 The committee to protect journalists USA brought out a report for which I wrote the forward recently about two months ago It was out in August sometime in this country 27 journalists 27 have been murdered since 1992 And these journalists these 27 you can understand there were many more murder But these 27 it can be established that they were murdered because of what they wrote Okay, they were murdered because of what they wrote. That is an astonishing figure if you go by that kind of that stringent evidence Evidential process that they did 27 journalists now I analyze their data and I wrote the forward. Let me tell you some of the things Last year there were three in the last year you remember there were three murdered I'm not counting the rationalists and that's another problem all your three rationalists when writers and journalists Please understand. They were also being attacked. Dabholkar was attacked for what he was writing Pansare for what he wrote Okay, Calgurgy and academic who also wrote But the three professional journalists or journalists as we understand them who were murdered in the last year Here are some of answer 27 overall. Here are some interesting things for you All the three were Indian language if you could if you look at the 27 not one of them was working in an urban metro It also argues a different class background of the journalist. It is impossible to find in those 27 one Holy English speaking English writing journalist working and it is impossible to find anyone working in corporate media English Publications India today lost a person who was Hindi There is a big class difference in composition class social background difference between journalists working in the Ungracing media and in the non-engrazing media and the Indian language media So most of the journalists most of the journalists were non-metro or rule either non-metro or rule Most many of them where freelancers are stringers because independent journalists today can only survive By being freelancers stringers though I believe there is space even now in the mainstream media within which you can play as I did for the years But the spaces are shrinking In the process of what we're doing, we're not but the overall process. We're not just killing journalists. We're killing journalism itself What happens when one of these rural journalists gets killed Immediately we de-legitimize that person The stories will be was he really a journalist or was he part of some corrupt nexus locally These are the people who have lost their lives to bring you some information We de-legitimize them because and this is one thing I have now come to aid and formerly broken with The definition of professional journalist, which is today dictated by corporate media Okay, so if you are a professional journalist, if you're a journalist who is covering the anti-Posco agitation Or you're covering the Polavaram Dam, which by the way is much bigger a hell of a lot bigger than Narbada and again It's measure of how much your universe has shifted in the 1980s. There was a healthy debate in the media about And there were a fair number of people writing against the dam Polavaram, how many of you have even heard or can tell me anything about that? Yep. Thank you. That's one Okay, sorry, you by the way in I noticed that in the leftward bookstore. There is a brilliant brilliant book about it Yeah That's all right. Can you can you relax relax sit up? There is a wonderful book in there It's called people's history of a river. I strongly recommend you read this book by R. Uma Maheshway Okay, our publishers and it's a wonderful book and it really but the fact is look at the distance between the discussion debate Reporting over Narbada dam the silence on the Polavaram Dam, which is much larger as a project than So that's also a distance a measure of the distance you've changed now look at this again the 27 journalists the composition Which I told you about look at the fact of the kind of intimidation Brutalization of journalists in say Chattisgarh It hasn't really sparked that great outcry now why you can ask are there no big names no big corporate media journalists Because we work within a framework where the journalism has been tamed You're not going to cause that much offense to anybody if you do you will soon be a freelancer Which is a form of disguised So you The corporate media have already tamed the general since there are wonderful journalists in the corporate media Who don't realize 10 20%? of their potential because they're really they can't step beyond particular You can I mean you can write anything about la luprasa your friend But you don't dare I see as I said you can look at the various benchmarks. How was Jane you covered? How was Rohit? How is it when you are covered? How is he being covered today when you have the most completely fraudulent? Commission report when the appropriate authorities the collector of the district and the Thaisandar Declared that he was a very you have a commission set up to say with a specific aim of saying he wasn't Where are these skating editorials? Where is the examination of this? Who are they? What do we cover? So Reliance as I was saying owns a man has a million interest Whatever you are writing about effects. It's like if you were writing on consumer goods and you were writing on say proper game proper gamble Whatever you do you'll be writing about something about them So you start getting rained in you get called in you can also look at Interlocking directorships. I have a lot of fun getting on to the net and looking at the page of Board of directors of various media houses. I haven't done it for a while But I can tell you it's fun. You'll find boards of directors where there is not a single journalist Because what does new what are newspapers have to do with journalism anyway? They're about revenue. They're about profit. So you have On dining juggernail there was a one journalist representing the world newspapers, you know Winfra the world newspapers think he's an Irish guy Can't speak a word of Hindi or read it much less read it, but he's there on dining juggernail There are two big big tax consultants and real estate agents the third biggest in in the North Now these are the people sitting and presiding on the board of the largest newspaper in the country and perhaps the word This was a few years ago that Names might have changed but pick up any board you like of the major media houses and find how many Journalists there may be the owners children. Okay, and since they actually sat down one day at a desk and wrote something They'll be thrown in as journalists But if you cover Narmada or Polaro or Posco or these things You're an activist your branding if you sit on your back side and polish Your seat with this polish your stool with the seat of your trousers for 30 years Churning out yard upon yard of corporate press releases is used. You're a professional. I Don't accept this And I think the idea is to liberate journalism art literature writing from corporations and Take it back to communities where it came from and that's what I think should be our direction That's where I think we should be going. That's where we should be going with us, but Otherwise We live in the era of the greatest ever apparatus of brainwashing and indoctrination Ever devised by human hand And that is your that is your media in 2009 What became a major political scandal a story on paid news? Well, I pointed out I did a story on the extraordinary modesty of chief minister Ashok Chauhan Who had 86 full pages in color on him without a single advertisement in a single newspaper? 86 pages full pages and his elect his election expenditure account on Advertising was 11,398 So I want I rang him up. I couldn't get him. I wanted to know where I could get those advertising rates Yeah, but The shit hit the fan with that story and the entire paid news scandal came out see how powerful the media are How powerful corporate media are The press council of India ordered an inquiry The inquiry committee was the subcommittee which did the inquiry was Paranjoy Guha Takota and Srinivas Reddy They produced a devastating 72 page Naming names which we had done in our story naming the newspapers naming the editors naming all these Guha and Guha's report was devastating It was immediately killed by the press council itself the press council killed its own Reduced it to 12 pages removing all names. So it was like a kiddies moral science You know be good guys good girls don't don't do this Well, I have to admit that the next press council chairman Immediately of the first act on assuming the chair was to put that report up, but it was four years of three years later By which time the issue was there? Every now they were here was the media exercising corporate censorship on an unbelievable scale where it could tie down the press council of the country Corporate ownership of media has grown your historically the first hundred and in Yeah, in a few years you'll complete 200 years of Indian owned media when you look at Miracle Akbar of Raja Ram Mohan Roy which from day one was talking about Sati talking about social reform widow remarriage You know education of girls Of those 200 years, there's a hundred and seventy years which is praiseworthy and Something to be proud of there were many chapters even there Which are not to be proud of like the communal press, but the mainstream nationalist press was a very humanist Okay, from bugger sweet to Mahatma Gandhi. There were people writing always writing about uniting people about changing things Yeah, and no one gives him credit for it one of our most under estimated journalists was Baba Saheb who also launched two papers and Really really scared the political opinion journalism Terrific stuff and these way your journalist your journalist every one of your nationalist heroes Doubled up as a journalist men and women including Sarojini Naidu Vijay Lakshmi Pandit all of them It's very hard. By the way, that was true of much of the third world in the Philippines. It was result Okay, in Africa. It was others those coming out of colonial experiences fought for human liberation this they saw their Journalism as a tool of change as an anti-colonial weapon and They gave you a framework of freedom to live it. What have you done with it? In the last 25 years All the owners of newspapers that ownership has changed where newspapers used to be owned by one individual one family Those are gone. Most those families have become corporations And you can just look at each one of them is involved in a thousand other businesses So their ability is totally compromised and it produces what I call the new convergence in the media What do I mean by the new convergence? The new convergence is a non technological convergence, okay Here's what happens Over the last I'm talking about 25 years now giant corporations come to dominate the media Reliance is the largest but there are others The media are increasingly corporatized Both in structure and itself in it. They're proud to boast of themselves as businesses BCCL and HD are both family owned functioning on corporate lines It's not corporations functioning on family lines the families owned functioning on corporate lines You have interlocking Directorships on the board So the head of a major private bank will be on the board of this newspaper and this newspaper's Management will have a director on that Back on that bank's board Ben Begdikian who wrote the greatest book on media in the last quarter of the last century called media monopoly and was national editor of the washington post Two times Pulitzer Prize winner. He described this incredible web of corporatization and described it as Those interlocking directorships he traced about 100 200 of them and called it Corporate incest within corporate incest because it was so And but Begdikian Predicted in the first edition of his book That it would be down to 20 companies in no time. He found 15 He called them the private ministry of information and culture and mind you Two time Pulitzer Prize winner national editor of washington post at the time When it when it published the pentagon papers That book was never reviewed in most places Or was called alarmist He was he was wrong 20 corporations from 50 to 20 he wrote that in his third edition By his fifth edition it was down to five now. It's about four companies Controlling the world of media largely Now of course the issue is but what about social media? It's liberating influence Tell me about it The digital monopolies are the worst monopolies in history for two reasons Please understand the extent of monopoly in the digital space Is greater than anything in print media or television Google learns owns 72 or 74 percent of all search Also google owns 72 to 74 percent By the way, they will not say more than 74 exactly around 80 percent They're not going to tell you that because if it shows about 75 percent there are going to be calls for legislation Against that kind of monopoly Most of them very modestly understate their achievement Microsoft Apple and google What they own about 80 odd percent more than 80 percent of email eBay PayPal eBay 68 percent of all auctions online PayPal god knows what percentage of commercial transactions it's in The same guys are now beginning to own me old media as well Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos of amazon Many of the others are lining up to make purchases of the caracasses By the way, let me also tell you one more thing the old advertising revenue model has collapsed Our guys don't want to believe it, but it has We still keep boasting in india. The media is growing Yeah From what to watch And that the fact is that the new york times Survived its worst financial crisis by taking a one billion dollar loan from the mexican billionaire carlos slim Who was Many years in the top four or five richest men in the Forbes list Washington Post is now owned by Jeff Bezos A hell of a lot of other properties in the legacy media the old media are being acquired by the digital guys Yes, there is space in the digital media. Yes, there is people like me have moved put one foot in there now But i'm saying there is also space In the in the old media if you're willing to fight for it You cannot fight for a better media without fighting monopoly. Forget it Are you going to fight for legislation that will End the kind of Ritualist homogeneity that has been brought to your media. I want you guys to understand one thing You're a country of 1.28 billion people 833 million rural Indians speaking 780 living languages Three of six of which are spoken by more than 50 million people three of which are spoken by more than 80 million people One of which is spoken by more than 500 million people and a lot of which are spoken by one million people or less One of which is spoken by one person now like J. Roo in the under months and seven persons like Saiman in Tripura, Saimari is here's the point and here's the central point You are the most heterogeneous and diverse societies in the world Being covered by a media that is more homogeneous than it has ever been in your history Hmm an incredibly homogeneous media is trying to cover the world's most complex heterogeneity and diversity It's doomed you're doomed How can they Why why the hell Would they give a rat's ass About a language of seven people seven speakers left in Tripura Why they bothered if the you know They'd be probably happy if the great Andamanese and the Jaravas die out completely then you can completely use the place for tourism Eco-tourism So You're please understand that is your problem in a nutshell You're a revenue driven profit driven entity If you're not going to get profit out of covering you why the hell should I cover I'm not going to cover you if it doesn't make money from you By the way, that's why publishing houses like let's go in matter Okay, they're going to cover the issues that matter to you to your children to your grandchildren They bring books that matter which these guys won't even review But at least they're putting your books there And if you want to you can So yes, there are spaces in the digital media, but there's also this problem this huge Corporatization that has taken place this gigantic corporatization that has taken place has completely squeezed media Into a you've you've made the bottom line of journalism is Does it make revenue if you reduce journalism to a revenue stream? And remember that has to be the case when your media is a very small department of large corporations It's not as if the media is the biggest entity in reliance, right? If it was the biggest entity in reliance, it would have some more say and some more leaving And probably be more obnoxious but But But it isn't it's one department. It gets its orders. You will not cover this party and that party Right. So when you've got this unbelievable situation where you've reduced journalism To a revenue stream There's the rest for me It's entire what follows is entirely logical don't You know one thing don't squeal And grown and moan to me about how bad the media are if you're not prepared to do something about it If you're not prepared to buy leftward publications If you're not prepared to buy the magazines journals the small support the small websites that are giving you information At their personal cost If you're not willing to stand up for journalists When you're not willing to stand up for the paranjoy guhata kultas For the neha dikshins if you are not willing to stand up for them When they are victimized for doing what for bringing new information that is central to your functioning as a democratic society Yeah, if you're not willing to stand up for them if you're not willing to subscribe to at least three alternative magazines All of you are many class people who can afford that if you're not willing to subscribe to three alternative publications Don't belly ache to me. You can you cannot absolve yourselves of the responsibility of being proactive on the subject We're not talking about media as media. We're talking about the central the fourth state of democracy As I keep saying in mumbai and delhi it's very hard to tell the difference between fourth state and real estate Many newspapers in this country make more money from their rentals and their buildings. I'm not joking There are major newspapers that make more income There are newspapers which are running only so that they can make that income because if they stop publication, they lose those premises Okay, so You have got to be proactive in getting there You have got to be proactive in in getting into this so you This but that was only one part of the interlocking Big business and media is one part of the interlocking. This is india Okay, now If you if you look by the way in dining jagran and some of the other boards, there were people south asia representative of mcdonalds was one of the You know absolutely an authority on hindi Realty firms In one in one board the representatives of general electric and raytheon were on the board of a hindi newspaper And from the world press institute, there was this gavel over any On the dining jagran board. I don't think he's there anymore Now the if a newspaper is a commercial entity worried about taxes worried about real estate worried about production worried about wages In this city in this city, you have seen Far more brazen abuse of the supreme court Than even the what the bccm is doing and it has come from the corporate media of this city How many of you are even allowed to know? That three times the supreme court of india has told media of this country You will implement the wage board And they just tell the supreme court to do you know what they don't care That's why I asked those guys at the compliance seminar. Please tell me who are the worst offenders Nobody answered my question on record. Nobody answered Because they're also scared everyone's scared In fact, one of the media guys said who can do anything to us. We are the media So you have this this is your other part of the interlocking the then you have Business families merge with politics And political families go into business And both go into media and you have the marans And you have the akali Have the baadans and you have the reddies And rama jira and all of them in in andra So what you're seeing is a three way political families enter business Mr. Raj Takari who never held a job in his life paid 421 crores along with his partner to buy the koheload Militia No um miss uh What's supria sule Who have only worked in an NGO declared um In asset ownership wealth in her election affidavit eight times that of her fathers Seven times that of her father shallot power Who declared just eight crores? and But I understand that he's a busy man and he might have been some confusion about Whether he thought they were asking him about annual or daily income So that was okay now Big political families get into business now if The day I read her election affidavit. I said I want to join that NGO I'm all for the voluntary sector and Then you have You have mr. Karthi chidambra From the political family going into business You have as I said the baadans the reddies everywhere so Political families are going into business business families are going into politics Media houses are going into both and both are entering media houses. That is your new convergence What can you possibly do? Oh, and another thing I mean when I started by saying surgical strike I'm saying that the lobotomization of the media took place when globalization came in that became the minimum Qualification globally for being an editor was that you ought to have had a frontal lobotomy and be utterly incapable of imagining Even the most remotely independent thought if you manage that for three years you'll be editor in chief And that's how the editor died in the early nineties. Okay You have Whether on whether the shameful behavior on the 10th of the nationals Whether the utterly crazy look I want to tell you something there are things to be proud of and look at how the media treated Those do you award wapisi moves? I'm proud of the writers of this country. I addressed the progressive writers associate two months ago And I said I didn't have the time I came for your conference only because of this that you guys Through your awards in the faces of these comebacks Yeah, and they were editorials criticizing them. There were articles on the opinion pages attacking them You have to understand that somebody living in bilaspur somebody living in gulbarga or aichu That award is such a big thing. It's the biggest thing in their rights to say i'm going to give it back Man, you have to understand how much courage and integrity that requires your writers did it Did you see a single big editor return his Padmishree or her Padmabhushan You're tamed I have to say that I did not return any award because I never ever accepted an award from a government so I I don't attack others who Accepted it's a personal decision. I believe a judge see it's like suppose you're heavily invested in a company And you're reading the auditor's reports and you find out that your auditor Is being given awards and prizes and money by the company you've got to be pissed off, right? I'm saying a journalist a reporter is external auditor to the government of India A journalist is an auditor A journalist is a witness That's my role So I can't be taken if as long as i'm covering the government I should not have any financial dealing with that I've worked on several government commissions and panels Like for my sins. I was on the bpl census expert group I never accepted a designation or an honorarium or anything and I went to the meetings myself I take that also amongst journalists and all of us We need to recreate the culture that existed 30 years ago 20 years ago of who we are and what we want to be What is it we cover finally? Let me give you some numbers These are from again from Delhi from the Center for Media Studies When it's not just the rationalist, I just want digression. It's not just the rationalist issue. It's not just JNU It's On the on the beef bag on everything the performance of the media is so deeply compromised Now Triple the luck is the discussion of the day Fine. Oh absolutely It is a crime against women. No question in my mind about that Yeah, but not one of them cares to observe the irony That you're having this triple talak debate In the regime of a prime minister Who deserted and abandoned his wife without a single word let alone that word repeated three times How many have done serious and probing stories of the plight of that woman who can't get who can't get So people who can't get She can't get her passport today She has a problem getting her passport She was going around from pillar to post the prime minister's wife I'm saying you're covering this talak business. Yeah cover it for god's sake do cover it But don't leave out this part back to the agenda as it is What is it that we cover? What are the numbers we cover? The center for monitoring studies Is situated in Delhi headed by n baskar around They've actually cut down the amount of monitoring they do because one who afford who can afford it But they cover They monitor three major six major channels and six three english three hindi Six major newspapers three english three hindi These are the big ones Okay, what they cover they look at In one exercise they look at the front page of the newspapers And the equivalent of the channels is prime time Okay, so then they look at news by origin news by space news by content label and what do they get This is what they get in 2014 15 0.23 percent of news Came out of rural india election year by year that's why it was better Where 833 million people reside This the this entity occupied less than 0.25 percent of space on the front pages tv stories by origin By rural by origin 0.80 percent in 2014 and 0.96 percent in 2015 Why did that go up? A because you had five major state elections and b because of the so-called drought Which is another story It's a mega water crisis. It's not a drought. You can have five good monsoons It's still going to be a very major problem for you because of the inequalities involved in the use and harnessing of water in this country Print stories by origin of rural origin news stories 0.24 percent Hindi newspapers dynamic basket hindustan and dynamic juggerna origin stories by our on agriculture 0.0 percent 0.2 percent and 0.0 percent we're talking about the front pages So 0.06 percent english newspapers ht ty hindu 0.1 0.27 0.00 That year is after i left the hindu okay And 0.17 percent is the average Whole states get zero There are 12 or 16 states and get zero in a whole year in terms of coverage By the way, you just have tripura suddenly in the news Not because you have an olympian who did so well Distinguished herself from that state It's also the state that ran the best nrgs for 10 years, but you don't get any damn reporting about that I went there to cover the nrgs when they had cut 53 percent from tripura's nrgs budget and doubled the nrgs budget of gujarat Where everything is done by machines and one of the work woman workers adivasis asked me Angrily because the money was going to swatch barat swatch barat so and She said what is this swatch barat? I was trying to explain she said If you're going to keep our stomachs empty, why the hell do you need to build toilet? So, uh, what what do we cover by the way? 66 percent of your newspapers front page 66 percent guess the origin New daily The tv gets it slightly better they are 51.73 percent of the time of time on prime time is daily And newspapers Front page 66.92 you can say you can almost round that off I think in the paid news scandal when we found every big newspaper was conducting this It then went to the election commission. It's still hanging mr. Chavan's case. It's still hanging in the screen code Various journalists got victimized along the way again a sign of hope Where did I get all that stuff from? Yeah It was the thing that really shared me up and made me go ahead 24 young journalists across Maharashtra Without knowing each other or coordinating with each other after the first story came Sent me anonymous packet both things they put their name and said sir if you use my name my job is gone Many of them knowing that I don't read Marathi Gave me rough translations and said this is paid news. This is how much we were paid for it This is how much the publication got per column And that's how your paid news story came out From journalists putting their necks on the line for you within that mainstream corporate media I think it's something to be proud of that with all the damn cynicism We're still attracting such youngsters to the media that they're still coming to journalists it If In in rural India the the model is criminal intimidation and murder in the city. See why is it that many of us don't have the problem? Please understand that there is a very clear caste and class structure in the media Most of us Working in the mainstream media. We have a ready made insurance by virtue of our class background Oh very much by the virtue of our speaking English awful and by virtue of being Largely a bunch of brands That's how I you know You have to hear this story. I remember when the other Prasad was first declaring himself to be a chief ministerial candidate The damp press conference was divided on cast lines. Everybody was sitting according to their And they were chewing pann and ridiculing the man and saying I Today all the paid new stuff is now legitimate. I hope you know that it's now called native advertising It's called online. It's called native advertising It's paid for content that is disguised to look like news, which is what made news is it's now called native advertising You are in deep shit with your media We all are we all are What do we do one there's no alternative no option All movements particularly progressive movements must develop Not just their own media firstly, they also need to develop a media strategy They need to have a media wish Understand what's going on in the world Okay now You've got to have Left to it. You've got to have these publications. You've got to have the people's archive of rule in India, which I represent You've got to have news click, which is accessible to you However, you've got to also have a strategy And you've got to understand that one of the first things in that is if you can't break monopoly, you have no chance You can fight a positive battle saying we are fighting for diversity in a diverse nation We are fighting for heterogeneity in a heterogeneous nation and we cannot allow 1.3 billion voices speaking 780 languages to be spoken for by a small narrow elite We have to have laws and directions that ensure Diversity and by the way, please the much underestimated all-india radio broadcasts in more languages than the rest of the media Okay, they do another thing that you have to do is to fight for Reforming and strengthening your public broadcaster, which by which I mean it should not be a government broadcaster It's got to be a public broadcaster. You'll really see how you may laugh at me, but there were a few years when Somnath Chatterjee was speaker and even now Where Lok Sabha and Raj Sabha TV offer you much better political discussion without those people being Pits of some corporation or the other Put it yet You do get good stuff and these are the only these are channels where you actually get Satyajit Ray films or Brinansen films or things like that Think about it a public broadcaster as against the government The present regime has been crack earlier regime was tracking down on that autonomy. The present one will take it further In the in terms of their economics in terms of their approach to the media They're not very different except that this one brings its personalized Saffronized nastiness to everything that the earlier last day As Arun Shauri said Very correctly and the one time that I have to agree with Mr. Shauri He said the NDA is the upa plus cow I think that's a perfect perfect solution. It's upa plus cow So you have to fight for the public broadcaster You have to fight for laws against monopoly. You have to fight for laws to ensure diversity Yeah, you also another Stop accepting That X is a journalist only if the corporate media certifies him or her Journalist the origin of the word was simply someone who maintained the journal Yeah, there are things to being a professional journalist a discipline and ethics a verification You know journalism is a discipline of verification Do you find any verification in the nationalist history hysteria going on On the television now, you know, it's all very well to beat up on one anchor. I don't think that is the Right thing to do He's I mean, it's it's natural because He he you know, he makes the word obnoxious seem like a compliment But but it isn't just him Please understand those are the parameters the media have drawn for themselves They're looking at it in terms of capturing eyeballs t-arpies money advertising So that's So then the other things is also that you have to address Every political movement progress movement has got to develop its strategy and develop its own media And for that I think we need to break down the privileges of a very tiny bunch of people speaking for a nation I'm saying that can happen If they give more and more voice in our stories as journalists and in their stories themselves To everyday people and their everyday lives It's what I'm trying to do with the People's Archive of rural India You can look at the URL ruralindiaonline.org And I also leave some of those Bookmarkers or whatever for you so you can take those and have a look at I mean visit the site You need a large that the digital spaces will also shake My idea that one reason why the digital space Is a more friendly zone than the others Is because the cost factors are very different and much lower than Like One last thing about what say we are doing in this India by the way breaks down into 95 regions historically evolved or natural physical regions It breaks down into 95 regions. Do you know that no publication or channel of yours covers more than 8 to 10? Effectively there may be mention of someone when there's a flood or an earthquake or something but covering them physically In the People's Archive of rural India We are determined over the next five years to put out a fellow in residence living with ordinary people mandatory residents of three months one year of fellowship from where We will get the only database in this country that will have stories Representative of all regions all cultures of this country I invite you to join me in that Endeavour and I want to thank you for being so patient with me in overrunning my time But that's what I meant when I said you live in a media In a media world in a media universe that is politically free but imprisoned by profit. Thank you