TOI --Ascent and the Descent

By Prem Chandran

Many of us might wonder, prima facie, as to why The Times of India has chosen to come up with a statement, that too in a subtle way on its inside Ascent page a week ago, on how the nation’s premier media organisation functions with its multiple units and 250 editions spread over the length and breadth of the country, and how it gives freedom to its regional editors. Clearly, the daily has come to think the time has come for it to defend itself and appear to be ‘setting its record right’.

The timing of this exercise matters, as it is by now common knowledge that the world’s largest English newspaper in terms of circulation has got to be identified with the Narendra Modi bandwagon, and there are those who think it played a major role in changing public perceptions and effecting a change of government at the Centre. For TOI, interests in running a media establishment and making a big business success out of it mattered; and it mattered always. It did not seek to uphold an ideology --left or right -- and carried on with its role of dissemination of information. It represented all shades of opinion, and earned a reputation on that count. There were rare exceptions though, and the push for Modi was one such.

Now, however, after pushing a political idea, and successfully at that, its sane leadership apparently thought it owed an explanation to its large mass of readers. The best way out was to say what it wanted to say, but get it across to the world from some obscure corner of the daily. What it took pains to state all through a long article was that there is no central editorial control for the daily, and every regional editor has the “freedom” to take things forward in ways he thought fit – in respect of editorial policy. This, however, is for the “consumption” of the readers; and this is easier said than done.

Fact is, every media baron breaths down the neck of every journalist who works in his establishment. The baron shapes the policy, and the others follow suit. And, it is also no secret that the government breaths down the neck of media barons, and most of them oblige other than those who have their own agenda to push: Ramnath Goenka, for instance. Arun Shourie was a great journalist, but he had no existence independent of RG. RG set the policy, Shourie took it to its heights. Fact is also that there’s no independent media in this country. Media freedom is a mirage to an extent, and there are some who exercise their rights with rare boldness, but in the end, chances are that they lose out, being unable to withstand pressures of various kinds. See also how a Vinod Mehta found his way out of Outlook after he took courage in his hands and came up with the Nira Radia tapes -- an expose that had many, including senior editors, running for cover!

TOI is unique in many ways. Unlike its main competitors, The HT and the Indian Express (not to mention the poorly produced The New Indian Express from the South despite the fact it has a highly professional editor at its head in New Delhi), TOI generally avoided giving an impression it took sides. Exceptions were there, too, like during and after the Emergency, when Girilal Jain was at its head. “Giri” as he was fondly called by one and all, had a soft corner for Indira Gandhi and her party, it was perceived, and this invariably got reflected in the weekly articles that he wrote on the Edit page. Unlike today, the Edit page in those days had a strength of its own, and readers used to closely follow the writers therein, including and most prominently Giri. We might not agree with his views, but he had a lucid way of putting across things that we, in the end, would come to believe he had a valid point to project. He was asked out, it is said, after a change of government at the Centre and Morarji Desai headed the Janata Party government; around the time Samir Jain came upfront and effected a clean-up. And so was the fate of Kushwant Singh, who took the popularity of The Illustrated Weekly of India skyhigh, but his perceived error being his so-called closeness to Indira Gandhi, who bit the dust in the 1977 parliamentary polls.

After Giri, Dilip Padgaonkar ran the paper for some time, and he did a good job. However, a part of his undoing was that he started thinking he was holding the nation’s second most important position after PM (Narasmiha Rao), as the Editor of the top daily. Samir Jain and the rest of those who ran the daily apparently did not stomach what Padgaonkar said, and it did not take long for him to exit from the Editor post. Except for this funny statement, he had everything with him to be a good Editor, and the paper’s content had modernised in positive ways under his stewardship. In recent years, his advocacy of the Pakistan cause, in place and out of place, had raised many eyebrows about his integrity, though.

Dilip was perhaps the last prominent Editor for the paper. With the management pushing for marketing as the best way to increase circulation and aggressively neglecting the Editorial side, TOI had at one time reached its nadir. Samir Jain, it transpired, had only contempt for the editors. He thought TOI was a product, modern marketing techniques mattered, and it would sell irrespective of the quality of its content. There was little to read in the newspaper. There were those who saw an opportunity waiting, and went ahead with the high-profile launch of DNA. HT too had set up shop in Mumbai. These, by default, brought back life into the editorial side of TOI, and its page numbers suddenly rose. A new aggressiveness about news coverage set in in TOI. Its Editorial page however continues to suffer. Not many readers would seem to care for it these days. That the Edit page has been relegated to one of the last pages of the daily, shifting it from the centre-spread, is not the only proof, if one requires, of its falling standards. Those who began writing columns on the daily some 30 to 40 years ago, like Jug Suraiya and Bachi Karkaria, as also Shobhaa De and the like, continue to fill the TOI pages with their sermons. This writer, for one, stopped reading them long, long ago, if only for the lack of novelty in what we get to read out of them. There are those like Chetan Bhagat, who make a difference, but they are rare appearances.

True, there are professionals who see the editorial handling of the daily as amateurish, page to page, a play by half-baked elements who lack a sharpness in treatment of the subjects and are no doubt devoid of a spirit of innovation.

With the result, it is a moot point as to whether TOI today has a reputation as a quality English newspaper. Its circulation is increasing by leaps and bounds across the country for the likely reason that most of its competitors do not have the resources, network or competence to challenge it. In New Delhi, traditionally strong HT is putting up a stiff defence, and in recent times it has made major inroads into TOI’s circulation base in the latter’s base itself—Mumbai, where HT is providing a qualitatively better daily fare to the readers. Both young readers and the serious ones are switching over to HT in droves. HT started in Mumbai late, in the 90s, and by now it can boast of having a circulation that equals half the daily copies of TOI, or more.

It might surprise many as to how TOI, as also the Times Now news channel, has acted as a spearhead for change in the build-up to General Elections 2014, alongside many other media establishments in this country. Its largely Bengali journalist workforce is by disposition and temperament pro-Left and anti-BJP, and they are more so against the likes of Narendra Modi for multiple reasons. From individual to individual, they would not have been the ones to sing Modi’s praise. But, those who track the daily and the channel would know for sure that even occasional critical comments against Modi were tempered in ways as would harm him the least.

That TOI did not choose to sing in praise of the establishment (Sonia-Manmohan) should be to the daily's credit, more so at a time when the two worthies ran a largely discredited dispensation with multiple power centres that worked at cross purposes for most part, culminating in a policy paralysis and much worse. Perceptions are that Modi, the smart operator that he was, worked from top to effect a change in TOI's policy his favour, and the journalists fell in line and sang his praise. That the nation badly needed a change and Modi turned out to be the best best, as the only leader with an individuality and guts among the lot of discredited elements who prowled around in different shades and indulged in shady deals, is an unalloyed fact. Hence, TOI as a media establishment need not be apologetic about the way it acted. It did the right thing. Samir Jain, who led TOI ably for a long time, reportedly used to begin his daily prayers by seeking God’s blessings that he be guided do the right things in life. As a media establishment, TOI might have its multiple interests, but that it still maintains its dignity as a newspaper is unquestionable.

Those of us who worked in the media for long years know well that there’s a limit beyond which no media establishment can be objective in its approach to news and views --and the disseminations thereof. Personal interests invariably get intertwined with public interests that we are supposed to uphold. The Hindu, down south, had its great reputation of being objective in its news coverage for long years, and more so during Editor G Kasturi’s period, and it enjoyed unmatched credibility through its existence. That made up for the dullness of its content. Its journalists mostly relied on press releases and press conferences to generate content, promoting a kind of arm-chair journalism, and the management was content with it in the sense these are factual reportage and no liberties were taken by relying on information dug out of what is loosely termed as 'sources.' The family ran the daily with a singular commitment to the profession. But, the high doze of leftist news and views that it sought to project in recent years, thanks to one individual Editor, including in its Frontline that turned into a Leftist journal, is a case in point.

The Western media has its known biases. The Guardian, London, is a professionally strong media establishment, but its Leftist leanings are well-known, a model on which N Ram tried to shape The Hindu. It was under his leadership that Frontline took on a red hue. Guardian towered over others by its quality of content, which, despite its ideological leanings, endeared the newspaper --now online -- to the readers. Neither TOI nor The Hindu can claim to come nearer to Guardian, or the world's top English newspapers, in terms of quality, research being the mainstay of its content.

Ascent of descent, TOI need not worry -- not yet -- about a loss of credibility by way of the perceived support it extended to Modi or the Hiindutva forces. It still has something for everyone to read, and it carries with it, as usual, all shades of opinion. Therein lies its strength. premcee@gmail.com; www.indiahereandnow.com