Indian media’s touching concern for the Congress and opposition raise questions

Much of Indian media have been busy abusing the opposition as inept and lazy. The design is often to deflect public attention from the Government and issues that should be far more important to people.

Several print and TV personalities have recently taken to Twitter to call the opposition “inept and lazy”. An ‘eminent’ news channel at the same time held a program under the title ‘100 days 100 disasters of Congress’.

The programme was bound to confuse people into thinking that Congress is the ruling party in India. After all, why else would anybody care about the blunders of the party which, by their own account, is on the verge of extinction?

This is not the first time that members of the media are condemning the opposition for not being as combative and aggressive as the ruling regime is.

It is fairly commonplace to find the media praising the ruling regime as a 24x7 election machinery with an insatiable thirst for power and other such dramatic description of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ways of working (which of course includes engineering mass defection and horse trading of MLAs).

Perhaps the media need to ask a few questions to themselves. Why do they have such high expectations and demands from the opposition? Is it because they don’t like the ruling regime and want the Congress to quickly come back to power?

Or is it because they want to lend the opposition a voice which is the legitimate job of the media? Or is it actually because they want to find excuses to keep the public busy with opposition related narratives so that the ruling regime remains insulated from questioning? Or could it be that they find it easier to attack the opposition but not the ruling party?

If we go by the number of times TV news channels pick and choose opposition activities they give coverage to, it becomes clearer what their designs are. During the 2019 election campaign, for example, the media often blacked out press conferences and other statements issued by both the Congress party and other opposition parties. In January this year, Rahul Gandhi hit out at Union Minister Ananth Hegde for his deplorable personal remarks against Congress leader Dinesh Gundu Rao.

Around the time media were quick to pick up Tweets by Rahul Gandhi. With his remarkably direct and scathing attack, this tweet was expected to be a major topic for primetime debates on TV channels. BJP leaders, it was expected, would have hit back at Mr. Gandhi with Whataboutery followed by some abuses for Nehru. But none of this happened, the issue was ignored by TV channels and it just disappeared from public discourse. Significantly, TV channels debated the Karnataka Congress leader Siddaramaiah’s alleged misbehaviour story which also emerged around the same time.

This week, the media completely blacked out Congress spokesperson Dr. Ragini Nayak’s press briefing on September 10, 2019 on the issue of women’s empowerment.

“Is it not legitimate to ask, why BJP leader Chinmayanand is not yet arrested? Why is he not being questioned? Why are women BJP leaders who used to send bangles to Manmohan Singh silent now? Although we believe bangles are no symbol of weakness but strength,” Dr. Nayak said raising concerns about the way UP police had been handling the complaint filed by a law student alleging rape and harassment by BJP leader Chinmayanand.

Ragini Nayak briefed the press for about 15-20 minutes during which she also mentioned the Unnao rape case, and reports of journalists’ arrest. The members of the media then followed it up with questions on Kashmir, Pakistan, Delhi elections, and Rahul Gandhi, their line of questioning making their agenda perfectly clear.

In the end neither the women’s empowerment issue nor any of the answers Dr. Nayak gave to questions found any mention in mainstream dailies or TV news.

Even when the media seemingly gives coverage to opposition activities, if one reads between the lines, it becomes clear that the coverage is designed to somehow feed BJP’s narrative about the opposition or to try and deflect people’s attention from some pertinent issue for which the government should have been held answerable.

It would therefore be wise for the Congress party to not fall into this trap of a constant demand by the media to do something. The party should do what it has to as per its own wisdom and not make any move just to fulfil media’s demands.

As for playing the role of the opposition, first let the people of India fully experience and understand the choice they have made. As and when they feel dissatisfied with their choice, let them hit the street in a people’s movement not led by any political party. Let them first give a sign that they need a change.