Media As Political Mercenaries

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Akshay Marathe in Newslaundry

Big political outfits like BJP use ad power to capture the voter’s mind space. What options do small parties have?

Full disclosure- The author is a member of the Aam Aadmi Party.

Television media’s influence on the Indian voter’s choices has grown exponentially over the last decade. India has been exposed to the chaos of 24×7 television news for the last three general elections. It has gradually become one of the most effective opinion-making platforms in modern politics, thus, changing the nature of politics irreversibly.

A political party or leader is today as much a brand as a bottle of Coca-Cola. Coke might have a decent product, but where will it be without the huge advertising spend? In order to stay in the consumer’s subconscious, Coca-Cola has to be generous with its marketing expenditure. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were seen by many as an acceptable alternative to the Congress during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Yet, without the advertising blitzkrieg that the BJP unleashed on the electorate, their margin of victory was arguably impossible.
The influence of television media on voters’ opinions and the money spent by political outfits on advertising campaigns is inter-related. If an organisation is a big advertiser on channels/newspapers of a media house, it is routine to find coverage in those media channels that favours the advertiser.
A Harvard study established a link between advertising expenditure and media coverage. The problems that this has created for democracies has long been analysed and talked about although no real solutions have emerged.

The news media is often referred to as a “beast” owing to its sheer size, power and tendency to be reckless. The ad revenue- media coverage relationship, however, means that the media isn’t just a beast – it has also become a political mercenary. It means that if a party like the BJP is spending an exorbitant amount on advertisements on news channels, and an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is spending close to nothing, the BJP can exert leverage on the media to go after AAP through what some call “supari journalism”.

There need not be a direct transfer of money between BJP and the media house, but BJP’s ad spend combined with the central government’s ad largesse to media houses is enough incentive for them to systematically malign AAP through their news channels, newspapers and websites. The Congress too did this for a decade when it was in power, but it seemed unable to match the BJP’s ad budgets in recent times.

To some, this may sound like an elaborately worded, but far-fetched conspiracy theory and people are free to draw their own conclusions. I have suspected the media’s role as mercenaries for some months now, but my belief was strengthened by two successive television news stories that caught my attention in the last couple of days. These two stories are also what prompted me to write this piece.
November 26, 2012, was the day Arvind Kejriwal and company’s freshly-announced political alternative was named Aam Aadmi Party in a public gathering at Jantar Mantar. November 26 is therefore held to be the party’s foundation day. On November 26, 2014, the party appealed to volunteers and supporters to donate Rs 2,611 to mark the party’s anniversary celebration.
Within a day, the party collected close to 26 lakh rupees and everyone was happy – except for Rohit Sardana of Zee News.

Sardana did a full-length debate show on Zee News on the same day discussing AAP’s donation drive that was, according to him, deliberately planned to “hurt the feelings of Indians” by making use of a date on which many Mumbaikars had lost their lives in the terrible terrorist attacks of 2008. All but one panellist agreed that AAP had lowered the standard of politics in India and applauded Zee News for exposing AAP.

It is important to note that whilst this debate was on air, ads of the National Democratic Alliance government’s Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana were playing in the background. What we must also remember here is that the owner of the Zee Network, Subhash Chandra, had sought a ticket from the BJP to contest the recently-concluded Haryana Assembly elections. While he was denied a ticket by the party, he campaigned for the BJP in Haryana anyway. The day, November 26, has a special significance in India’s history. Although India’s Republic Day is celebrated on the January 26, the Constitution of India was adopted on November 26, 1949. This is the precise reason for November 26 being chosen by AAP to launch the party formally.

It is on this auspicious day, that the party was seeking financial support to contest the upcoming elections. It is not unreasonable of me to expect that any person with a basic level of intelligence would understand this, but Zee’s journalists did not.

The second news story that struck me as needlessly vindictive was aired on News 24 on November 28. This was about a fundraiser dinner that the AAP had organised in Mumbai on November 27 with Arvind Kejriwal. A sensational voiceover told viewers that Mr Kejriwal had, in his “desperation” to collect money, forgotten about the real “aam aadmi” of his party, as entry to this fundraiser was restricted to those few who had donated a minimum of Rs 20,000 to the election fund.

A party volunteer standing outside the venue was interviewed by the enthusiastic reporter. The volunteer flashed his “membership card” and declared that AAP had become a party of “khaas aadmis” since ordinary volunteers like him had to be able to shell out Rs 20,000 to meet his leader. What the reporter chose not to mention is that Mr Kejriwal had spent three hours that same afternoon with over 700 volunteers, where this card-bearing volunteer had conveniently forgotten to turn up. What should have been hailed as a modern, progressive and transparent model for collecting electoral funding, had been turned into a means to vilify a party that is struggling to put together a relatively measly budget of Rs 40 crore for the upcoming Delhi elections.

The party has already put up names of all donors from the fundraiser on its website, along with the amounts donated. The reporter also incorrectly stated that AAP had turned to the “corporate” class for donations, implying that AAP had not felt the need of doing so earlier, whereas the fact is that AAP has been making use of fundraisers such as this one, even before it had won the 2013 Delhi elections. The reason I can be sure of it is that I had attended a couple of them at the Constitution Club, last year.

I do not wish to make this a partisan rant about how AAP has been targeted by a section of the media. That is not my motive. I want to raise the larger question of the potential dangers that such a media-politician, power and money equation poses to India’s democracy. Does this mean that small political parties, that have nothing in terms of ad revenue to offer to a media house, will be bullied into submission by the might of the ad budgets of the bigger parties? How do parties that cannot influence large media houses survive the ad blitzkrieg that parties like the BJP use to capture voter’s mind space?

This is a significant threat to the vibrancy of our democracy and it is important that we find a way to counter this trend before it is too late. The need of the hour is to find a way to put an effective check on this blatant use of money power to influence elections. Can it be done?