Tracking Media Behaviour in the Time of a Pandemic
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A JOURNAL OF THE PRESS INSTITUTE OF INDIA ISSN 0042-5303 October-December 2020 Volume 12 Issue 4 Rs 60 COVID-19 Tracking media behaviour in the time of a pandemic A pandemic is a public health emergency and much more. It CONTENTS not only galvanizes the health institutions but several other • Domestic workers bear the brunt, parts of public life, says Pradeep Krishnatray seek return to good times / Sudha Umashankar ass media is an integral part of public life. It has to necessarily • How the innovative Indian is report about and react to the pandemic. How it does and whose fighting a deadly pandemic / Rina Mukherji perspective it adopts, is of critical importance. There are at least M • Learning in the new normal four ways of examining this in its entirety. Put together, they help explain comes with a set of challenges / media behaviour. Afsana Rashid The first, of course is content. That is, what the media chooses to tell or • Anxiety, job losses, financial woes not tell is of importance. The second aspect is its role vis-à-vis the state and driving more people to suicide / Shoma A. Chatterji Central Government of the day --- the agency tasked to deal with the pan- • A different Durga Puja, with poor demic. Does it adopt a watchdog role, an adversarial role, or a supportive craftsperson the hardest hit / role? The third is its public function, its relationship with the society from Manjira Mazumdar which it derives its credibility and sustainability. Whose side it is on or • Of contributors, editors and what version of the truth does it prefer to bet on? Does it speak up for the journalistic ethics / Sakuntala Narasimhan people? Finally, a lot depends on the media’s ability to manage the tension • Wanted: objectivity and and contradictions that invariably emerge from its editorial stance. accountability / Let us examine each of these in some detail. Media content is, of course, N.S. Venkataraman the crux. In the present case, the pandemic is the crux. It is the news. The • Why the fight for inclusivity must media gives enough of it each day and has been doing it for a number go on / Sarita Brara • The doyen of Telugu journalism of weeks. COVID-19 was a continually developing story, and it gained was progressive and had a salience as it drew nearer to India. Media amplified it accordingly. literary flourish / Mrinal Chatterjee In India, and much of the world, the media actually loves a crisis when it • Adyar, lovely Adyar / refuses to go away. Its indulgence aggravates when the crisis has no relief V. Ramnarayan or clear answers. And as the toll rises, it hurriedly fixes responsibility on • The magic of Rajasthan, revisited / Madhura Dutta someone or some groups. During the 1918-19 Spanish Flu, it found one in • Selectors are always the whipping the poor who lived in unsanitary conditions. A hundred years later, it found boys / Partab Ramchand one in Tablighi Jamaat, conveniently ignoring all those who had travelled • Remembering Jan Steward / to Europe and other places and likely brought the virus to India. Soumitra Chatterjee / Kishore Bhimani / R. Padmanabhan / (Continued on page 3) Dean Jones October-December 2020 VIDURA 1 FROM THE EDITOR Down but not out – yes, we have been able to fight back o, we have finally passed experiencing something they had Fighting the battle at the fore- what has been truly a terrible never before. There was a strong front were also journalists and Syear. Before the novel coro- element of claustrophobia and fear. photographers as they relayed sto- navirus and COVID-19 arrived, Difficult times push you to be ries, mostly heart-wrenching, from things were not too bad for news resilient, to think innovatively and to across the world. The winners of publishing houses. There were strive harder. And that is what many the 2020 PII-ICRC Awards (see some encouraging trends, such as people across the world did. Many page 7) produced some outstand- growth in digital subscriptions. of the stories in this issue relate to ing stories and pictures. They, as Although advertising and digi- COVID-19 –the varied experiences, well as all those who sent in entries, tal subscriptions remained at the the ‘new normal’, the agony and are wonderful examples of what heart of the revenue strategies of pain, and fighting the virus and win- good journalism can do, especially many publishers, there was an ning the battle sometimes. in the time of a crisis. More power increasing recognition of the need We have lost many to COVID. to them. for diversification. Several pub- There have been some tragic deaths News about roll-out of the lishers looked at growing alterna- after hard-fought battles. Actor Sou- COVID-19 vaccines in some parts tive income streams. mitra Chatterjee’s passing away of the developed world has brought We all know how the Indian news was one such (two tributes featured renewed hope that the virus can be media had gone through tough here); singer S.P. Balasubrahman- eliminated. As 2021 dawns, we look times even earlier; we had heard of yam’s and Kishore Bhimani’s (trib- forward with hope at seeing better declines of 20-30 per cent in print ute featured here) were the others. days ahead. Here’s wishing readers advertising revenue, how digital With fear stalking everyone and a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous and revenue was not growing enough to rumours floating around, espe- Safe New Year. compensate, and of shrinking rev- cially on WhatsApp and other social enue growth and increasing costs. media latforms, people everywhere Sashi Nair By March 2020, COVID-19 had were looking for information that [email protected] cast a large shadow across the was useful, truthful, complete and world. Governments in many coun- accurate. Indeed, the need to stimu- tries clamped lockdowns for days late solidarity and public awareness and weeks. India was no excep- had perhaps never been greater in tion. Lives changed, people began recent times. Dear Reader, You may be aware of the very difficult times the news publishing industry is going through. It was quite bad even before COVID-19, but now we are struggling to stay afloat. Vidura has never had much adver- tising support but, somehow, we managed to bring out the printed edition. It will no longer be possible to do so. Vidura will from this issue (October-December) onwards move to a digital-only avatar and be available in the PDF version. Kindly send us your email ID to acctspiirind@ gmail.com for us to email the journal to you. You may continue your subscriptions at the same rate and we will ensure that you receive the journals by email. Editor 2 VIDURA October-December 2020 (Continued from page 1) took effect? Did the media wonder, The media hardly ever spoke In India, however, the media did if not question, the utility of the up for the people. We constructed much worse. It continued to focus on lockdown itself? Part of the reason a composite week of an English disease and death, not health. It shut it did not do a good job of quizzing daily published from New Delhi out from its content the voice of the the government is because it lacked --- The Times of India --- and studied rural folks, the sick and the infirm, the resources --- science journalists, its front page content spread over and all those who held a view dif- health correspondents, historians four months beginning February ferent from that of the government. and medical anthropologists on its 2020. The daily published 175 sto- What has been media’s role vis- editorial bench. ries on COVID-19 on its front page. à-vis the government? It would On television, we saw more doc- However, it virtually quoted no be worth examining the extent to tors than epidemiologists or virolo- family member of a deceased per- which the media questioned gov- gists discussing COVID-19 when son, an alternative point of view. ernment actions and decisions, the they clearly lacked the training The person quoted was usually delays and procrastinations. It hap- and expertise to do so. We also someone in authority --- a doctor pily reported President Trump’s witnessed foreign public health or a bureaucrat. A deeply disturb- visit to India without questioning experts sharing more forthright ing human-interest story received a the wisdom of doing so at a time and honest assessment of the situ- silent burial. when the pandemic was round the ation than their counterparts in The television channels did a bet- corner. Or, like the government, it India did. Short on revenue, an ter job than newspapers, but only to failed to anticipate its arrival. already thinned editorial team sur- the extent of showing police’s heart- Why it did not confront the gov- vived mostly on public relations less and cruel treatment of the poor ernment when it gave a bare four- department handouts. In doing so, men and women who trudged long hour notice before the lockdown it failed in its calling. distances to reach home. For the first Illustration: Arun Ramkumar October-December 2020 VIDURA 3 time, perhaps, some high courts did their e-editions. The circulation- commodity. Their continuation has a better job than the regional news- credibility paradox has accen- the potential to influence local poli- papers. The Telangana High Court tuated. It is ironical that when tics and decision-making. repeatedly pulled up the state gov- people’s needs and demand for The coronavirus pandemic may ernment for not following ICMR news increased, the newspaper perhaps be the first news story to guidelines.