Once the poll battle was won, and won by everyone, there was a piece of advice for the BJP: introspect.
Will the media do the same? There are several very good reasons why it ought to: by acting as the media spokesperson for Prime Minister Narendra Modi (who resigned from the post Wednesday after the results), television news has done a damaging disservice to journalism and been unjust to its viewers by presenting a one-dimensional picture.
In print, most mainstream newspapers play with a very straight bat on the news and depend on explanatory journalism for depth. On 5 June, a day after the poll results, the inside pages of all dailies were a mine of information and analysis on what happened—and why.
However, the 5 June headlines on Page 1, looked rather tame: ‘BJP falls short, needs allies to govern,” wrote The Hindu. ‘Abki baar, coalition sarkar’, was The Economic Times lead headline. ‘NDA LEADING INDIA SHINING’ is how the Hindustan Times put it. The Indian Express went with, ‘India gives NDA a third term, Modi a message’, while The Times of India punned: ‘Hat tricky: NDA 270 paar, INDIA raises bar’. Note, NDA has suddenly become the keyword to search for.
Newspapers had photographs of Modi greeting BJP supporters after the victory and stories on kingmakers TDP’s Chandrababu Naidu and JD(U)’s Nitish Kumar as well as of the Congress, on Page 1.
You would have thought Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav and TMC’s Mamata Banerjee—if not Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray and NCP’s Sharad Pawar—would get a look in, too; surely, they are the ones who upset the BJP’s fortunes. But they were missing from Page 1.
Question: Is it time for the news media to be accurate but also more aggressive?
Also read: TV news did during 2024 election what it has been doing for 10 years—be in Modi’s corner
Exit for polls
There are other questions we ought to consider. The first one concerns exit polls.
Did you see pollster Pradeep Gupta cover his face and burst into tears, on live television? It was mid-afternoon on 4 June, counting day of the Lok Sabha polls and by then it was clear that the NDA alliance would fall short of the majority 272 mark. The AXIS My India exit poll had predicted a landslide—360-401 seats—for the NDA, on 1 June (India Today).
Nine exit polls on television news channels gave the NDA 350+ seats. All of them were wrong.
Question: Did their data indicate such a result or were the figures inflated to support the BJP? If the latter, should we take future exit polls seriously?
Bias was clear
You need just a pair of eyes to see that Modi has been overexposed on TV news during the Lok Sabha campaign and unreservedly supported by it throughout his term as PM. The Opposition barely gets a look in and when it does, it’s usually to be criticised or maligned or mocked.
Now, it appears to be payback time. After a strong showing in the Lok Sabha polls by I.N.D.IA, opposition politicians and commentators are attacking TV news anchors and channels—on their channels.
A leading news anchor lost her temper when a guest on the live telecast of the election results, Tuesday, accused her of being a “doormat” of the BJP (Times Now). “I am not a doormat….I don’t need a certificate from Rahul Gandhi,” said Navika Kumar, the anchor in question.
Yogendra Yadav, political activist and experienced psephologist (a tongue-twisting definition of a pollster), had predicted BJP would not cross 270 Lok Sabha seats—he was right.
TV news wanted to interview him after the poll results but they couldn’t have liked what he had to say. On India Today, he accused the “entire mainstream media”, including India Today, of trying to “hoodwink” the country, of acting as the BJP’s “spokespersons”, of “campaigning” for the BJP, and creating a “mahaul’ of “400 paar” seats for the NDA. He hoped they would be less “servile’ (India Today) going forward— “start speaking”, he said.
Similar cutting comments were heard from Opposition leaders on other news channels. Congressman Pawan Khera’s attack on Aaj Tak anchor Anjana Om Kashyap and Pradeep Gupta crossed the courtesy boundary by a mile but revealed a lot of pent up anger.
Similarly, Mohua Moitra took Rahul Kanwal and Rajdeep Sardesai to the cleaners. Not nice but a result of the partisan coverage on TV news.
Several TV news anchors such as Sandeep Chaudhary, ABP News, on his 4 June show, analysed how poorly the broadcast media had reflected the issues on the ground that turned around this election — be it the Agnipath scheme, unemployment, or the misuse of investigative agencies against Opposition parties.
Rajdeep Sardesai also said the media needs to navel gaze—in his own language.
Question: Will TV news channels be more balanced? Think about it: wouldn’t they have better served the interests of the ruling party — if that was their intention — by presenting a more realistic “mood of the nation” — rather than creating an echo chamber for the PM and BJP?
Going by the blazing TV news headlines about a ‘Historic 3rd Term for Modi” (Times Now) and PM Modi always in the picture, it seems that news channels will continue as if 4 June didn’t happen.
Also read: Newspapers are pushing Modi to inside pages more and more while TV channels remain faithful
Change the language
Lastly, a warning to traditional news media: change or the public will go for a changeover—people are looking for more than what you are offering. A great deal has already been written about the phenomenal following of Dhruv Rathee — and we know the BJP has used ‘social influencers’ during the election campaign. Popular Beer Biceps has 4 million followers on Instagram.
There are YouTube newsmakers like journalist Ravish Kumar, who are avidly watched — as of June 2024, he has 10 million subscribers. Then there’s The Lallantop — it has about 30 million followers on Youtube. There are other channels such as NMF News with 18 million viewers.
Online news portals offer alternative news coverage and opinion—to name a few, think of ThePrint, The Wire, Scroll.in, The New Minute, The Quint, Newslaundry. There’s also Prannoy Roy’s recently launched DeKoder.
On 4 June, if you wanted to avoid the loud rapid fire on TV news election specials, you could have watched the sober YouTube coverage of these news portals. They’re still playing catch up but with each successive election, they’re getting better and more sophisticated, technologically.
The author tweets @shailajabajpai. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)
Little introspection on part of fiberal charlatans masquerading as senior journalists in the media is also due. They have been gloating as if opposition, supported by them, has achieved stupendous victory in this election and BJP has been completely decimated, which is not the case. In short, just stop being holier than thou.
One thing TV news is excellent at is flattery. They don’t know how to introspect.
Comrade Yogendra Yadav was the only psephologist who predicted the election results correctly. Red salute to comrade Yadav.
First this opinion writer, needs to take her own advice. Introspect.