Newspapermen should be grateful to Mr LK Advani that he has only accused them of exaggerating the factional conflicts in the Janata Party and not of inventing them. For some of his colleagues are now using much sharper language and no longer in private.
Mr George Fernandes has, for example, been reported to have told a meeting of Janata Party workers in Pune last Saturday that “from the manner in which a nationwide ‘campaign’ had been launched, he suspected that there must be some ‘game’ behind it.” From the report in question, it does not appear that the minister gave any further indication of what, in his view, the ‘game’ is. But clearly it will not be unfair to him to infer that he is accusing the press of being party to some dark conspiracy against the Janata Party.
In that speech, Mr Fernandes did not identify the other conspirators. But in another address at the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce the same day he lashed out at the so-called big business houses because they have had the temerity to say through their “stooges and touts” that industry is heading towards anarchy. And in a talk with correspondents he reportedly identified Mrs Gandhi and Mr CM Stephen as the “stooges or touts” of big business.
“CAMPAIGN”
It is not inconceivable that the first two of these three items – the criticism of the industrial policy by business houses and the use of “stooges and touts” by them to press the attack on him – are not linked in his mind with the third – the nationwide “campaign” by the press. But this appears to be a fairly weak possibility. Mr Fernandes is accusing, though still indirectly, the press of being in league with big business.
This is not all, either. Mr Fernandes has thought it fit to remind newspapermen that they were singing praises of Mrs Gandhi when the Janata leaders were in jail and struggling for the freedom of the press. In plain terms, he is saying that freedom of the press is a gift of the Janata Party, that newspapermen should be eternally grateful to it for this gift and express this gratitude by not criticising it.
No apology is required for these long quotations. For one thing, while Mr Fernandes may be using harsher language than his colleagues, he is not alone in nursing a sense of grievance against the press. For another, his attack is reminiscent of Mrs Indira Gandhi’s prolonged campaign against newspapers leading finally to the proclamation of the emergency on June 25, 1975. Mrs Gandhi, too, used to accuse them of being the spokesmen of big business and other vested interests.
Though Mrs Gandhi was doubtless concerned over personal attacks on her, Mr Sanjay Gandhi, Mr LN Mishra and Mr Bansi Lal by The Motherland, the now defunct Jana Sangh daily, among others, she was preoccupied with what are called the big papers. It is these she wanted to frighten into submission and emasculate. A legislation had, indeed, been prepared at her instance to delink newspapers from business houses, limit the holding of an individual, a business house or a group barely to three per cent, and vest almost total powers in the so-called public trustee. And her government would not have displayed the interest it did in the well-being of small papers if she was not generally satisfied with their performance.
The attitude of the Janata government is obviously not identical. Mr Morarji Desai, for one, has for example, not been willing to confer special favours on small newspapers just because they are small. But there cannot be much doubt that when his ministers criticise the press, they, too, like Mrs Gandhi, have about a dozen or so newspapers in view, most of them English-language ones.
If one could, it would be interesting to find out to what extent Mrs Gandhi’s attacks on the press were the result of the authoritarian streak in her personality and to what extent the result of the feeling of insecurity which increased perceptibly in the wake of the Gujarat and Bihar agitations in1974. But it is a futile exercise partly because it is impossible to measure psychological factors and partly because it may have little relevance to the present situation. It will be more pertinent to find out what the “big” papers had done to provoke Mrs Gandhi’s ire and whether or not the same factor or factors are responsible for the Janata ministers’ displeasure.
This question, too, is not easy to answer. Indeed, but for an article which Mr Dharam Vir Sinha, deputy minister for information and broadcasting during the emergency, had written in that darkest period so far in the history of Indian journalism, it would have been difficult to cite specific evidence in support of the view that Mrs Gandhi was angered not so much by editorial criticism of her policies and performance as by the display the reports of Mr Jayaprakash Narayan’s speeches and activities were commanding. But that piece of evidence is important. Officials of the Press Information Bureau would not have gone to the length of counting the number of times Mr Narayan’s speeches and pictures were published on the front page of, for example, this newspaper and Mr Sinha would not have used these figures if the boss had not taken a dim view of newspapers giving Mr Narayan the publicity which they felt he deserved by virtue of his stature and the popular response to his utterances.
DISPLAY
Likewise there are good reasons now to believe that it is the display that the reports of Mrs Gandhi’s tours have received in major newspapers that has annoyed the Janata leaders the most. Like her, they would not admit that they do not approve of what many of us in the newspaper world regard as objective journalism or like her, they, too, would wish us to condemn the opponent – in her case Mr Narayan and in their case she – to some back page. But this is what hurts. Did not Mr Roosevelt say something to the effect: “Give me the front and my opponents the edit page”?
To say this is to invite the charge of being guilty of establishing a parity between one who had stifled democracy and one who helped salvage it. But that would only show that the critics do not know even the A B C of the ethics of journalism. To have deliberately treated Mrs Gandhi’s visit to Belchhi, her first big meeting in North India at Agra on October 2 last year when about 200,000 turned up to listen to her, the fiasco of her arrest the next day, her subsequent tour of South Gujarat and her election tour and victory in Karnataka and Andhra as non-events unworthy of hitting the front page because she had sought to impose family rule on the county and stifle the opposition and journalism would not have conformed to what any worthwhile journalist in any democratic country would call objective reporting.
Whether the Janata leaders know it or not, the debate is not a new one. Responsible journals in the West have faithfully reported the utterances and activities of communists and crypto-fascists even though they know full well that given a chance the two groups would destroy all democratic freedoms.
LIMITATION
Finally a few more points briefly. First, the factional struggles in the Janata, the atrocities on the Harijans, the communal riots, the rise in prices, the feeling of uncertainty among industrialists and potential investors, the increase in crimes in the post-emergency period and similar developments must inevitably command headlines in newspapers, however sympathetic the editors and the proprietors are to the ruling party. This adverse publicity for the Janata may be grist to Mrs Gandhi’s propaganda mills. But it cannot be helped. This is the limitation of the mass media. They are inevitably concerned above all with the successes and failures of those in power.
Secondly, it may not be a bad idea for the Janata leaders not to take it for granted that “big” business is monolithic, that major newspapers are in league with this menacing entity and that editors take orders from proprietors. The reality is much more complex. Big business houses are more often at odds than in league with one another and editors of big newspapers in this country are as free in many cases as their counterparts anywhere else. Their situation has not been and is not uniform. Some proprietors interfere more than others and some hardly at all. But that has been the same story in Britain or the United States.
Thirdly, old-fashioned radicalism with its attack on business and newspapers had ceased to be viable during Mrs Gandhi’s reign. After 1973 it gave her no political advantage. It is not likely to produce results in the changed circumstances when the centre appears to have shifted to the countryside.
Finally, the old saying “dog does not eat dog” remains as valid as ever. It is not one newspaper’s or journal’s business to tell the others how they should or should not report or display a news item. This is a form of censorship unworthy of them who call themselves journalists. Some journals specialised in this activity on Mrs Gandhi’s behalf in the past and some others are busy on the Janata’s behalf now.
The Times of India, 10 May 1978