 Hello and welcome to Newsclick. Today we're going to discuss what we have earlier also discussed, the relationship between independent media, corporate media and the people. Let me start with Paranjaya because you have been in press council earlier, you have talked about paid news. Do you think that today the corporate media, we should at one point some semblance of what would be called independent journalism, giving some space to actual journalists. Now it has sort of turned entirely into what times of India really started as advertorials and news mix together. See there is no doubt about the fact that the role of the large corporates in the Indian media has become bigger and wider. There is no doubt about it. And you see this is coincided with the period when we've seen a convergence between what we earlier called broadcasting and telecommunications. So all the major telecom, let's say the notable example being Mr Mukesh Ambani. He's not just India's richest man, he's the head of Reliance Geo, he's also India's biggest media baron. Now Paranjaya, it's also the print and television coming together. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now this has happened earlier. The point I'm seeing what is new today is that the corporate sector or the involvement of the corporate sector has become stronger than ever before. One or two other things that have happened simultaneously. And that is across the world and also in India we've seen over the last 10 years the impact of the advertiser or the amount of money that was spent on advertising has not gone up at the same rate that it had in the past due to a variety of reasons including the recession. And this period has coincided with the rise of the internet. So what has happened is in India and this is particular about India, the biggest advertisers are either government, the government of India and the Bharati Janta Party, the ruling party. So this explains why such a large section of the so-called mainstream media is so subservient to the ruling dispensation. Of course the digital platforms are becoming important but there's still only 20% of the total ad revenue that's there in the country. So 80% is still going to what would be called the conventional media. Today we're really looking at that element of it. Of course a lot of the independent platforms are today on digital platforms. This is not. As well as the mainstream. Yeah. But that's why I'm saying that I would not make the distinction right now on the digital versus print versus television. But look at the media and its eternity. Siva, again you've been a part of the editor's guild. You've talked also or you've seen how the journalistic freedom has been curbed both by the state and also by the owners. Now owners have always been powerful in the media but do you think the fact that cross holdings have been not stopped and they have become much more powerful than they were earlier? Yes, of course. I mean they've become far more powerful because we've become so servile and we've become, you know, we are crawling. We meaning journalists. We as journalists. We've become so servile. So I think that they appear more powerful than they did before when you had independent journalists, you had editors, you had people standing up to them. Today you don't have anybody standing up to them. And apart from just the money, there's also this fear factor. Everybody's sort of terrified and they call themselves journalists and then they're terrified. They're terrified of losing their jobs because there's large scale retrenchment by television stations to the tune of 300, 400 people just sacked in one go. Editors fired without a moment's notice. Contract labor coming in. And the fear of government. The threats, the intimidation, the you better watch out or else. The strategic arrests of journalists putting them away like in Manipur under the National Security Act for just a Facebook post questioning the local government. You know, so this is the murder of Gauri Lankesh. So this is all fear tactics which they're pushing in. And then you have this bunch of journalists and anchors and celebrity anchors so called who are going just over the top with their vitriol, the divisiveness, the hate and they call themselves journalists. Tush, you run what is what we call probably a thorn in the side of the establishment today. The caravan does long form journalism. You've been all this. Do you also reckon, think that the fact that today the journalists don't have their unions and almost what Siba just now said. Most journalists have become contract labor has also weakened them, weakened them in front of the management. That's one of the reasons that the journalists have really lost out. Well, look, I think it is part of a process that we are again as is responsible for legally speaking, whether I'm under contract or not, I'm still bound by the Working Journalist Act and I'm fighting a case precisely on those grounds. But the fact is that we are in no position to actually use the law to our advantage because how do you fight an owner? And I think that was an earlier problem. And this blame of course lies with ownership and greed and the money that we wanted. But it is also that the unions have frittered away the kind of influence and action that would have been necessary. And I know people don't like the distinction being made. But for me, at the core of the journalistic business is editorial freedom. And the union made the issue an entire issue of employee versus management. I actually don't have sympathy for that broader framework. But I do feel that we do need ways in which we can fight back with editorial freedom. I don't think going back to the unions is going to be a solution today, but we have to find a via media that takes some of the strengths of the union, looks at some other ways, recast laws, but how do we do it in the current scenario is actually the problem. Because, and I'll just take a minute more to expand on something that Paranjoy said, we keep believing that corporates are agnostic to ideology. And maybe corporates in terms of the West can be thought in those terms. But in India, you go back to the history of the Gita press, you look at what is corporate ownership in India of the media. It is largely Marwadi, Gujarati, Baniya, Jain. This is an ownership, not just the Gita press, spirituality, babas. We are in an era where these owners have found an ideological match post neoliberalism in the exactly the kind of capitalism they actually revel in. We are in an era of Hindutva capitalism. And for media owners, this is a perfect match. So they are in alliance with the government, not just on economic policies, it is also in ideology. In this framework, we can keep discussing solutions, but we don't have the wherewithal to find ways of implementing those solutions. Well, let's look at the two aspects that you're talking about, the Shahu Jains, where both Marwadis and Jains, so you can look at all of this, but that apart. Really the issue is what you are talking about, the marriage between neoliberal ideology and Hindutva capitalism, as it were, as the underpinning of it. Do you think there is a regulatory solution to this, not just the action of the journalists, whether they organize themselves or not, for whatever reasons? Yes and no. Right now, what we have in India is regulatory anarchy and chaos, completely. Across the world, also in India, technology has moved traditionally faster than regulation. But I'll take one step back and then look at this phenomenon. Firstly, the whole idea of information as a public good, which includes what you have been advocating the whole notion of the internet as a public utility. And therefore, if it is a public utility, then it needs to be regulated and governed as per certain norms in which your air, your water, your electricity is regulated. Now let's look just at the organizations in India. You have the Central Board of Film Certification, called the Sensor Board. You have the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the Technical and Commercial Regulator. You have the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Licensing Authority, particularly for television channels. You have the Press Council of India, a quasi-judicial body set up by an act of parliament, only concerned with the print medium, toothless, completely toothless. Then you have, in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Computer Emergency Response Team. So you have a proliferation of all these bodies, often at cross-purposes with each other, in an age where the media have converged. And on top of that, you have what are called self-regulatory bodies, from the Advertising Standards Council of India to the News Broadcasters Association to the Indian Broadcasters Federation and their regulatory bodies. Again, they don't have any legal backing. So whether it be cross-media honours or just implementing the law of the land, say the classic case of Zee and Gohar Raza. The News Broadcasting Standards Authority said, Zee, what you've done, you should not have done, you apologize immediately. Zee says, I'm not going to do it. What are you going to do? You know, so this is really when you talk about the letter of the law, the spirit of the law, regulation and governance, right now we are going through a completely chaotic situation when anything goes. And this is exploited by the ruling dispensation. You know, I would still probably think that the issue of technology in this particular case is really not the fundamental issue right now. On the kind of problems you're talking about, say Zee, the broadcasters are not regulated, they have what is called self-regulation. And if they don't listen to their regulator, nothing can be done about it. Cross-holdings could have been barred right from the beginning. The television ownership and press ownership should be separate. We'll leave out radio as a small part today, just for the time being. And if you remember, the United States, the most capitalist of countries have separated the two because you agree that press media has a function in democracy which is different from all other, shall we say capitalist activities. And if I may just interrupt you, you also have a regulatory body in the form of the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. I'm still saying there is technological issues involved, which I want to parse out of this discussion. And simple regulation, no cross ownership. It doesn't need any technology issue at all to be brought into this, but we never did it. In fact, now we have extremely powerful monopolies spanning across all platforms and that's the threat. Georgia brings in the additional one of also the internet platforms also being a part of this. So again, Harthosh, regulatory issues that are there regulatory issues that we could actually agitate for across the country. And this is really an issue of democracy. It's not an issue of only journalists in order to bring back what you call editorial freedom. Well, I mean, I could lay down four or five things. We all know what needs to be done, whether it is cross ownership, it is whether it is actually implementing the spirit and law of the Working Journalist Act. We are not extending it on mediums, etc., etc. The question is how do we get there and I keep coming back to the question because once we agree that the whole superstructure is not in our control. Where do we go? I mean, the fundamental problem here is that no constitution in the world anticipated the role of the media in democracy. The American and the British don't have a written one. The American was written far before this. The Indian constitution takes cursory note print. Today I would suggest that if you actually have to have a functional democracy, the kind of constitutional safeguards that have been built for the judiciary, the separation of the legislature and the executive actually have to be part of a working constitution to have a democracy that can function, the idea of not just information but the media as a public could. Because in the absence of that, it comes back to funding questions, ownership issues, journalists who actually understand editorial freedom when they need to get outside this framework and become entrepreneurs to raise money for them are already falling into the trap of what actually is wrong with the media. If we wear two hats, I'm sorry, we cannot do that work and it is not a journalist's job in the end to build the business of media, however much we may want to and we are in desperation being forced to do that. And that is our real problem. Seema, I think Hartoche has made this point very sharply that if we want democracy, we have to think of what kind of media independence particularly in terms of content is required in order to preserve that democracy. What is your response because you have been in both politics at one point. No, but I agree with this completely. The point is that how and this is something we've all been grappling with for years now, having meetings, trying to see what we can do and then coming up with no solutions. And I think if you talk about the fourth pillar of democracy and we talk about the watchdog being a very, very fundamental to a vibrant democracy, then we've got to give it some teeth through the constitution and give it some protection through the constitution. We've really come down to that level. So when they talk of amendments and they talk of taking the constitution forward, they have to look at media freedom very carefully because all the bodies that represent us and I'm not talking of the regulatory authorities, but I'm talking of something like the editor's guild of which I was a part and so it from within. I mean these are bodies which have sunk into some kind of an abyss where they don't function, they don't respond, they don't talk about freedom of the media, they don't stand up for the independence of the media. You know an occasional statement is about all that this kind of a body comes up with and it's got all the editors as members. So we ourselves are not being able to infuse ourselves with any kind of vibrancy and independence and like you say that now many of us are out there on the digital platform trying to be business persons which we are not. It's an important point that if we want the media to play its role in democracy, if we see that role and we don't think it should be only capital that plays its role in the media then we need to think not with just as journalists but what is the stake people of the country have in the media and how do you build that that's a political question I think that's a very important element that you have said. All four of us here are quote-unquote will be called as independent platforms of subkind, how bad or good we are as entrepreneurs of course is an open question. Seba has already said that we are not and I would go with that. I am not, I don't know what that is. I would go with that as well and I don't think the other people in the panel are also going to be great entrepreneurs. Do you think the independent media can really act as a corrective on the corporate media or this is as Satoshi is saying is really trying to replicate the corporate media on a smaller scale. I am not as pessimistic as that to say it's not possible. It is possible but not easy and we come back to the economics of it. Is crowdfunding the way forward? Is it philanthropic institutions, foundations and trust that will provide grants? Is really this the way forward where you say okay we are funding you, we are not expecting you to give us returns or maximize your profits but do your journalism independently. It's very simple. When you have a cash crunch, you cut down on what you call investigative reportage. It takes money, it takes time. Simply put if two people have to travel to five different places and interview 50 different people then when come up with a half an hour say documentary that costs far more than getting five people to shout at one another on the idiot box. Five idiots to shout at one another. That's correct. So the economics is one part of the story. But I agree with what Hirthosh and Seema are saying at the end of the day. We have to look at a new constitutional authority. I mean none of us really imagined even 15 or 20 years ago the importance of the media. What academics like Arjuna Padurai and I'll talk about you know the media escape. You know if you again want to look back at old models of base superstructure infrastructure. This is a new phenomenon that's happened across the world. Say the use of social media. The way social media has been weaponized. The way social media has been used to spread hatred, disinformation. These are aspects of the working of the media that very honestly very few of us could have anticipated the scale of this kind of change. Certainly but a lot of this weaponization as you have said. We saw for instance during the Babri Masjid the regional platforms particularly in UP and a lot of the language press was infected. Which again publicly it has been commented upon and so on. Do you think apart from the constitutional safeguard that you're talking about. Is it really these for a political movement and the political parties at least some sections to take this up as their platform. Because journalists are not going to do it clearly. Do you think there is a case and I'm specifically talked about what we can do. Building a reader base and telling them that if you want independent news some of you who have money. Some of you who don't of course we can't they can't subsidize or pay for this. If you have and there's a large middle class in India who can give 1000 rupees a month say for instance to any of the platform that we are talking about. Do you think there is a space for readers supported news of that kind. Of course look at Caravan and we are lucky there that we are our owners have guaranteed a degree of independence which is rare in Indian journalism. We have to absolutely and we have worked out over the last year and it's been heartening. We have put in a subscription digital subscription model. There is partly content has gone behind paywall and the response has been interesting very very positive. We are not talking 1000 rupees a month we are talking 1000 rupees a year. But the fact is people are willing to pay and over the long run we could possibly look for sustenance entirely from a subscription base. It is one possible way to go as Peranjoy said that there are for example the trust in Bangalore funded by a group of entrepreneurs is funding some media institutions etc etc. The only problem with these models is still that you know it is not even the difference between corporate and independent media. It is the difference between small and big media. There is literally if I may use it from science there is a phase change when you go from one to the other. It's scale and in going from scale it's simply not a question of you go from small to big. Fundamentally the conditions in which you operate change. So while we can continue to do stories and have and we tend to believe social media has huge impact. It has some impact but largely in the absence of big media that can take up those stories. The government has effective control the small independent media just acts as a way for the government to say look we have independent media in this country. Largely it is an excuse to exercise almost complete control from the back door in a way where you can actually claim independent media. In that sense the emergency was nothing because people knew they were being served propaganda. Here you are being served propaganda you don't realize it. And that is literally the question of money ownership because yes we can exist the way we are existing today and maybe more such outlets can come up. But is that going to solve the problem of democracy that we are talking about? Unfortunately I don't think so. Can I briefly intervene just the analogy he drew between the 19 month period between June 1975 and January 1977 the emergency. You know Indira Gandhi put a few journalists behind bars. But as LK Advani famously remarked when he was information and broadcasting minister most of the editors when they were asked to bend they crawled. Today the editors and the media barons are crawling they weren't even being asked to bend. Why? Because of what we've discussed the combination of factors you've been squeezed financially as Seema pointed out the fear. They also want to do it. Some of them are in deal with the government. Seema ideological alliance. You know actually I disagree with what Hattoshi is saying and I won't raise that question with you. Yes independent media can be argued legitimizes the lack of freedom in the rest of the media. But does it also not preach the conspiracy of silence that existed mainstream media so they can no longer hide the news. Let's put it this way. What all of us in different ways have put forward different points of time. Caravan very recently as a part of certain other platforms as well. It does make it finally to the mainstream media even if they don't want to carry it. The Rafale stories did not come in mainstream media it came later. So what it does is actually may create a crack through within which certain kinds of news can go. Don't you think that independent platforms play at least that role not just a legitimizing one. Yeah absolutely and I think it's very important like you said it breaks the conspiracy of silence. It's able to give that point of those stories which you do not even see reflected in the main media. It's able to bring back to some extent the focus on real news which is disappeared from television because you know it talks of peace. It talks of the old yardsticks of journalism which are important with when media is talking over the these platforms are talking about peace and they are actually exposing each and every one regardless of ideological affinities. Now this is very important one that's important but I know where Hartoche is also coming from because it is all of us having worked with the big media. You realize the reach it has and for the government that's what it needs to control. It doesn't at the moment need to control you know the people on this platform because at best your huge pinpricks. I mean the size of the pinprick is what we decide at that moment. Well it depends if it's a balloon a pinprick can be very dangerous. I mean so therefore don't disregard pinprick. No no I'm just just sort of reformulate. I mean my idea is not to knock independent media that's where we are sitting. I think it is important. All I'm saying is while we make differences the intervention required at the scale of fundamentally effecting the nature of our democracy which is what we were trying to get to. You do lead big media presence you do need scale. When you look at the overwhelming majority the bulk of the media is on one side. So it's really you are really a very small portion and as you said it takes a lot of effort before the mainstream media is literally forced to take up. No but I think it's also very exciting what's happening is you know you have television and you have these terrible news channels actually belching out the news and you know the passive audience sitting there and no no audience sitting there eating it up and soloing whatever rubbish comes from there. And then you have the newspapers delivered to your door the only one that is interacting with the people through crowdfunding through the 500 rupees whether student comes and puts 100 rupees at your meeting is all coming from the independent platforms where the real people's participation has actually started making itself felt which we never felt in this extent before. Three takeaways. One is the need for the media to look at political interventions for more independent journalists, journalist platforms. That's what Hartosh I think did talk about. You said about regulation regulation across platforms and what Siba has said how do you engage the people who are our readers to be able to fight for our quote unquote independence and how much that will carry over to the mainstream media. I think these are the three takeaways we have. Thank you for being with us and we I would conclude with one last statement which I like to make in any of these platforms that the independent media can together be the scale not that we are not competing against each other. We are really competing against corporate media and therefore the alliance of independent media together. Can it have the scale which we are talking about? And hopefully some of the things you have talked about the platform technologies which are coming in. The question is who delivers content because okay there is Google, there is Facebook, there is YouTube but who generates content? None of the platforms do. Finally it is the media which generates content otherwise there is no content in this platform. Thank you very much for being with us and taking this discussion forward. We have to I think we need all of us put together to continue this discussions more and bring the reader engagement we need in order to be able to create truly independent media. This is all the time we have for NewsClick today. Do keep watching NewsClick and do visit our website.