 I wish this were not a memorial lecture, but it is and it's for my old friend Neelabh Mishra. I received a message from a couple of friends in Delhi, apparently I still have a couple left and it was as most messages from my kind of friends are very disparaging and mean-minded one. It said, P.S., how are you going to inspire all those young people out there this evening? Suggestion, move to front center of the stage, put your palms on the floor and meet the Rathore fitness challenge with 30 push-ups. As you can imagine, they are no longer my friends. I have nothing against push-ups, I love push-ups, but I'm a lot better at put-downs. That's what we will get into tonight if you're okay with that. It's a very bizarre kind of a thing when you live with an establishment and a dispensation that makes a word like Kafkaesque sound very weak. What's worrying is that sometimes the media do report this. I'm going to be telling you that today the problems of the media are not about a bad newspaper or a good newspaper. It's not about individual journalists who are sold out or not sold out. It's not about that at all. It's not, by the way, about a couple of anchors who drive everyone. It's not about a couple of insane anchors, though I do concede that we have some who give insanity a bad name, but it's something much more structural. It's sad though, and at the same time, if you look at it content-wise, it's sad that many of the bizarre stuff that happens every day in extremely sensitive fields like education, health, are simply either reported in a very anodine fashion and no editorial comment because you're scared as hell of offending the government of the day. Sometimes they are reported. I'm not going to be disparaging about the entertainment value of many members of our government. I mean, whether it is the Prime Minister's paleolithic plastic surgery illusion or, you know, I discovered, I mean, like most people of my class background and generation, discovered the internet in the late 1990s or early 2000. Imagine my modification on learning that our ancestors had been sitting on it 9,000 years without telling us. My favorite, though, is my old police commissioner from Mumbai and Pune, Mr. Satyapal Singh. And before you start drawing any conclusions, I support and endorse a couple of the points he's made, but it's the third point that is the most interesting. Satyapal Singh, of course, look, you know, in disparaging Darwin's theories, he's, that's okay. He's making the point that no one is beyond criticism. Darwin is certainly not beyond criticism. The second point he's making is that, which I all agree with that. I also agree with the fact that he says, nobody has gone into the jungles and watched apes turn into men. This is a fact. It's a, it's irrefutable. Nobody has watched apes turn into men, but we live in privileged times. When we get to see Mr. Singh, Satyapal Singh and so many of his colleagues in government attempt the reverse process with some success. The media, you know, the kind of people you're having, the kind of people the media are quiet about, scared of, pussy-footing about. How many of us simply are willing to take an editorial position and say that you are, they have simply no place in subjects like education. They should be allowed anywhere within a mile of an educational institution or the science congress and the rest of it. But the media, that's what today is about. There's a point beyond which they cannot either speak the truth or criticize beyond a point. And I don't know about you, but I hate that cliche about speaking the truth to power. It's a very stupid line, really. What is, you know, when you say, let's speak the truth to power, there is an assumption that power is innocent and naive. And if you tell them the truth, they will sort out everything, right? I think the time is to speak the truth about power, to say that these dangerously challenged intellects should not be anywhere near the sensitive portfolios and subjects they are. And that also to say that I have never seen the media and the intelligence here so intimidated intellectually. I also know that before I get into the structural stuff, at least half a dozen people on the way ask me about, what about Cobra Post? What do I think will happen? I think seven things are already happening. And by the way, I have to tell the Cobra Post guys that I take the times of India's claim of a counter-sting very seriously. I mean, they're damn serious about it. They conducted a counter-sting. Imagine they rolled out their most important undercover reporter for the purpose, Vinit Jain. The Ben Begdikeyan of Bori Bandar. Well, number one method is silence or unofficial denial. They can do this because they know that 90% of the media are in the same racket, okay? So they know that others are not going to point fingers at them. Maybe a few valiant websites and people like that. But since most of the others have their hand in the till, they're going to keep quiet or report it very mildly. The second, my favorite, is the counter-sting claim. The third will be, it was not my voice, it was forgery. We have to send it for forensic analysis in a laboratory overseas, which takes only five years. And fourth is the vilification of the reporter and the organization, which is well underway and going on quite, you know, enthusiastically. Five will come, we thought he was a madman. We were humoring him. Six is going to be litigation. But the seventh is going to be to shift the focus, if anything comes out of it, to shift the focus like we saw the media shift the focus in the Radia Tapes issue, okay? In the Radia Tapes issue, it became about the journalists, you know, who were pretty stupid to have done what they did and pretty silly to speak the way they did. But the important issue of the Radia Tapes was something else that a bunch of corporate CEOs could decide who should get what portfolio in a government in a cabinet. That was the issue. And then Mr. Tata reacted pretty much the way Dainik Bhaskar has reacted to the Cobra Post. He went to the court to stop the use of the tapes by the media that the way they were doing. I love the extremely strong language that Mr. Tata used. I'm quoting him verbatim. He said that we are becoming in the danger of becoming a banana republic. In one run on cronyism, it's bad for people of lesser power. Thankfully Mr. Tata is not a person of lesser power. In banana republics, they go to jail without adequate evidence or their bodies are found in the trunks of cars. Normally though that happens to RTI activists, to whistleblowers, to people leading anti-displacement struggles. That's who it happens to normally. But I do understand Mr. Tata's concern about bodies in the trunks of cars as a leading car manufacturer and the Jaguar where you can fit two bodies into a trunk. He had concerns. Eight points about the media as it stands today. And then we move back structurally. One, I mean the fundamental feature of the media of our times and for the last 20 years is the growing disconnect between the mass media on the one hand and mass reality on the other. That is the fundamental feature of the media of our times. The Indian media are politically free but imprisoned by profit. Three, what you see in the media is a structural shutout of the poor and the marginalized. Not indifference, not neglect, but a structural shutout. Four, it had four had two phases. The first part of the first phase was the corporate hijack of the media agenda. The second phase was the corporate takeover of the media itself. Five, a corporatization of media ownership culture and of audiences themselves. Six, I believe the Indian media of which I am a part and have been for 38 years is the most exclusionist institution of Indian democracy. In terms of representation of different sections and diversity amongst our population, amongst our people, the worst of governments is better than the best of media. In terms, you have the most narrow, narrow caste and class basis in control of the media. You know, you've had chief justices of India who are Dalits. You've had two presidents who are Dalits. You've had any number of chief ministers who are Dalits, but try finding me a chief sub-editor who is a Dalit in a mainline national newspaper or an adivasi for that matter. Many years ago, my friend, Professor Prabhat Patnaik put it so beautifully when he said, the moral universe of the media has shifted. Unfortunately, that accompanies a gigantic material shift. The material universe of the media and its gigantic shift comes, is obviously coterminous with the moral shift. The media are, we also have to see them now as a key figure of the establishment and the corporate world. Pushing economic policy, influencing it very strongly, the media is an ideological arm of the corporate world. I've got to speak to you about the new convergence, a non-technological convergence which I will come to, in what, how three different distinct streams of Indian society have come together wielding power like you've never seen before in the media. Then, I'm arguing that the media, with its shift, you know, many of these journals, newspapers were very cash-rich 10, 15 years ago. They shifted into the market. They moved their money into shares, their wealth into, you know, market, notional wealth of the market, and they're trapped by it like they were after the Wall Street collapse, which is when you saw the rise of paid news, because the media are too heavily involved in the market to ever tell you the truth about it. I'm not, I'm very pleased to say that I'm not the only one speaking about the dangers of corporatization. I'd like to quote for you from a very insightful speech by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, a speech he made at this Diamond Jubilee celebration of the Assam Tribune, where he has this to say, Justice Gogoi says this about corporatization of the media. Today, while the Orwellian censorship of the emergency may not be in place, other challenges and changes have assumed its place. Highly corporatized media and press is a growing trend and that is getting institutionalized. I repeat, this is not me, it's Justice Gogoi. Highly corporatized media and press is a growing trend that is getting institutionalized. A change that is diametrically opposed to the verity that reporting ought to be without fear or favor. The adversarial relationship is bound to soften and is perhaps softening already. The malice of prior restraint, a historic remnant is being replaced by self-restraint and self-censorship by the media itself. That's Justice Ranjan Gogoi speaking this year, last year at the October at the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of the Assam Tribune. We are in a period of time when the ownership concentration is at its highest in our history. Very, very few people control the bulk of media. It's a worldwide phenomenon, you're seeing just now the restrictions on Time Warner and AT&T and all those are being lifted in the United States by the courts. But here's one reason I began by saying, you're not going to be able to do this. The corporate media cannot stand up to government, they cannot tell you the truth. Very simple reason. Every major privatization of the last 25 years, amongst the top beneficiaries have been the media owners. Every single, that influences everything they cover, they've got too much to lose. So even when they are hurt by something like demonetization, they go about criticism of it very gingerly. Believe me, many newspapers were seriously hurt by the demonetization because of the amount of slush money they hold for paid news which doesn't go on to the books. They were really hurt by that and yet they went about criticizing it so gingerly. Look at it today, if you privatize Spectrum totally, who are the beneficiaries? Ambani's, Tata's, Birla's, amongst others, all of them major media owners. People seem to think that the Tatas don't associate with media, they are Tata Sky, they're in an alliance with the biggest media baron in history. You privatize mining, who are the beneficiaries? Ambani's, Birla's, Tata's and major advertisers and powerful other people, but many of them connected to media or media owners themselves. You privatize oil and natural gas, who are the beneficiaries? As they say in Mumbai about identical samples, same to same. Yeah, it's the same bunch of guys. Sorry girls, they are guys. The health sector and the education sector are now full of media owners. Remember that the Prime Minister made his famous Ganapathy proves that Ganesha proves that we knew plastic surgery in whichever era that was at the Reliance Health Foundation, whatever it's called. Okay, over there. And in education, Maharashtra, all the major media owners are education barons. Some of them started their publications with the money coming out of that commercial sector. Yeah, don't forget, Bennett Coleman and Co has started the Bennett University. I loved looking at the speeches and stuff that were made there. Not one of the clowns on stage knew who Thomas Jewel Bennett was. They knew he was an editor and proprietor of the Times of India. They didn't know what he did. And in fact, in the speeches, they even said that he was a firm supporter of the Indian people. And here is the 29 what did the 19 that he was very sympathetic to the freedom struggle. Actually the 1925 obituary of the Times London says that he forced the Bombay government to prosecute Bal Gangadhar Tilak for his inflammatory speeches and writings. So that's who he was. But now you have a university in his name, Bennett. The look at the way the media celebrated. Yeah, the Walmart Flipkart takeover. You know, those who were blocked in one way from retail have come in another direction and all the front pages and editorials have been celebratory. Right. It's showing the virility and desirability of the Indian market. I mean, these are the kind of words that have been used. How important we are in the world. Look, not only have you privatized all these sectors, I mean, you're going to be. No one has even considered the kind of damage that's going to be done to brick and mortar shops. How much it's going to hurt employment. How much it's going to hurt the, you know, the small traders, the Kirana stores. And don't we can privatize anything. Look, in this country, we privatized a national passion. We privatized cricket. Yeah, some people call it now. I mean, some people call it cricket. It's actually the IPL. Yeah, don't forget media owners owned IPL teams or where media partners of IPL teams like the telegraph and the, and the Kolkata night riders, like the Deccan Chronicle actually owned the high original Hyderabad sun risers. The number of interlocking ownerships and different fields. I started before coming here to start listing some of the industries in which our media barons are involved. Okay, it's just amazing. I won't take all night. So I want to read the full list, but coal blocks, mining, thermal power plants, private luxury hill stations like La Vasa, hotels and resorts, real estate. You know, aviation, agriculture, agricultural machinery, traders, tractors, cement, steel, shipping, jute, casting, chemicals, pharmacy, pharma, big pharma, agrochemicals, IPL, cotton, rubber, tea, coffee, electronics, film, dairy, construction, real estate. The list, banks, power, call centers, captive power plants, books and music, Chit funds. Oh, that's a big one. That's a big one because if you look at Kolkata and the collapse of Sardar and the loss of 700, 800 journalists jobs. Do you know that seven dailies opened in Kolkata in the space of 24 months? They were essentially sales counters for the Chit funds and other rackets. When that blue 700 journalists were out of the first thing they cast off in their thing was to drown the journalists. Processed foods, textiles, manmade fibers in just the media front alone investment in the Indian media in the 36 months before the Wall Street collapse. In 36 months was 12,483 crores. Now these guys are everywhere, everywhere, whether it is gas, spectrum, mining or other dubious land deals. Everything that you've seen in the privatizations has benefited large, the largest media owners. Never in the annals of Indian media have so few profited so much from so many giving them so little. And there's a seamless movement between these different industries and media. So you have an assistant editor from an economic newspaper, a financial newspaper joining a private company A as the PR. After two years he comes back as the associate editor of the same newspaper only to join another private company as CPR or Corporate Communications Chief a couple of years later and returns two years later as resident editor of that same paper. So there's this endless revolving door because they do not see journalism and media as being different from any other industry. That Mr. Sameer Jain told us very honestly in 1985, 1986 and we didn't believe him but they really do not see the difference between working in PR and working in journalism. I also have to tell you that worldwide particularly in the United States but it's happening here. PR jobs are outpacing journalism jobs three to one. And that's apart from all the journalists who act as PR agents anyway, regardless. So you have this endless revolving door. Look what is good, I make a strong distinction today between media and journalism. Journalism is something very different from media. AJ Liebling the great American journalist and essayist said many years ago, people everywhere confused what they read in their newspapers with news. And I think that's true. Journalism has been reduced to a revenue stream. And you can see it, you can see it in the memos, in the orders to journalists of what they can cover, what they cannot cover. How do you judge journalism as good or bad or anyway? You do it this way. Whether journalism is good, great, bad will be determined by how that journalism engages with the great processes of its time. That's why Gandhi, Ambedkar, these were great journalists, they engaged with the huge processes of their time. So many of your freedom struggle leaders were also journalists. A lot of history has been lost on our present and succeeding generation. I was in Pajap three weeks going from village to village pretty recently till about two weeks ago. And it surprised me and it hurt me that even in Pajap, we celebrate Bhagat Singh as the great revolutionary. Bhagat Singh as the revolutionary, activist, anti-colonial. All this is true and we should. How many people know that Bhagat Singh was first and foremost a journalist? That he wrote in four languages. He taught himself English in jail. He worked with or in the Akhali. He worked quite some time with Pratap. He wrote there and a lot of his political journalism came out in Kirti. We don't know this person as a journalist but he was a journalist and all this he does in four languages by the time he is 23. You had some journalists, you had him, you had Gandhi, you had Ambedkar, you had Nehru and all these people were journalists. They started newspapers in random under incredibly difficult circumstances. What are the great processes of our time and how do we engage with them? Inequality, deprivation, mass human displacement. I am just giving you a sample. A 20 year agrarian crisis that has claimed 3,5,000 farmers' lives in suicide officially which is complete crap. And in the last two years please note that the National Crime Records Bureau has not published farmers' suicide data at all. Which anyway was pretty distorted in the last few years particularly since about 2013 and massively after 2014. So you have that crisis going on and everybody thinks it's about a lone waiver or it's a hell of a lot more than that. How did we cover even the short term great processes like demonetization and GST and Aadhaar? Again Aadhaar is celebratory, not looking at the extraordinary damage it's doing. In the People's Archive of Rural India we have been following little children being denied their scholarships because of Aadhaar. A girl from Anantapur whose name is Hindu, three times her card has gone and come back as Hindu. Our reporter accompanied her to the damn place to get that corrected. But this inequality, let's take just one of the, and then of course the great processes of our time, the rise, the astonishing rise of fundamentalism and hatred. The mega water crisis that we have, it's not a drought, it's a mega water crisis, and it's nice isn't it? The Niti Ayog has recognized that there is a water crisis but it's a recognition entirely aimed at privatization of water in the name of rational pricing. Because Mr. Amitabh Khan has all, five days before the water report comes out, he writes a piece in the Times of India arguing for rational pricing. Do you guys know what water cost to whom already? Every summer you see those lines of women, poor women in Marathwada at the tanker. Through the season they pay up to 1 rupee per litre. 1 rupee per litre starts at 45 paisa at the beginning of the summer season. At the end of the summer season they pay 1 rupee per litre. In the same Marathwada, in the same Aurangabad region are 24 beer and alcohol factories which pay 4 paisa per litre. If you're IPL you pay nothing at all. And all the editorials and comments were attacking the Bombay High Court judgment of two years ago when it said no IPL in Marathwada during the drought. They attacked the courts on that issue. That was the one thing that they stood up to the courts. But let's take one of these issues, inequality. It is greater than it has been since the 1920s and 30s. The latest Forbes list, 2018, March. For some reason Forbes always releases its list of billionaires on March 8 international women's day. Maybe it's an aspirational thing because there aren't many women in the list. But there are some, I don't know. Anyway, the latest in year 2000, in 1991 we had $0 billionaires. Then the list begins. In year 2000 we had 8. In year 2012 we had 53. In year 2018 India clocks $121 billionaires whose wealth is equivalent to 22% of your gross domestic product. In a population of 1.3 billion, 121 individuals control wealth equivalent to 22% more than a fifth of your GDP. Which kind of crisis will you not have when you have that level of inequality? And just take the top man in that. It's a little bit, we're speaking about the media and this. The richest man in the country, 19th richest in the world, is also the biggest media owner. Mr Mukesh Ambani. Mukesh Bhai, I'm very sure does not know the names of all the media channels and concerns that he owns. I could probably tell him. He wouldn't know. All those channels you see by the way, ETV, Hindi and ETV, Malayalam. Those are not owned by Inadu TV. That was an old story. They were all sold to an entity that is controlled by Mr Mukesh Ambani. In the Forbes list, in 12 months Mr Ambani added $16.9 billion. Rough calculation, translation, that's about 115,000 crores he added in 12 months. It means he added because the Forbes 2017 list gives the 22 billion figure and then suddenly he's 40.1 billion. It means he added nearly $2 million every other. Must have worked very hard to do that. Now, what would it be if India's agricultural labourers and poor farmers were to try earning that on the NRGS? If you take the national average of the NRGS, it would take 18.7 million labourers, 18.7 million labourers working on the NRGS for 12 months without a day off, without holidays, Sundays, Saturdays, anything. It would take 18.7 million of them to generate the same $1,15,000 crores. That's what it would take. Now, it's possible of course that Mr Ambani added that money by the dint of his labour and the sweat of his bro. I mean, you can't believe that, but less charitable minds like my own think that it just had to do with little shifts in policy, which favoured his enterprise, Geo, over his rivals to the point of nearly killing them. I remember waking up one morning and finding for the first time in history, the face of the Prime Minister on the front page of a newspaper peddling a private product, Geo. That day, I thought that I will amend the national salutation. No more Jai Hind. It's Geohind. So, if you look at that kind of inequality, we ranked now number four in the list in the world of billionaires. India ranks number four. We ranked number 131 in the UN Human Development Index. That's where we rank in that. 131 in Human Development, number four in the media versus journalism as I made the distinction. Jobs of journalists have been lost. More than 10,000 media persons, journalists, cameraman, etc., have lost their jobs at least, and this is a very fragmented figure, since 2008 October, when in Maharashtra in one week, 470 jobs were lost at the stroke of a pen. Last year, in the last two years, as you know, the Hindustan Times has closed six editions. The telegraph has laid off 600 people. Sardar went bust. The daily union of journalists says 4,000 jobs lost in the last 16 months. The channels lay off some of the best journalists in this country are without jobs now, because you need a different kind of journalist, and I'm going to show you what kind of journalist you need. It's not just about India. It's about where corporate media and corporate-led capitalism is just now. All of you know of the legendary Time Magazine, Time Incorporated. This is what Time Incorporated has started evaluating its journalists from 2013. On what basis? Normally you have quality of writing, how prolific the person is, stories broken. They added an all-important column that has taken top priority. That column of evaluation is beneficial to advertiser relationship. It's fascinating to me that the journalist who scores highest on quality of writing scores lowest on beneficial to advertiser relationship. Look at this. Quality of writing, 10 on 10. Beneficial to advertiser relationship is the lowest. Conversely, the journalist who tops the beneficial to advertiser relationship is among the lowest on quality of writing scores. It's very telling. It's a very telling chart. This is from the Time Magazine, Time Incorporated's internal memos put out by the newspaper Guild. So that's another thing that you have to see. As I said, PR is fast overtaking the world of journalism and incorporating it. The British Petroleum, when the BP gas spill took place in the Gulf of Mexico, the journalists who attended the press conference, David Bairstow of the New York Times, wrote that he was astonished to find that there were far more PR persons than reporters in the audience, in the press conference. Because they had come there to learn from the feet of the master on how to do the PR. You know, the Australian sociologist and political scientist, Alexander Kerry, put it so beautifully in one paragraph. He said that there were three great developments in the 20th century. Three developments of great political importance in the 20th century. The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda to stifle the growth of democracy. And I think that fairly covers much of the 20th century and quite a bit of our own. And he also said this, the success of corporate media's propaganda, the success of business propaganda in persuading us that we are free from propaganda, is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the 30th century. Now the new convergence issue. If you look at the last 20 years, 30 years, see the newspapers in India, journals were started by somebody with five rupees and a passion. The Hindu guys had, owners had five rupees, they borrowed another five rupees, they raised, you started a newspaper. That era has completely gone when you have priced everybody but very rich corporations out of the media market. But three things happened and it's peculiar to South Asia and very special to India in the growing concentration. It's not just, I have to tell you this, the old type of media monopoly no longer exists. The monopoly within media, you know Ramnath Goenka controlling newspapers in the south, Bennett Coleman and Co controlling newspaper circulation in the west, that sort of monopoly does not exist. Now the erstwhile media monopolies are small departments of much larger conglomerates that are not media. So Mukesh Ambani is the owner of the biggest media networks, network 18 and a number of other things. But all those are a very tiny part of reliance. Then why do you patronize them? Why do you get into them? Because of the ideological, political clout and influence that you have by being in the media. So these are the new media monopolies, they're actually giant conglomerations across the world and in India. Second is that, so giant corporations control the media, we've spoken about that. Then there are interlocking bonds in directorships, in companies. So on the board of media companies, I don't know if, when I feel depressed, I need some entertainment, I go and try searching who are the board of directors of each newspaper. Dainik Jagaran had someone from Ireland who didn't know a word of Hindi, but what does newspapers have to do with news anyway? So you had all the boards of directors are stuffed with directors of banks, former directors and former MDs of public sector banks, after retirement they come out to these boards. They have directors on their boards from real estate, everyone has one tax lawyer. And this is who are your people presiding over the direction in which the media will move. The interlocking directorships are just incredible. There were people from General Electric and Raytheon on entities set up with one chapter overseas who became part of these directors. Gavin O'Reilly from the World Press Institute was on the Dainik Jagaran's board for a while. At the same time this is happening, oh by the way it's so complex. As I said 200 or 300 different industries, we are going on the same pattern as the US did in the 60s, 70s and 80s which Ben Begdikian, the author of the greatest media book of the perhaps of the 20th century, the media monopoly, he said it's become so intricate. He called it corporate incest within corporate incest because it was so interwoven and interlocked. At the same time this is happening, great business families enter politics, great media families enter business, great political families enter media and business and you have a new convergence. Whether you're looking at the marans in Tamil Nadu, I knew their dad was a journalist and editor of the DMK's organ, their newspaper. You can look at the Gadkaris, you can look at the Badals in the Punjab and the political families going into business when Mr. Raj Takre purchases the, what mills is that, the Kainur mills? At 479 crores. So you've got this unbelievable convergence of business, political and media influence. Now, what can we do, what could you do, but just before that, just before that. You know, I think that one needs to sort, I, I'm really appalled by the murder of Shujat Mukheri as I was by the murder of my friend Gauri Lankesh. But I want to tell you something about, in the non-conflict zones, something about who it is who gets killed. Please be very clear about who it is who gets killed, which kind of journalist gets killed. First of all, I have to tell you this, Shujat and Gauri knew, knew that they ran risks. They understood a principle which I hope every journalist will understand. If you do challenging journalism, you will be challenged. Now, why am I saying that? If you look at the list, a Center for Protection of Journalists brought out a list in 2016, as you know. And some of you might know, I wrote the introduction and analysis of their data. Of about 60 journalists killed between 1992 and 2015-16, after which Gauri and others have been added to the list. Only about 27 or 28, they could ascertain definitively that these people died because of what they wrote or what they said. Now, in those 27-28, there is not one high-profile, big-city, ungrazy corporate media journalist, not one. All of them are small-town, weak, not all, most of them, Indian-language journalists. Most of them were covering crime business and politics. Most of them, crime corruption and politics, most of those journalists. They were more vulnerable. They don't have the social caste and class insurance that many of us had. I say had in the past tense because the murder of Gauri Lankesh tells us that the premium on that insurance has just doubled. And Gauri Lankesh, by the way, very prominent journalist, very high-profile, but primarily writing in Canada. She was bilingual and she could write just as well in English, but she worked with the Canada media, with the Canada language. So, if you look, what does it tell us that not a single person from a lot of journalists in this big corporate media do romanticize themselves? And now, I believe that the danger is spread. Now, nobody is exempt. That notice we've been served. But it also has to do with how we define professional, how we define journalist. Most of those journalists, you see, most of, one thing it tells me, the relative safety of all of us working in the so-called mainstream media, apart from having a lot to do with our backgrounds, also means that we weren't doing much challenging stuff. It also means that. Now that that has changed, and with some, there are always individuals and exceptions. And I grant at least, I know half a dozen of them. But that change has come about in this. So secondly, who do we accept as journalists? I've noticed that every time a small town, weak, vulnerable journalist gets killed, immediately we start questioning his legitimacy. Was he really a journalist? You know, we don't do that if it happens to one of us. But we immediately question, oh, he was running a cycle shop and a TV store. How else would he live given what they pay the stringers? So we immediately delegitimize that small town and rural journalists to get slaughtered. I can tell you this as the person who broke the paid news story on in 2009, November. Many of you are familiar with the paid news story on the front page of the Hindu. I could do it because, A, I worked for the Hindu, because of my social background, my class background, my caste background, and a certain national profile, hilarious though that is. If that story had been written and broken by a Taluka level or village level journalist, he'd be dead. Be clear about that. Now I was fully protected and confident. All that happened to me were a huge number of bribe offers by those involved, running to crores of rupees. But I was having too much fun anyway, so there was no question of doing that. We see, you know, we don't, how is it that we don't accept that, you know, we have allowed corporations to define who professional journalists are, having this daily fixed job, going to an office in a big building. Please know that Narendra Dabholkar, Gobind Pansare and M. M. Kalburgi were also journalists and prolific journalists. Dabholkar ran his own magazine and Kalburgi and Pansare were prolific columnists, but we don't accept them as journalists. They were journalists. They were also murdered and they were doing challenging journalism. What can we do? And of course here we also now, people always write to me asking about, is the net different? Isn't the net different? Can't we solve things? Can't we all go on to the net in social media and stuff like that? Please know that the digital monopolies are the greatest monopolies in history. There are no other monopolies that have never been monopolies on the scale and importance and power. You're just seeing Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and that's the tip of the God-I-Mice book. Please understand that these big guys are different from all other monopolies in one way, whether it's Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, whoever, YouTube. Who are these guys? And what is their specialty that makes them different from all other monopolies in history? These guys own your personal data and they traffic in it. They sell it. I call them human data traffickers. That's who they are. That's where the money comes from them. And how do we then... So my point is please use the net. Please use your social media. Don't romanticize it. You will end up being ineffective if you romanticize it. So don't do that. Use it as skeptically as you can. Get into it. What do we need to do? We need to democratize the media. We need to decolonize the digital. First and foremost, we need to fight to dismantle monopoly. It never ceases to amaze me how many people correctly resist or oppose state monopolies. But the same people are so easily accepting of private monopoly. That is something it really never ceases to amaze me. Two, we need to dismantle those monopolies. We need to do it with legislation to start with, with public action to accompany it. Because, by the way, in this country, we do not even have the cross ownership laws. We don't have even the cross ownership laws that the United States has which prevents you from being the only game in town. You cannot be the person to own the only newspaper, the only portal, the only radio station, the only TV channel in a given town. In India, none of those laws exist. There are no laws on cross ownership. There have been recommendations on this and it has never happened. Three, or was it four, is revitalization of public broadcasters. I don't mean government broadcasters. I think that there was a brief period, maybe due to someone like Swamnath Chatterjee being there. There was a period of four or five years when Raj Sabha TV and Lok Sabha TV were more watchable for discussion and news than any of the other damn channels. Because they didn't have touts and shields on every panel. You know, you introduce guys on panels, five people, five wise men, it's always men, on the panels. And you don't say that this person is the biggest lobbyist for big tobacco and big alcohol in this country. You don't say that this person is a sports agent who has got the fingers in every damn pie there is in the IPL and elsewhere. And tell our viewers that we present these people there as experts. Speaking of experts, please open your newspapers for the last 20 days and read the editorial pages. How many of the experts are from Delhi based foundations which are corporate foundations, wholly owned subsidiaries of corporate foundations. And they too have a revolving door between journalism, media and the foundation. You know, somewhere they decided it's better to sound foundation than to say chief PRO of Dabhol. So the foundation sounds more respectable. You're kind of certified as an intellectual of some sorts. And two more points on this which is we need laws that make paid news a crime. After we broke the story, the election commission did three things which I acknowledge. Perhaps the best election commission though I differed with them very strongly on many things, especially the conclusion of the paid news scandal. However, the first time the election commission in its history opened an expenditure monitoring division. Two, and MLA was unseated on that ground. Two MLA's were unseated on that ground. Second, they made paid news an electoral offense on which you could be unseated. Three, they also, they organized district level teams to monitor paid news in every district of this country where elections were being held. But my point is that all this is helpless. There is helplessness in this. So long as your electoral affidavit does not require the person to attach his income tax return, his return to that affidavit. And speaking of inequality and electoral affidavits, by the way, there are electoral affidavits which have stated the wealth of the person at 6586 crores. I wrote about the gentleman in Andhra Pradesh. However, just look at your parliament and electoral affidavit. In year 2004 when the affidavit was first introduced, 32% of all MPs were Karolapathis and that is self-valuation. And somehow we get very modest when it comes to that. In 32% of Lok Sabha MPs were Karolapathis, self-declared. In 2009, 53% were Karolapathis. The figures are from the Association for Democratic Reforms. In the 2014 elections, 82% of your MPs were Karolapathis. On that growth rate, we can be confident about 100% sweep in the 2019 elections. You need to change that election affidavit and then you need to also support alternative exam. By the way, I don't like the word alternative. I think that we are all part of a mainstream. And in fact, conferring the name mainstream media on corporations is wrong because they are mass media without masses. They exclude. Support the small journals, the small magazines, the websites including I'm making a plug for the People's Archive of Rural India here. As Niveditha told you, we don't take government funds, we don't take corporate funds, but we will take your... Do we have a revenue model? You. Yeah. Okay. Support it. I feel irritated when people belly ache about the media without supporting, financing, funding, examples of small media that stand up to the state, stand up to governments. Okay. How many people are subscribed? How many people are subscribing to at least three journals like an EPW or a front line or something like that? It varies from region to region, but very few of us actually do that. And how many of us send in donations, as I ask you to do to the People's Archive of Rural India, which is wholly committed to rural India? The average national daily in India has 0.67% of front page to 69% of the population. That's a center for media studies figure from this city, parallel journals and very, very importantly before I conclude, revival of the journalist and union movements. The day the contract system took over in journalism, our independence was gone. There are no unions to protect us. They were finished with the contract system. At the height of the paid news scandal, I got a call from a veteran journalist in Mumbai who shall remain nameless. He told me, tomorrow you're going to see a paid news story on the front page of my newspaper. He was senior to me by two years in the profession. He said, tomorrow you're going to see a paid news story and it's going to have my byline on it because the management decided that an interview with the senior cabinet minister had to have the byline of a senior political correspondent. And then I said, yeah, what happened? He said, Saina, when you and I entered this profession, there was the working journalist act to protect us. We were not under the contract system. I am now in the eighth month of 11 month contract. I've got EMI's of 30,000 on my house, 20,000 or so on the education loans for my kids. I've got a mother in hospital. I've got one kid looking for a job. Do you want me to be a hero? The contract system destroyed the independence of the journalist. Where journalists' unions existed and were strong, we had a sense that if something went wrong, there was somebody to fight for us, stand by us. So you need the revival of that union movement. You need parallel journals. And at the same time, do not barricade yourself into little ghettos. The mainstream media belongs to you. It was not created by the investments of the Jains and the South Jains. It was created by the people of this country struggling for freedom. Listen, when Bal Gangadhar Tilak was sentenced to six years in Mandalay prison for sedition, the protests did not come from the Tata's, Ambani's or Birla's. The textile workers of Mumbai, mostly illiterate, came out onto the streets and 22 of them died in the protests. 16 were shot dead the first evening. Coming out to defend the freedom of expression, the freedom of expression of a man they could not read but identified with and said he is speaking for us, we are speaking for him now. That is the fabulous Indian tradition. So decide which of the two debates we are really looking at, freedom of the press or freedom of the purse.