The 25 years odyssey of NDTV

The importance of independent electronic media at present is greater than ever before in order to enhance democracy, protect the Indian diversity, civil liberties, empowerment of woman, Dalits, STs and other neglected sections of society, and to ensure honest, transparent and good governance.

There is far greater reach of the electronic media now – there are more than 500 TV channels in the country. Most of these TV channels have, however, no respect for their independence and credibility. In fact, it is such channels which are turning India into a tele-visual political society.

NDTV, the first private news TV channel which was started in 1988 by Prannoy Roy and his wife Radhika Roy, completed 25 years of its journey in 2014. To commemorate this event, Ayesha Kagal has published a book titled ‘More news is good news.’ The book is an anthology of essays, interviews and articles by many persons who played their roles in building NDTV into a credible news channel.

Radhika Roy in her foreword to the book rightly observed that in the relentless 24/7 news cycle – wherein the present, this movement now, is everything – fair and balanced journalism will not only endure but help build a foundation of trust and credibility.

The usually reticent Prannoy Roy says TV news because of its greater reach and the unstoppable energy of India’s chaotic, anarchic and creative democracy and the media's unrelenting focus on exposing corruption, India is beginning a "cleaning process" towards a truly "Swachh Bharat.” Roy feels that because of excessive competition and fragmentation of electronic media, all growth in advertising revenues is also resulting in fragmentation.

He apprehends that the TV sector in India will face the fate of the dotcom sector in Britain and America, with low advertising rates leading to losses. He quotes Elizabeth Murdoch as saying that making of profits without purpose is one of the most dangerous goals for capitalism.

Agreeing with Elizabeth, Roy opines that the path to making profits for a news organisation is littered with compromises that change the very nature of journalism, often so that it can no longer be recognised as a news channel. But for many channels which have no journalistic values, the first and most popular option is to go tabloid and gain eyeballs with competition, and the rush for eyeballs tabloidation has become a major trend and it should be seen as the death of good journalism.

The other option is to go tabloid and it is not mutually exclusive to fiddle the ratings. After a four-month-long elaborate investigation in India, Nielson officials have admitted to having never seen as much corruption of the ratings system in India as anywhere else in the world. According to Nielson, virtually every city in India has a rating consultant who for a relatively small fee will ensure higher ratings for any channel.

The method is simple: the consultant gets to know the homes where the people-meters that measure viewership are located. These are meant to be anonymous homes, but the consultant manages to find out addresses. He visits the people-meter homes, gives them a brand-new 60-inch plasma TV and says, “Watch whatever you like only on the lovely big TV but on the TV attached to the people-meter you must watch this list of channels.“

The family also gets an additional reward at the end of the year if they have done what they are asked to do efficiently. Some channels resort to blackmail and extortion to increase their revenues. There is also the widespread phenomenon of 'paid news,’ where the media asks the parties to pay for editorial space without making clear to the viewer that this is an advertorial.

From the beginning, the NDTV recruited persons with sharp intelligence, remarkable facility and ease in expression, high linguistic ability and intense industry and passion for news. The main reason for many media houses to give up credibility is because there are no real penalties for defamation or libel and no effective privacy laws. It is frankly a free-for-all environment – you can say what you like, and get away with it, without being fined or penalised in any way.

As a result, our media is losing its rigour. There is after all no need to double-check your facts – no real need to do any research. The lack of punishment for defamation is leading to the end of honest journalism. To correct this malady, Roy suggests giving powers to the Press Council to impose fines. He is of the view that the appointment of the members of Press Council should be done by the judiciary, and not the government.

Shekar Gupta, a senior journalist with experience in both electronic and print media, says in his article that many TV channels have become gullible, unquestioning and non-journalistic. The only pressure on them is to find issues for the evening “tu-tu-main-main” debates, allowing for scepticism. Each one of these stories caused plenty of what we prefer to call shout rage. The question is whether the media should play the role of a watch dog or blood hound. Gupta feels that journalists should be watch dogs and hounds at the same time. The challenge is to balance it in a democracy.

Good journalism has to be adversarial. It has to speak the truth to those is power. Gupta praises NDTV for showing that if you play the game by the original rules, you could still hold public officials to account, raise the cost of abuse of power and raise the cost of corruption. The watch dog and the hound are today barking their heads off every half an hour, only interrupted by commercials. It is as if their tails were perpetually on fire. When we tie a string of fire crackers to a dog's tail, it runs and runs. It is this sense we get, watching TV news channels these days.

Gupta says that the most common reason trotted out to justify this is about TRPs. He says "senior executives both in editorial and marketing tell me with a resigned look in their eyes. Look I try to run a reasonable news channel for some time, but then you see so-and-so, he does this all the time. USKA TRP DEKHO AUR MERA DEKHO , what is the point?”

Gupta says there is a point. The general assumption is that “there is a lynch mob in our living rooms now, baying for blood, and they want this” and “the audience also wants this.” He says we must not buy it nor accept it. It is a challenge NDTV has had to lock horns with all these days. Gupta says that fundamental to the vitality and editorial health of any news room is a set of relationships – the sacred relation between the reporter and his or her source to begin with; the questioning relation between the editor and the reporter; the wall between news and opinion; the impermeable barrier between editorial and advertising.

All these relationships go into reinforcing the most crucial relationship of them all, the adversarial independent relationship between the news room and the powers-that-be on one hand and the media and society on the other. In other words, differentiating the watch dog from the hound takes a lot of hardwork in nurturing these special relationships. It is like you need a third pair of eyes watching over the watch dog and the hound.

That third pair of eyes in the fourth estate is either shut or non-existent today. “That is why the relationships I mentioned are either damaged or under threat,” says Gupta. And those in power who are to be under journalism's critical gaze are now enjoying the media losing its credibility because a media at war with itself, a media that is ridiculed, a media that cries wolf so often that no one takes it seriously is wonderful news for these individuals and institutions. Freedom of press is not specifically mandated or guaranteed by either Constitution or any specific laws.

There is a fundamental right to free expression under Article 19 of the Constitution. But, there is a wide range of court judgements protecting and expanding press freedom. The force of journalism, of good journalism, will change and should change in sync with the larger forces of politics, economics and society. But the heart and soul of journalism will always remain in its capacity to stand up to power to point out that the emperor has no clothes, to tell the story the emperor doesn’t want told and in the end speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. This is a serious business and we cannot do any of these, if the joke is on us.

Gupta says that NDTV has weathered many storms and challenges but there has been nothing more difficult than avoiding trivialisation to respect facts, to discuss and debate, and not shout. The NDTV record book is filled with achievements and accomplishments through these years of change. Above all, NDTV is able to maintain dignity in the news room and the studio, to remain calm, have respect for facts and, most of all, the courage to not pitch a story higher than its intrinsic value. It is not easy building such values at a time when the budget has yielded to bull and biryani. But once you have done it, it is the best equity to have in today’s bazaar.

T N Ninan, a senior editor in his article, says that there is a lot of scope for telling real stories which are not being told and it is possible to do it on TV in an interesting way. He feels that there should be more reporter-based stories and not just studio discussions. Tavleen Singh, a perceptive observer of Delhi scene, says that it saddens her to observe that there is almost not a single channel that does the kind of hard reporting that NDTV did in its early years.

Vikram Chandra, editor of NDTV, reveals that unlike in countries like US, TV channels do not get the subscription money that they should; instead, cable operators demand heavy carriage fee from TV channels, which leaves channels entirely dependent on advertising revenues and hence on TRPs, which have been notoriously flawed, based on a ridiculously small sample size and subject to tampering. He says that NDTV possesses an unwavering journalistic leadership that most other media organizations would envy.

Swathi Thyagarajan who reported on the environment for NDTV says that their campaign saved the tiger in the country and another ‘Save our coasts’ campaign helped prevent the construction of a port that would have destroyed the beaches of Puducherry. Sutapa Deb, another journalist with NDTV, says that the possibilities at NDTV were endless for an ambitious journalist. What shone through was the harmonious and family environment that NDTV had created that enabled its employees to be who they were.

"For many of us, this helped create and sustain a higher level of engagement and performance,” she says, adding, "we believed in the news beyond the headlines. We believed our report should reflect the concerns of ordinary people. We believed that television journalists should bring viewers the news, and not be the news, to bring the voices of rural poor NDTV telecasts the village voice series portraying different social realities.” Nidhi Razdan, an experienced anchor, says that today prime time Indian TV is almost all talk.

Almost every single news channel in English and Hindi invariably focuses on debate and all the debates have become noise. She says that apart from spokespersons of political parties, there are commentators, analysts, basically people who can speak on any subject with a strong degree of knowledge and comfort. This guarantees a good debate. What really holds the show together is a decent panel and good research. Once you have your facts, good questions follow and that uplifts any show. Putting a panel together is an art that requires many skills.

You have to have the power to persuade, the talent to negotiate, the art of grovelling and, most of all, you must be able to juggle egos. Having a personal knowledge on various subjects becomes key to the anchor. You cannot be a good anchor without being up-to-date on the news cycle from politics to business, culture and sport. Your research person will help you, but only up to a point.” She ridicules the anchor taking a stand even before a subject is debated. This leaves no point in the show. She says, "we are not here to pontificate but to ask questions.

We need to improve debates, to find more voices of sanity and not to reduce arguments into shouting matches. The best way would be to combine story telling with debating points.” Monideepa Banerjie, another journalist with the channel, says that the battle for bias-free credibility is a daily battle for both national and local channels. Uma Sudheer, the channel’s correspondent at Hyderabad, feels that though objectivity is a journalistic ideal, an element of subjectivity is becoming inevitable. Over all, the book makes an interesting reading for all those working in the electronic media.

By C H Rajeshver Rao