Well, finally, they did it. After repeated scoldings from the Supreme Court, Patanjali’s “Unconditional Public Apology” for misleading advertisements appeared Wednesday on the last page of leading newspapers, in Hindi and English.
It would have been difficult to miss: the quarter-page notice on behalf of Acharya Balkrishna and Ramdev hits you between the eyes with its bright red and yellow colours. Hopefully, this is where the matter ends.
Meanwhile, DD News’ new colour scheme for its logo is making the Opposition see saffron. That’s because it is now saffron. Overnight, it went from what The Indian Express called a “ruby red” to deep haldi.
Newspapers reported that Opposition leaders such as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee strongly objected to the “saffronisation” of the Doordarshan logo. Former CEO of Prasar Bharati and Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader, Jawhar Sircar alleged, in a tweet, that the change would “influence voters”.
The current CEO, Gaurav Dwivedi, felt that too much was being read into the change, according to The Indian Express. “Using a bright, appealing colour is purely about the channel’s branding and visual aesthetic,” he said. Such was the interest in the topic that news channels such as Times Now and NDTV 24×7 actually debated the hue and cry over the new colour scheme.
However, more than the colours of DD News, we should be discussing its contents. And we ought to ask ourselves: is the public broadcaster following the model code of conduct (MCC) during the elections?
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Following BJP’s lead
That DD News is the voice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government is widely known and accepted. This is as true now as it was under earlier administrations, BJP or Congress.
In normal times, the national news channel telecasts everything Modi does or says. It follows up with what Home Minister Amit Shah says or does. It’s the same with other central or BJP state ministers.
Once elections are announced, the public broadcaster, as official media, is expected to be ‘neutral’. The government must not use it to gain political advantage over its opponents. During the 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign, the Election Commission of India pulled up Doordarshan for not giving “balanced air time coverage” to all parties and warned it of “partisan coverage”.
Clearly, DD News hasn’t paid attention to ECI’s words. The national broadcaster goes where the PM and the BJP go. Watch any DD News bulletin during the day and notice how it is replete with news about the PM, the PM, and more about the PM on the campaign trail. As a concession to the MCC, his speeches are not broadcast live or in their entirety, but excerpts play out throughout the day.
This is followed by coverage of the poll rallies of Shah, BJP president JP Nadda, and other top leaders of the BJP, say Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. Clips from their speeches fill bulletins in the special section ‘24 ki Chunauti’. Before, during, and after the shows, there are BJP ads for ‘Modi ki Guarantee’.
What the Prime Minister, his ministers or top political leaders say during elections is news and must be reported but this coverage goes further than that. Its focus is almost entirely on the party in power.
Last Sunday, for example, DD News broadcast extracts of Modi’s speech from Rajasthan’s Banswara—the one that has led the Congress to complain to the EC, and Times Now called ‘Modi, Manifesto, Manmohan & Muslims’.
Shah in Bihar, Nadda in Maharashtra, and Singh on an official tour of…the State-owned channel broadcast all these activities of the ruling party. There were sound bytes from Minister of Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur, a letter from the PM to K Surendran, the BJP candidate in Wayanad, and an interview with a BJP leader in Jammu and Kashmir.
We also saw Modi, in his official capacity, observe Mahavir Jayanti.
And what of the Opposition? Not much. Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge got a look in as did Bahujan Samaj Party’s Mayawati but that was about it. Remember, there was a huge INDIA coalition rally in Ranchi on the same day, 21 April—it didn’t make headlines on DD News. Till late afternoon, all we saw were a few visuals.
This pattern continued into the week. On Monday, when newspapers reported on the Opposition rally, DD News was preoccupied with Modi’s speech in Aligarh, and his Sunday rally speech. DD News followed Modi’s lead to repeatedly run clips from former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s 2006 speech in which he spoke about “SCs, STs, OBCs, minorities, women, and children’s first claim to resources”, but concentrated on his reference to Muslims.
On Tuesday, footage from Rahul Gandhi’s speech on doing an ‘X-ray of the country’ and a survey of the people’s wealth, which the PM also spoke about, was telecast throughout the day. When was this speech made? DD News did not bother to tell us.
Programmes or shows are routinely interrupted on the channel for sound bytes from ministers. On Wednesday afternoon, Thakur was pulled in during a discussion on the re-distribution of wealth.
Once again, there were clips of speeches by Nadda and Singh. The Congress, represented by Kharge, was also shown – and for a change, he was heard too. The same day, sound bytes from Shashi Tharoor and Sachin Pilot were telecast. And the audience briefly heard Priyanka Gandhi in Kerala and Rahul Gandhi at a function in New Delhi, on Wednesday.
If Congress is getting little coverage, other Opposition parties get radio silence. It’s as if the PM and his party members are the only ones on the campaign trail.
Even when DD News is not giving us election news in ‘24 ki chunauti’, it is following where the BJP leads. Thus, on Monday, BJP protests against the possible ‘love jihad’ case in the Neha Hiremath murder, were widely covered. It was followed by BJP’s Gaurav Bhatia’s press conference on the issue—and then an interview with Hiremath’s father in which he demanded a CBI probe if the government and police were incapable of getting to the bottom of his daughter’s killing.
The star of the Wednesday news was Sam Pitroda—or villain—all the way from the US due to his comments on a wealth tax. This was news everywhere.
One DD News anchor linked the remarks to the Congress manifesto for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, which promises a ‘wealth survey’ and said, “This is a communist vichar dhara (ideology)”, followed in countries such as China or Russia. Should such comments be made by an anchor of the State media?
The author tweets @shailajabajpai. Views are personal.