Ownership of Media: No
Gains without pains
Media is a business of idealism, passion, commitment and
involvement. In the early phase newspapers in India were largely owned by
middle class or upper middle class intellectuals. They did not start the
newspaper primarily to earn profits like businessmen. They were inspired by the
spirit of social reforms and struggle for independence. The circulation of
their newspapers was quite moderate and hardly any advertising, yet the news
and articles were far from trivial or sensational like today. Even iconic media
barons like Birlas (HT Delhi, Searchlight, Patna); Dalmia-Sahu Jains (Times of
India, Economic Times); Tatas (Statesman, Calcutta) and Ramnath Goenka (Indian
Express) were men of vision and left their mark on the profession. Those who
followed them -- Ramnath Goenka, Aroon Purie, Indu Jain, Ronnie Screwvala, Prannoy and Radhika Roy, Samir Jain,
Vineet Jain, Raghav Bahl, Aveek Sarkar, Shobhana Bhartia, Subhash Chandra and
Rajat Sharma—atleast had the media as their main line of business.
The late 80’s and early 90s saw many media startups and takeovers
by big business houses like Ambanis (Observer Group), Vijaypat Singhania
(Indian Post), L.M. Thapar (Pioneer), Sanjay Dalmia (Sunday Mail), Lalit Suri
(Delhi Midday). They were all successful in their own business domain but
failed badly because media was not their primary business. They also lacked the
patience and commitment. They were primarily dependent on a few advisors who
were good journalists, managers or advertising professionals but had never done
business themselves. As a result, after sinking in tons of money down the
drain; the promoters decided that they had enough of losses. What this simply
means is that you can’t deliver without labour pains.
The early 80s saw the emergence of a new generation of editors
like—Arun Shourie, M.J. Akbar, Aroon Purie, Vinod Mehta and S.P. Singh. They
were all heroes who laid the foundation of an investigative and a new brand of
attractively packaged journalism. Akbar launched the Telegraph, Vinod
Mehta’s magic was seen as the hand behind the success of Sunday Observer and
later Outlook. Thanks to such stalwarts India today has more newspapers and TV
news channels than any country in the world.
Most
of the national media groups are owned by corporate houses who want them to run as profits
centers. This is not withstanding the fact that when newspapers start covertly
lobbing or tailoring news to suit corporate interests, the problems, concerns
and interests of the weaker segment of society get swept under the carpet. It
is one thing for a newspaper or magazine to have a political or economic point
of view but quite another to overtly or covertly align with a political party,
ideology or business interest. Every reader or viewer
has a right to get unbiased, undiluted and unadulterated version of news or
views and not what suits the political or business interest of the newspaper or
TV channel promoter. Journalists are expected to stand up for the truth and democracy.
But how is that possible where owners control the editors, who in turn
influence the writers and content. This means media moguls ‘make politics’ not
just profits
A basic nuance
of the newspaper industry that most corporate owners fail to comprehend is that
‘news’ is not a commodity or product that sells directly bringing immediate
return on investment. This is one reason why in many organizations advertising
and sales personnel who bring in the money are treated as blue-eyed boys while
the editorial staff who provide the content which drives everything from –
visibility, readership, circulation, advertising, credibility and goodwill in
the market are seen as unnecessary burden. This explains the reason for the
vanishing tribe of sub-editors—who used to play a very useful role in the
editorial team – were the first to be axed in the cost cutting measures as they
did not bring a penny to the organization.
Fallout of this
trend has been the devaluation of the position of Editor. Earlier, an editor
used to control the whole newspaper, including advertisements. He used to
decide what goes where on which page, if at all. Today, the post of editor has
been marginalized and the advertising and sales teams first decide where to
place the advertisement and the complimentary write-ups desired by the
advertisers and the space left is left for the editor to display the news.
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