The media in India is highly politicized & biased is
what we agree.
At least most of us wouldn’t disagree.
Names of senior
and celebrated journalists always crop up in these discussions. but with media ethics
of journalistic standards lying in shreds, all of them continue to hold their position without any remorse & naturally under the tutelage of their Masters..
I got reminded of the old time vinyl record label- HMV- His Masters Voice where a dog intently was listening to his master's voice over phonogram. Today the dogs also bark the way their owners tell them. How ironic & iconic..
These media barons and their stooges continues to hold positions even as the public trust in a partisan media has eroded fast. I can
pin down at least 20 names and all of you, who care to read and not in a state of
perpetual hibernation, would know all or most of it. So I am not referring it
here.
When it comes to television, the alliances &
conviviality between politicians and media goes to a whole new level.
Instead of paying for advertisement in the form of news,
politicians have decided that it is much more economical to just own television
channels and put their adverts.
and
And how by just airing the owner’s allegiance political
current leanings views generates black money & TRP's.
All you need is a billing agency
overseas & even Mauritius would do. One need not go to Cayman Islands or far.
.
The
politicians gets paid in dollars by the news channel for content and airing rights & bring back the money as FDI in Media/ real estate/ stock markets & you name it.
Same tricks that Ambanis & Adanis of India ( read businessmen) are doing. They teach each other as
student and professor depending what one wants to learn!!!
The list of channels owned directly or indirectly by
politicians is a very long one.
Almost all news channels are owned either directly or
indirectly by politicians. Out of the registered 876 (12/16) news channels, nearly 700
are owned by just 30 people and all are politicians or businessmen having open
political biases and support.
The situation in the south is far worse with every party
in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, owning at least one mainstream
news channel.
Since the number of channels owned by politicians is so very large that even I am clueless to dig it in all.
I can only highlight the rot that has been seeped
deliberately in society by such channels that only alters the mindscape of 90%
of viewers who are semi literate to illiterate who are incapable of analysing
the news to generate a perspective on their own & hence takes the sustained
feed as truth.
I define an illiterate Indian as one who is incapable to
get a starting entry level salary of Rs. three lacs annually.
Here are the list of a few dozen lost cause cases &
the more famous channels & newspapers that have a definite conflict of
interest in delivering political news because their owners are all politicians
themselves.
The Tribune & The National Herald Have always been a Congressi
newspaper covering the regions of North India such as Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Himachal
Pradesh and J&K.
Only Manmohan & Sonia reads it & Rahul keeps it
on his desk to look informed!!!
The Pioneer English newspaper has always shown a pro-BJP,
right wing, nationalist ideology. Chandan Mitra, owner and editor in chief of
The Pioneer is a BJP member of Rajya Sabha. He is also on NITI AAYOG. Not sure
who reads it. Maybe, Arvind Subramanyam.
The Statesman has always been a left wing,
anti-establishment newspaper. The only saving grace being that it has never
pretended to be anything other than that. It has long been the newspaper of the
left wing communists out of Kolkata. So is Ganashakti for the hardcores.
The Hindu too has been open about its ideologies and
doesn’t shy away from being declared an organized left newspaper. It is
controlled by the Kasturi family which has nominated MP in Rajya Sabha &
Lok Sabha.
Indian Express is
really interesting. Founder of the Indian Express Group was a member of the RSS
and so the newspaper was always right wing in its nature. After Goenka’s death
the group has split in two ( by doing some black magic to Rajiv Goenka, adapted grandson of
Ramnath Goenka, in scandal &
usurping the Group) and now there are
two newspapers with opposite loyalties.
While The Indian Express now supports congress & The
New Indian Express continues to support NDA and right wing ideologies.
Last we heard that Shekhar
Gupta is trying to get a Membership to Rajya Sabha.
Hindustan Times is
one of the worst case of paid media.
It is managed by Shobhana Bhartiya who
is the daughter of industrialist KK Birla and was a Rajya Sabha member of the
Congress Party till 2012.
The Times of
India is tries to present an image of being a
nationalist newspaper. However, any thoughtful reader of the Times of India
would know that it’s not really the voice of the public that it claims to be.
It shifts it loyalty with the government in power. It’s the Worst of the lot.
A
winning Chameleon.And now the digital media that have clear conflict of
interest, but what is it in India? Conflict of interest, one must be joking!!!!
Before we get into the top 10/12 news channels, here are
some regional and lesser known channels just for your information:
1. Congress
health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s wife Riniki Bhuyan is the chairperson of News Live and Rang.
2. In
Karnataka, tourism minister Janardhana Reddy and health minister Sriramulu
Reddy own Janashri along with a couple of newspapers.
3. Kasturi
TV is owned by former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy.
4. Suvarna
TV of the Asianet group is owned by Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrashekhar.
5. Sakshi
TV is owned by Jagan Mohan Reddy along with NTV and TV5 in Andhra Pradesh.
6. Studio
N is owned by N. Chandrababu Naidu & Friends!!!
7. Odisha
TV is owned by Baijayant Panda of the BJD.
Other channels in Orissa are also 7politician owned.
8. Indiavision
in Kerala is owned by Muslim League Secretary M.K. Muneer.
9. In
West Bengal, CPI(M) controls TV-24 Ghanta. Trinamool Congress has Kolkata TV.
Sukhbir
Singh Badal owns PTC and PTC News in Punjab along with PTC Punjabi and PTC Chak
De.
And now let’s come to the crème
de la crème of politically owned/ aligned news channels in India.
Jaya TV- Named after its owner,
Jaya TV is owned by Jayalalithaa, the AIADMK chief. She also owned Jaya Max,
Jaya Plus and J Movie. She owns all this through the holding company Mavis
Satcom Ltd. But how it has been now after her demise, god knows. Shashikala, Panneerselvam or ...? Anybody's guess.
But she is not alone in Tamil
Nadu to own television channels-
Congress owns Mega TV and Vasanth TV, while
Vijayakanth of DMDK owns Captain TV.
SUN TV- DMK chief Karunanidhi’s
nephew Kalanithi Maran.
He controls Sun TV, Sun News, KTV, Sun Music, Chutti
TV, Sumangali Cable, Adithya TV, Chintu TV, Kiran TV, Khushi TV, Udaya Comedy,
Udaya Music, Gemini TV, Gemini Comedy and Gemini Movies.
Karunanidhi himself
owns Kalaignar TV and a close associate M. Raajhendran owns Raj TV and Raj
Digital Plus.
Family business and legacy
politics cannot be defined and seen better than this. Gandhi’s are bacchas (KIDS) !!! A single family dynasty that brought down the citadel of Congress like a house of cards.
IBN LOKMAT- Rajendra Dadra, the Minister of School Education of
Maharashtra and his brother Vijay Dadra, a Rajya Sabha member, both of
Congress, control Lokmat which is the largest selling Marathi newspaper in
Maharashtra. The group also owns IBNLokmat in association with the TV18 group.
India News is owned by
Karthikeya Sharma, brother of Manu Sharma who was sentenced to life
imprisonment in the Jessica Lal murder case.
Karthikeya Sharma owns the ITV
Media group that operates many news channels including News X. Karthikeya and
Manu are sons of Congress leader Venod Sharma.
NEWS 24- Rajeev Shukla is a MP
from Rajya Sabha & the secretary of the All India Congress Committee. He
controls News 24 with his wife Anuradha Prasad. From a news anchor , he has travelled a long way. Let us wait for the decent.
They also own Aapno 24 and E24.
Interestingly Anuradha Prasad is the sister of BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad
& Rajiv Shukla are brother in law. This is what we call Brothers in Arm, You ask for an arm & someone can give you a leg up!!!
NDTV is owned by Prannoy Roy.
The NDTV group owns NDTV India, NDTV Good Times, NDTV 24×7 and NDTV Profit and
other channels. NDTV is known to be sympathetic to communists/ socialist biases.
Pronoy Roy, the main investor in NDTV, is married to Radhika who
is sister of Brinda Karat a Rajya Sabha
member of CPI(M). Brinda Karat is married to Prakash Karat who is the General
Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Times Now is part of the Times
group which operates Times of India, Mid-Day, Nav-Bharath Times, Stardust,
Femina, Vijay Times, Vijaya Karnataka and Times Now. Times Group is owned by
Bennet & Coleman. The Italian Robertio Mindo who has a share in the group
is a close relative of Sonia Gandhi.
CNBC India & TV 18 Network- Major shareholder Mukesh
Ambani having at least one dozen channels in English & Hindi.
Gautam Adani hasn't featured yet & readers can help in comments.
I am yet to to dig out the
proxy operator for Adanis having TV channels. It has to be there in Gujrat. Obviously, it would be BJP.
ZEE Entertainment Group that
owns at least 12 channels is owned by Subhash Chandra, who is a BJP MP from
Haryana.
India TV- Now having major
ownership by Rajat Sharma & BJP Politicians. Rajat loves to do lap dance
with Arun Jaitley & Modi currently. However, he never likes to do it with
Rahul Gandhi. He is a AVP type friend of Jaitley & truly brothers in arms.
Republic TV- The most recent
addition and anchored by Shouting Man of India is owned by Rajiv
Chandrashekhar, a BJP MP. He continues the same way without realising that barking dogs do not bite anymore and an extension to that adage is that a dog would still be called a son of a bitch!!!
If any channels were left from
this list, which is likely as it is not an exhaustive list, then it can be either because the politicians have done a good job
in hiding any direct links or because I got bored of researching all of them,
which is likely.
When you know how ugly the face is, why then bother to find out the colour of undergarments.
Besides politicians,
businessmen also like to have some control over media and they either have a
share in media companies or they give their shares to media companies in
exchange of favourable news.
All main business channels
giving biased and paid stock market advice are so notorious for caveats that
the Govt. of India/ SEBI has warned stock investors to heed to the advice given
by the media on their own risk. So News channels and its advisors are exempted from mayhem that an investor may face.
The truth is that all mass
media in India has become corrupt beyond redemption and the only source of trustworthy news that
is left is the internet through blogs and small news sites or through social
networking sites such as Twitter where news comes direct from the source to the
public or Facebook where serious users might place some incidences correctly as a witness, given the political backlash that is often seen worldwide. India just emulates the world.
If there’s someone making money
while delivering the news from the source to the public, you can rest assured
that it would be half truth & half truth is just full of masked lies!!!!
In USA, it is as worse if not
more & we tend to be copycats. So our results are even more catastrophic.
Comments are invited.
On top a corrupt bureaucracy & officials helps the motive.
The planners like Kaushik Basu & Montek Singh, including the loathsome & mummified Prime Minister are offshoot of western value education having no mooring to the Indian ground realities, except in theories.
It is too late for them to grip with it. They are just theoreticians and lack sensibilities to govern in an impoverished environment where almost 40% of the workforce is on subsistence level (statistics are big lies in India) where at least 70% of people do not have access to safe potable water and almost similar people having no access to sanitation of a safe toilet.
The educational standards are so disparate that India produce largest number of professionals & yet more than 70% of them face employability issues & therefore not a single university has ever been able to produce a single noble laureate from it.
The infrastructures are frayed to the point of crumbling & yet new roads, dams, power generation units etc are being sanctioned recklessly without having the back-ends in place, e.g. power plants without a secure coal or gas supply, highways half done due to no land acquisition and compensation policies.
I can go on endlessly & incumbent dispensation will not be pleased.
So wherein lies the solution?
The woes of India actually doesn't lie in its micro or macro economic problem, but in serious political reforms & that must begin by new constitution, change in governance structures, autonomy to states & investment in quality education and R&D.
But Indians also needs to have a serious change of attitude quickly. The attitude today is fatalistic and submissive due to its socio political history of oppression for last 2,000 years & that got worse post independence with equal voting right thereby cleverly eliminating the educated class to have its say, especially when more than 60% of the India is illiterate, especially in northern heartland & that suits the number democracy.
Corruption, which is rampant, is simply out of social desperation and disparity, again stemming out of the loopholes and fatality of the people, both the givers & the takers.
The economic jargons of inflation, stagflation, slow down, devaluation, consumption, growth, subsidy etc. is not going to help India. But a genuine intent to do fundamental change in governance structures & educational qualities would bring about the entire necessary social changes that would be eventually the engine of sustained growth.
In the meantime people like, Basu & Singh’s would continue like a sucker who think that Indian can live well for 50 US cents today in urban India & yet they can have the audacity to bill the government a sum of almost 4,000 US$ per day for travel expenses!!!
All this is possible in a shabby democracy riding on the back of poor Indians who is just struggling for his next meal & is fatality comes to the fore then either by hook or by crook, which manifests to the western world as corruption.
Time would tell & so would The People.