Rtn. Farhat Jamal in conversation with Anant Goenka, Executive Director, The Indian Express Group on media & misinformation, fake news & propaganda
You appear to have come from a celebration.
Yes, I’ve come straight from a wedding and if my mother had not been with me, I would have changed and been late. But she made sure I came here straight. We’re addressing media, misinformation, fake news, and propaganda today. The challenge for many is discerning truth amidst a bombardment of news from various sources. These platforms offer diverse viewpoints but can sometimes obstruct straightforward reporting. Your views?
What you are saying is obviously 100% true and we all feel it. A lot has changed for the better after COVID-19. If you believe that COVID-19 was won by doctors and health specialists, the infodemic was won by old-school, old-fashioned journalists who hit the ground reporting. That there was an infodemic was
largely to do with the number of sources of digital news and information and, obviously, the big
platforms. But these are the realities of our time and we have to learn to live with them. But I do
think that mainstream media also hasn’t been very responsible. And there’s a good reason for that.
We have 100,000 registered newspapers in India.
That’s an obscene number. We have 100,000 registered newspapers, 500 news channels, and a countless number of news websites, probably in the millions. Most of all of this is controlled by three companies who give you all that information onto your cell phone. I think the entire ecosystem is to blame because of these three, because 500 news channels, 100,000 newspapers, millions of news websites are all competing for not your attention but that of Google, Facebook, and Instagram.
They’re competing for those algorithms, and that makes them do crazy things. That’s how you come to a place where people are struggling to figure out what they can trust because there’s just so much that
is coming at you. To add to that, 137-odd million in 2012 and 600 million internet users in 2021.
Whether it is social media, digital technology, or traditional platforms, they all add to it and they’re all using the internet, by and large. Absolutely. I don’t think there’s any medium that today can have an impact or reach a critical mass in isolation. Whether it’s TV, print or radio, if there isn’t a digital version of that medium or content, your impact is going to be significantly lowered.
Coming to The Indian Express (IE), how has it managed to protect its credibility as a news and information platform? One of the very famous taglines in journalism is ‘Journalism of Courage,’ and that’s what The Indian Express stands for. And, I have to mention two-three notable series done by IE: ‘Death by Breath’ is a series IE carried on the levels of pollution in Mumbai which was even mentioned by the Bombay High Court; another notable report was IE’s investigative journalism that brought
about the return of 12 very pieces of smuggled artefacts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York; and lastly, in the Nirbhaya case, IE reporting revealed that 46 vehicles that had been
set aside to protect women were being used to protect our MLAs instead. Well done and we are
very proud of you. So, how have you managed to maintain this credibility?
You can be proud of me but I want to know how many people actually read it. Thank you for taking
the time to make notes and remember some of our bigger pieces of work this last year. This differentiates us and why, in this mad environment of one lakh newspapers and 500 new channels, we are still relevant, we still pack a punch and we still have impact, because nobody else is doing investigative journalism anymore. Nobody else is doing the hard work of hitting the ground, finding uncomfortable stories and putting them out.
I don’t know how many of you have tracked the Panama Papers. A friend in the CBDT (Central Board of Direct Taxes) told us that just after the Panama Papers, literally in less than a year after that, the Government of India collected Rs 12,000 crores just by sending notices to the people whose names got printed in The Indian Express. So, when I met the Finance Minister, I asked for a 2% commission.
She said, “You’re confusing the bania (businessman) with the journalist in you,” so that didn’t go very far. dying by the age of 40, when we didn’t have much food, we were apparently uneducated, we didn’t
have a lot of money, large chunks of the Indian population were putting their lives on the line to
fight for civil liberties. And as we have turned more prosperous and as we have grown, faith in civil liberties, the investment and the interest in things that concern the country and society at large, things that concern not just your immediate family or your immediate job, are waning? I find people are not as interested as they used to be. And obviously that’s our challenge: to convince you that you need to read the news about the chief information officer’s election or that you need to read news about the
environment; that’s our job and it’s getting tougher.
What frustrates me is that in spite of all the growth, education, economic development and prosperity,
why are people complaining about free speech in India and then moving to Dubai?
Why are people complaining about free speech in India and moving to Singapore?
Towards the end, we have a forum where our
members will have the chance to put forth their
thoughts on this. Moving on to broadcast media,
it is a powerful tool which shapes public opinion.
And there have been many instances where the
broadcast media has not been honest. There is a
lot of noise on TV but are they close to the truth?
By and large, television news in India is a bit of a
joke. I’m not saying it to sound sensational or be
provocative, there are obviously exceptions, things
you have to watch, read and believe. And there is
some journalism happening on TV. But again, 500
news channels. Of the 500, I can assure you, not
more than 493 are viable business models. So, you
probably have the top seven news channels, seven
news houses, which can be profitable, sustainable
news businesses in India. The rest cannot be. It is
not feasible. News television in India, because of
the way it’s structured, distribution costs, how it
works, it is not possible to be a profitable business.
And so why are they in it then?
There are obviously different reasons. The moment
you believe that you know news as an industry,
being an owner of a news organisation gives you a
certain amount of power to get things done that
will benefit other businesses, that core business
loses its authenticity.. And so that’s where you know
that it’s the other businesses that are funding that
new space. It’s a matter of time before audiences
realise this and they reject, which I see happening.
After COVID-19, most of the traditional news
organisations like The Indian Express, The Times
of India, Hindustan Times… those of us who have been genuinely doing news for almost a hundred
years, we all saw significant growth in our digital
audiences. I believe the industry has come to accept
that audiences are asking the source of news and
who they can trust when they consume news. That
change has happened, if you believe that change has
happened on digital at least comparing unknown
anonymous blogs to traditional news trusted news
outlets. The next step is of the trusted news outlets,
who are you gonna trust more? I think we will see
audiences rejecting those who are in it for the wrong
reasons.
But how do we ensure that these news media
follow ethical guidelines?
The answer isn’t to put any rules on them by the
Government. The thing about free press and free
speech is that you have to be quite absolutist about
it. I strongly disagree with a lot of things that
happen on news television but you have to let them
happen and you have to let audiences decide what
they want to believe or not believe. Because, what
is the alternative? The alternative is that somebody
bigger than the news organisation or news industry
comes and says this shouldn’t be allowed. And that,
I think we have seen all over the world, is a recipe
for disaster.
Yes, the famous PizzaGate story of Hillary
Clinton changed the course of the US elections,
so to say. It eventually turned out to be fake news,
but it was already too late by then.
Absolutely. People keep blaming news media and
algorithms for fake news. I think algorithms are
more responsible than news media for fake news.
Obviously, I would say that as a representative of
the news media. But I think the biggest culprit as
far as fake news is concerned is and has always been
the Government. What is the biggest fake news
that we have heard in this entire century? Colin
Powell standing up in the UN and saying that they
have discovered weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq. It changed geopolitics forever. And generally,
we have seen this as a global trend. I’m not pointing
to any government, any political party or any part
of the world. But it’s a global trend, the stronger
the Government, the more fake news. And this has
been happening before digital was invented. readers to figure out what should or should not
be trusted. It’s up to you to take a call on what you
believe is news and what you want to support and
what you don’t want to support.
Every time you hit a share
button on a news item, it’s a
big expression of support to a
particular news organisation.
And every time you don’t share
something, it’s an expression
that you’re not really sure this
is something that you want to
share around. The audience
has never been so powerful.
But coming back to misinformation and
disinformation, the kind of humanitarian crisis
that some of this news misinformation and
disinformation has led to globally is absolutely
incredible. How does one go about preventing
this? Because governments around the world
actually have a role to play in it.
There is no answer for this. It is virtually impossible
to stop misinformation. I’m a bit of a World War
buff. In my view, the turning point of World War
II was when the BBC began broadcasting in the
German language so you had German audiences
listening to a counter narrative of Hitler. With war,
the fog of war, beyond a point, you have no sense
of what you can believe, what you can’t believe.
But whatever you share, talk about, that is the
truth, because you’re not going to believe the other
perspective, you’re going to discredit any other
opinion.
This brings us to the responsibility of mainstream
news, and this is the biggest problem of our times.
I mean, I believe that the biggest problem of our
times is polarisation for its profound impact on
society.
When I was studying journalism in LA, I interacted
a lot with journalists at The Los Angeles Times and
other news organisations. I was always very surprised
as to how firm they were in their opinions, and I’ve
always felt that journalists need to be curious and
open minded, otherwise you’re not really doing
journalism beyond a point. You have to have your
convictions, but you have to have an open mind.
The New York Times famously and publicly fired
its sitting opinion editor. The opinion editor of an
American newspaper is a very powerful person.
The opinion editor decides the editorial line that
the newspaper will take on a particular issue; every
day they do that. Then they invite columnists to
write. The opinion editor in America doesn’t report
to the newspaper editor. The opinion editor in America reports to the publisher, the owner of the newspaper. The opinion editor of The New York