For some time now, watchdogs such as the Press Council of India and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India have expressed concern over developments such as “paid news” and corporate monopolies in the Indian media industry. Those who value media freedom, however, should be concerned about another disquieting phenomenon that is currently rearing its head in some of the world’s thriving democracies.
In India, the telecast of an unauthenticated video recording of a student gathering enabled the propagation of a singular – rather than the previously accepted plural – idea of nationalism.
In the United States, Donald Trump’s spectacular rise is attributed partly to his articulation of economic grievances, but more widely to vitriolic Republican politics showcased by the media over the last decade.
In Brazil, in an environment of widespread corruption, media-led hysteria including Nazi-style salutes against President Dilma Rousseff of the Worker’s Party, may well be the cover for a coup by Brazil’s traditional ruling class.
In India, the US and Brazil, the media appears to be answerable for fueling an unprecedented totalitarian surge.
The phenomenon does not by any means represent the entire media spectrum. Indeed, for the large part, the media continues to perform its customary watchdog role – often against tremendous odds, as one can see in Turkey where several journalists have been jailed by President Recep Tayyep Erdogan’s increasingly dictatorial regime.
What the phenomenon does, however, point to is the true nature of the disturbing legacy of the Rupert Murdoch era, which is not to be found in determinate infractions such as paid news, corporate interference or privacy invasion (which proved to be Murdoch’s nemesis), as much as in a more insidious transmutation of the ecosystem itself.
The making of an ecosystem
The media that surrounds us like virtual reality today is a creation of the last three decades. It was as recently as the 1980s that the media, spurred by technology and deregulation, began to turn into the behemoth it is now. The unprecedented expansion was accompanied by a simultaneous shrinking of ownership, with control passing into the hands of a few transnational corporations. Similarly, in India, even as the media burgeoned to include 840 registered channels (300 of them for news and current affairs) and 82,000 registered publications (14,000 daily newspapers), the scene came to be monopolised by a dozen or so big players.
While the potential abuse of such concentration of power is immense, other significant issues are the effects of corporatisation, including a standardisation of content, a conjoining of entertainment and journalism under the broad heading of media, and an expanded reliance on advertising (The Indian advertising industry grew 25 times between 1976 and 1994, from Rs 1,160 million to Rs 30 billion).
These factors and the dominance of Rupert Murdoch – whose appetite for media acquisitions and aggressive application of the Ronald Reagan-Margaret Thatcher market orientation to the media made him the most influential representative of the times – caused the media to undergo a sharp metamorphosis.
The public purpose role of journalism, for instance, diminished in relation to a new imperative to entertain. Substantive issues gave way to glamour. The greed for advertising created an avidity for eyeballs – it also changed the perception of the reader from a citizen to a consumer.
This, then, is the environment within which the trend of media demagoguery can be understood.
The outrage industry
In their 2013 book, The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media And The New Incivility, Jeffrey M Berry and Sarah Sobieraj proposed that political polemics had become a business, one they termed the outrage industry.
Individual enterprises, ranging from enormous media empires to lone bloggers have collectively generated political mudslinging on a scale unprecedented in American history with a view to attracting viewers, listeners, readers, voters, members or donors by providing compelling political shows or stories, the common denominator for “compelling” in politics being what makes you angry…
Using the term “outrage” in reference to a particular form of political discourse involving the “mindful attempt to provoke an emotional response from the audience, usually in the form of anger, fear, or moral righteousness”, the authors go on to say:
“Outrage is often, but not always, accomplished through the use of categorical statements, exaggerations, and partial truths about opponents which may take the form of individuals, organizations, or entire communities of interest (e.g., progressives or conservatives) or circumstance (e.g., immigrants). Outrage sidesteps the messy nuances of complex political issues in favor of ad hominem attacks, overgeneralizations and dire forecasts of impending doom. Outrage is not so much a discussion as it is verbal competition, political conversation with a scorecard.”
Authoritarian atmosphere
In India, too, the last decade has witnessed the proliferation of vigilante moral policing groups, not unlike extremist groups staking out abortion clinics in the United States. We have seen the determined pursuit of sensationalism by the media, the leveraging of trivial statements into emotive controversies. We have seen the news give way to daily slugfests between politicians on primetime television. We have seen abusive trolls on the internet.
We have also seen the now routine aspersions of anti-nationalism, very similar to the Republican rhetoric that preceded the Trump phenomenon, according to Paul Krugman’s description in the New York Times about “racial dog whistles and suggestions that Democrats are un-American if not active traitors”.
A fear of physical threat (such as terrorism facilitated by disloyal leaders one would imagine) can trigger authoritarian tendencies in voters, claim US studies on conditions for the rise of totalitarian systems. This suggests that, regardless of the outcome of the current presidential race, Donald might by the first of many metaphorical Trumps, leaders who embody the classic authoritarian leadership style: "simple, powerful and punitive”
Clearly the hyper-commercialisation of the media has dramatically altered the American political landscape. In India, trapped as we are in an old analytical framework of caste, religion and ethnicity, we are still to understand how the business of anger has influenced and reshaped our politics and society.
