HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER

Khincho na kamaanon ko na talvaar nikalo Jab tope muquabil ho to akhbaar nikalo [Do not draw the bow nor bring out the sword, When facing the cannons bring out the newspaper]

Akbar Allahabadi’s famous couplet r e s o n a t e s with every idealistic proprietor and journalist as he attempts to speak Truth to Power. Independent media, clubbed together in popular nomenclature as the ‘free press’, has always faced its own version of ‘sovereign risk’ from the powers that be, the State, big business, religious hierarchies and powerful proprietors. Colonial India witnessed the British masters imposing one draconian law after another on our fledgling press. Throughout, starting from the Vernacular Press Act of 1878, running through the Press Acts of 1910 and 1931 and culminating in Rule 41 of the Defence of India Rules (DIR) of 1939, the common theme remained empowering the authorities to impose publishing bans, usually as precensorship, with severe financial and physical penalties for any infringements. The laws on sedition and defamation allowed for very subjective interpretations of what constituted infringements. Together, they completed the circle of intimidation.

Ironically, on 15th August 1942, shortly after the Quit India Movement had begun, a series of muzzling ‘gag’ orders imposing stringent pre-censorship provoked its inevitable reaction. On 19th August, the Indian Express announced that it was suspending publication. Its editorial declared - “To publish a newspaper under these conditions is to perpetrate a fraud upon the public. If we went on publishing under these constraints, the paper may be called a paper but cannot be called a newspaper”. In Karnataka, the freedom fighter HS Doreswamy, editor of the ‘Poura Vani’, a newspaper banned by the Mysore Government for its forthright editorials, went underground using a portable press. This spirit continued with the Press Council Act and the Editor’s Guild in independent India; apart from maintaining ethical standards, press freedom remained the central focus. Thus, the ‘free press’ continues to counter ‘sovereign risk’.

The waters get considerably murkier however when we come to what may collectively be called ‘proprietorial risk’, emanating from those who own a media outlet, or are part of its controlling journalistic, editorial and management superstructure. The influence that media outlets can exercise over public opinion far outpaces the investment required to establish and maintain them. Aware of this greater ‘bang for your buck’ potential, many individuals, corporates, religious orders and a motley bevy of pressure groups have happily waded into this swamp, often with goals that are more unstated than transparent. Their numbers have swelled exponentially with the advent of the electronic media and particularly its subset, ‘social media’. Now, each broadcaster from a social media platform can become a ‘social influencer’ reaching an audience of millions at nominal cost. Never in human history have so few been able to influence so many in so short a time!

The Union Government’s efforts to regulate this brave new world remains a ‘work in progress’. An ambitious Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, (BSRB), covering OTT channels and digital platforms and creators, when drafted in 2023, faced intense stakeholder pushback and was shelved in favour of draft Telecommunications Rules in 2026 which essentially leave OTT channels and digital news out of its purview. While the process of consultation continues, the final picture is yet to emerge. Again, while the recent spurt in the incidence of blocking online posts using the Information Technology (IT) Act has been much commented upon, it bears mention that even the present ‘high’ numbers represent an utterly miniscule fraction of the total number of daily posts and include uncontroverted cases of ‘deep fake’. Thus, ‘sovereign risk’, it would be fair to say, has certainly been confronted, if not contained.

While the new age ‘proprietors’ have dramatically added their muscle to the ‘free press’ in combating ‘sovereign risk’, often much less is known about that niggling question – who influences the ‘influencer’? Known cases of business interests targeting their competitors through ‘false flag’ operations using social and environmental activists continue to grow. It has also been argued by Noam Chomsky and S. Herman in ‘Manufacturing Consent’ that corporate ownership of media outlets causes selfcensorship in the selection of news stories and the way they are framed. To put it bluntly, news indicting an individual or corporate owner of some misdemeanour is hardly likely to feature prominently in the owned outlet’s public offerings, if at all. This task is left to its competitors, with their own skewed projection of events and even this becomes less and less likely as bigger and bigger corporate entities continue to gobble up smaller ‘independent’ outlets through the mergers and acquisitions, (M&A), route. Meanwhile, leaving aside perhaps the handful of celebrity names, professional journalists working in the outlet, even when they escape overt proprietor-induced censorship, are liable to come under pressure for self-censorship. Thus, there grows a tendency to internalise corporate or owner set boundaries, even when no formal bans are enforced, in the interests of job protection and career growth. In addition, corporate revenue streams including advertisement revenues are sought to be safeguarded, which may result in further reduction of journalistic independence and impartiality.

Which is the more dangerous, ‘sovereign risk’ or ‘proprietorial risk’? While a clear choice may be difficult to make, the historian Christopher Hill’s seminal work, ‘Lenin and The Russian Revolution’ may provide us with a useful hint on the answer. Hill writes that while for the Russian peasant and worker, the Tsar, like God, was “far away”, “the landlord continued to be very much on the spot”. For the rank and file journalistic and editorial staff in a media outlet, the ‘sovereign’ State is mostly a distant and occasional controller. The ‘proprietor’ on the other hand exercises control everyday and in every way, not least by the act of hiring and firing! As for us, lay consumers of print electronic and online ‘content’, we realise only too well the truth of the old adage - “He who pays the piper calls the tune”.

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY THE AUTHOR ARE PERSONAL

Anirban Mukhopadhaya, Retd. IAS officer