New Delhi: The problem is that the media personnel who disagreed with the surveys or reports on Haryana or any previous election were abused as being biased and in favour of the government.
This is not the first time that we have lost face in Haryana. In the Lok Sabha elections held immediately after the Emergency, take out the files of old newspapers of Delhi and many states and see. The news of the wave in favour of Congress and Indira Gandhi kept getting printed as the lead on the front page of so-called national newspapers. A major strategist associated with the Congress party’s campaign was my journalist friend. He used to say how many thousand rupees were being given to some selected journalists going to the constituencies from Delhi for their travel, according to their tickets, facilities and status. Naturally, the headline would be about the victory flag. The climax was that two weeks after the huge defeat of the party and Mrs Gandhi herself, the bureau chief of a big newspaper called my strategist friend and said that he had spent Rs 12 thousand more on the election tour and should return the money. Another journalist had sent a letter threatening to stage a sit-in in front of his house if he was not paid Rs 20,000 due for the work done for preparing the election campaign material. My friend almost cried and said, “Tell me, even then I had only given the names of some people to the party treasurer and advised him to provide the necessary funds. Now from where will I get the money from the defeated party?” By the way, even before that, around 1974, during the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly elections, we used to get information from the same friend about printing the party’s press release as news in an envelope with Rs 100-500. But then there was no electronic media, social media like today. Therefore, there was no public discussion. In the present times, the public discussion on the credibility of journalists, media groups, TV news channels, survey companies and independent YouTubers, websites, independent journalists and writers on Facebook who are claiming a big victory of the Congress in Haryana is tarnishing the image of everyone. But this is also an issue that calls for self-examination of the leaders who give and take.
The problem is that the media personnel who disagreed with such surveys or reports in the Haryana elections or any previous election are abused as being biased and in favour of the government. There is no doubt that different opinions in news or analysis or views can be right or wrong. But the increase in paid news or propaganda is dangerous. Responsible editors of media and institutions like the Press Council have raised this issue earlier also and made a code of conduct. I have mentioned authentic excerpts of such reports in a chapter of my book on journalism, “Power Press and Politics”. Parliament, Election Commission and courts have also raised this issue many times. Kuldeep Nayyar had spoken of a leader who had given Rs 2 crore for media propaganda during the elections. Another leader told the tale of paid news. He said that after giving a few lakh rupees during the elections, he had the experience that he felt very sad when he saw the opponent’s news being published with money ahead of his news. In states, some media organizations are openly infamous for being associated with some politician. Many such cases are also recorded in the report of Press Council. However, now big advertising agencies are handling the work of publicity. Therefore, legally there can be no objection to the advertisement of the party or the candidate. Survey companies also work to find out the position of the party candidate. But the controversy is on publicity done through cash payment, false publicity, biased survey etc. Can this not be called fraud? The Election Commission receives such complaints. But months and years pass in the process of investigation, evidence etc. The question is that why do the leaders themselves get caught in this trap? Due to this, the credibility of the publicity of them and their work is also decreasing.
In this context, it is important to mention a conversation with a foreign ambassador. In an intimate conversation, the ambassador said, “You people spend lakhs and crores of rupees on election surveys for media groups. We don’t wait for them to be published or to be shown on TV channels. We pay more money and get a copy of the survey delivered to our table in advance.” By the way, I came to know about it 25 years ago during elections in a European country that some institutions of a prosperous country educate and train select Indians to conduct such surveys in India. Later, with good funding, they conduct surveys in India and give their reports to those foreign institutions or their intelligence agencies. Perhaps this is the reason why Prime Minister Narendra Modi is speaking of international conspiracies against the democratic system and some political or other organizations working on foreign instructions.
To destroy the credibility of Indian democracy, foreign powers use so-called NGOs, news media, social media as weapons to incite, agitate, incite violence, riot on issues of workers, farmers, tribals, women. The Constitution makers studied the democratic systems of the world and made provision for the right to expression in the rules and laws of the great Indian Constitution. They would not have imagined the current world scenario; if they were alive today, they would have changed their rules and laws and made provision for some necessary control. At present, situations of not accepting any code of conduct are visible not only in politics but also in other areas of society. On this serious issue, necessary reforms by consensus in Parliament, creation of a mandatory code of conduct and approval from the Supreme Court are also needed. There is a need for determination and efforts to save the media from the evils of Ravana or darkness into light and social political pollution.