ side, some because these daily fracas are by now an addiction, but most others for their pure entertainment value.

This very Indian genre of TV debate has done more to damage journalism than any politician or political party. We are in a situation where the richest media groups no longer send out reporters to research stories on the ground, where the news bulletin has disappeared, and where nobody plays editor on a TV show as the star anchors are themselves their own editors.

Who would dare to tell them, boss, this isn’t appropriate. Or, this is inaccurate. Forget telling them if something is fair or not. That is all the stuff that the editor is supposed to do in a conventional newsroom. That institution has faded away in news TV in the past two decades.

The most perilous thing that can happen to a newsroom is the creators of its prime content being their own editors. This has been the norm on news TV. That’s why each show is such-and-such anchor’s show. Not such-and-such channel’s show. That’s probably why INDIA is naming and boycotting anchors but not their owners, or even the channels.

This is a dangerous over-personalisation of journalism, for which the greatest responsibility lies on the shoulders of the owners who run editor-free newsrooms, and on the star anchors. Because they chose to keep it this way. They enjoy the limelight and the power, they also get targeted as individuals.

Of course, INDIA has not cast the first stone with this boycott. The BJP has done it forever, just more cleverly and silently. At various points, boycotts of this channel or that have been announced on Twitter by its leading lights. At least in one case, NDTV, it was formally announced.

It is just that the BJP was more sophisticated about it. Denial — or grant — of access is a weapon newsmakers use across the board. It isn’t limited to politicians. Film and sport stars, corporate leaders and sometimes even civil society activists employ this.

As journalists, we will never endorse it. In the best of all worlds, all journalists will have fair access to all newsmakers, in the ruling party or the Opposition. But this isn’t the best of all worlds, and our wishing can’t change it.

That’s why we must accept that the opposition alliance is similarly within its ‘rights’ to blackball anybody it wishes to. They can instruct their leaders, members and spokespersons not to appear on certain shows. What takes this to a debatable level is the fact that they named these anchors and published a list. Those things do not end well.

This is almost like painting a target on people’s backs and publishing their names in a list. What is to stop the ‘other’ side, or the many ‘other’ sides, from doing something similar tomorrow? And what if those other sides do not stop at merely publishing these lists in press releases?

What if they start putting up hoardings in their states for better ‘exposure’? What if some ‘other’ who does it then says we are banning these people for being thieves, thugs, anti-national? There is no limit to stupidity once you’ve unleashed it. Remember that principle we repeat often: Never knowingly set a bad precedent. It justifies the others’ actions as mere retaliation. And the others are guaranteed to make it worse.

The argument, therefore, cannot be whether these anchors are good journalists or bad, or whether they are hate-mongers or true nationalists, pro-BJP or merely more market-friendly. It is limited to the wisdom of publishing lists like these. Because you can be sure that this will be the first, but not the last.

Who’s a journalist, what is journalism, what’s good or bad is an eternal debate. And it is a good thing that we are still talking about it with such passion. Here is something there is no debate about: There is no government, irrespective of which party’s it is, that does not misuse power against journalists.

Some use less visible methods, like denial of advertising to those seen as ‘not friendly’. You and I know what that means. Every party at this point does it. This is combined with denial of access. Again, all parties do it. The third, and the most dangerous, is the misuse of the law, the police and the ‘agencies’.

While we keep listing the excesses of BJP governments, others can’t claim to be holier-than-cow. The Mamata Banerjee government’s arrest of ABP News journalist Debmalya Bagchi is only the latest example. Almost all other state governments have some similar victimisation under their names.

Filing police cases against journalists on the flimsiest grounds, ranging from sedition to threat to public order, has now become a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for state governments. In this environment, how is INDIA trying to convince the uncommitted that it is any different from the BJP, which it accuses of communalism, high-handedness and even fascism?

Liberalism is INDIA’s brand proposition as against what it describes as the BJP’s narrow-minded bigotry. This listing of its no-go anchors does not strengthen that claim.

Once again, this is not an argument for their ‘journalism’. That there is hate on many of our TV channels is a fact. That hate sells and is so TRP/market friendly, makes it worse. That hate, hate-mongering and the popularity of hate need to be fought, is a democratic imperative. The place to fight it is the world of ideas and ideologies, in public and political debate. Not by, and I repeat that line, painting a target on the backs of your chosen few.

Since his Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rahul Gandhi has been repositioning his party (and by implication INDIA, the alliance it leads) as Mohabbat ki Dukaan, a shop dispensing love. In the run-up to the 2014 elections he gave his first full-length interview to Arnab Goswami. He said he wanted to first reach out and open himself to questioning by his biggest critic. Now his party says it will do just the opposite.

Whether he was right then, or his party and its allies are wiser now, is something they need to debate within. We can only say that this does not go with the proposition of Mohabbat ki Dukaan. It doesn’t help their cause politically or morally when all they needed to do was instruct their people internally not to appear on these channels. They’ve chosen to make a public spectacle instead. One thing it won’t change, unfortunately, is the type and quality of ‘journalism’ these 14 do.