Azad
“Fake News”. “Fake news channels!” “Fake media!”
Much before President Trump made it popular, a small section in Indian Right wing had started talking about how Indian Media was not representing them and/or not showing the complete picture. But we can safely say that Donald Trump was the one who successfully attracted attention towards Global Media bias. Not only did he popularize it, he also convinced people to support him around the issue. As an outsider, I have always had this doubt about why does nobody in the US media ever praise Donald Trump? Is he really that bad? Is the US really not doing that well? Surely there must be at least something right that he must have done! But only place where I get to read anything good about him is in far right groups on reddit and they very quickly veer off from objectivity.
There are no rights or wrongs in the world or in the words of the great Charlie Kelly, “The good of the scorpion is not the good of the frog, yes?”. As an Indian, I neither love nor hate Donald Trump. I just want to see or read about him objectively. I also want to understand everything on my own terms. I want to form my own opinions and not let a late night talk show host tell me what to think about something or somebody. Here I will make a presumption that most of you reading this would want the same. But how did we reach here?
Much before anybody else, Romans understood the power of giving food for thought to their masses. They were the first masters of propaganda, in recorded history atleast. First newspaper was a clay tablet and was published around 131 BCE. It contained notices to officials and a few public proclamations. They called it ‘Acta Diurna’ or Daily acts/news. Soon, they started publishing about legal proceedings, price of grains, births, deaths, marriages and even astrology. It continued in this form till Julius Caesar understood and harnessed true power of the Acta. Legend says that Caesar had gone on a campaign in Gaul (present day Germany) without the express permission of Roman senate and this had lead to fierce opposition and calls of arrest from his rival Pompey. He realised that the public opinion on Gallic war is divided and he decided to talk to the masses directly. He published Acta Diurna of his war time bravery, strategy, populist measures and vision for Rome; and started pushing it in public places. This swung public support in his favour and gave him an edge over his rival Pompey who had the support of Roman senators and twice the size of army. After the civil war, he formalised the Acta Diurna and regularized it. He used the Acta to involve his citizens in matters of polity and as an effective PR tool. These were written on Stone or Metal tablets and posted on various major communion centers. Later, the fabled Roman postal system, Circus Publicus, started sending these Acta Diurnas to various parts of Roman empire. Wealthy citizens, governors and other officials had scribes, who would be sent to copy the News for them. This was one of the various ways used by the Romans to govern. This was also the first recorded institutional use of Media by a Government to change public opinion.
Similar experiments were conducted by the Chinese in 8th-9th centuries. But the Chinese did not reach this level of finesse before going through some brute force measures of their own. In 213, BC Emperor Shi Huangdi ordered burning of books of poetry, history and philosophy as these were considered dangerous to his authority. Burial of 460 scholars was carried out in a bid to contain opposing voices and as a warning. This, by many intellectuals, is considered first act of Chinese censorship.
Then came the colonial powers. They took this a step ahead and understood its true power. A popular example is shown in the movie The King’s Speech, where King George VI has to overcome his stammering problem to address the British colonies on the new medium, Radio. This was the same time when Indian revolutionaries were writing and publishing ‘seditious’ articles, books and magazines which would be promptly banned. It all started with The Censorship of the Press Act, 1799 (Everything was to be submitted for Pre-censorship to the Secretary to the Government), and the noose kept on being tightened by Vernacular Press Act, 1878 (enacted to curtail the freedom of the Indian-languages’ press), Indian Newspaper Act, 1908 (Magistrates were empowered to confiscate printing press, property connected to of newspapers, which published objectionable materials serving as incitement to murder or acts of violence), Indian Press (Emergency Powers) Act, 1931 (Act gave sweeping powers to provincial governments to suppress propaganda for Civil Disobedience Movement) were just few of the acts passed by the Colonial British Government to keep the power of Media under their control. (Source)
“The amount of inflammable material in all the advanced countries of the world is increasing so speedily, and the conflagration is so clearly spreading to most Asian countries, which only yesterday were in a state of deep slumber, that the intensification of international bourgeois reaction and the aggravation of every single national revolution are absolutely inevitable.” – Lenin
In the archives of the British Library are 2800 documents, books, pamphlets that were banned due to ‘seditious nature’ between 1900 to 1947 in India itself. Indian revolutionaries working in America, UK and Europe would get these material published and send it in false bottoms, cargo ships etc. to India where their brothers in arms would smuggle and distribute it further ahead. They had to fear the draconian ‘Sea customs act of 1878’ before undertaking any such venture. Copy of Savarkar’s ‘The Indian war of Independence’ was published partly in France, Germany and Holland. Similarly, Gadar party in USA was active in publishing and sending their ideas to India where revolutionaries from Bengal, Maharashtra, Punjab and other parts were connected through an underground network.
Control on media meant control on the narrative, at home and abroad. Allies were conducting their own experiments. Rockefeller foundation , in 1937, started funding a study to find effects of new mass media on society, especially, Radio. And what were the Nazis doing? They were experimenting with Television broadcasts for the Olympics. In 1939, Germans came up with Büro Concordia. Target was to get into French, British and other homes and appear to come from within those nations. Allies caught on to it and kick-started their own machinery to spread propaganda in German homes.
This is, in my opinion, when imperial nations started perfecting modern media control. It immediately came to light after World War II. War against communism is a classic example of how a bogey was raised beyond natural threat to rally American and British people into supporting genocides and regime changes. In 1953, Iranian newspapers regularly published news about the then Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh being a bad Muslim. Grandson of Ted Roosevelt, Kermit, was given the charge of CIA ops in Iran and his first move was to give obscene amounts of money to Newspaper editors to publish anti-government news. When proven wrong, a retraction would be promptly published on page 16 but the damage would have been done. A democratically elected government was toppled and the region has never been the same since. Similarly, in 1954 media was used by US to topple Jacabo Arbenz’s government just to replace him with Augusto Pinochet which lead to a death of 200,000 people. No wonder when Fidel Castro met Che Guevarra for the first time in Mexico, they unanimously decided that they will clamp down and control media to such an extent that no external force will be able to use it. This ofcourse meant no freedom of press in the country but can you blame them? Throughout Latin America governments would be toppled, coups sponsored and the first step would always be Media management. A slew of unfavourable reports published in local media using the ancient Indian tenet of ‘Saam, Daam, Dand, Bhed’ being step one almost always. Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, you name it and you will find media being used to disrupt the natural process everywhere. Similar trajectory was taken in Cambodia, Vietnam and Korea. Makes you wonder if this is the true utility of media and the good that we get a spillover.
USSR, in the meanwhile, was experimenting with radio broadcasts to control its population and limit the damage done by BBC Radio and Vatican radio. which wanted to play upon the fact that Soviets were not an homogeneous society. Individual Soviet minorities were targeted through these broadcasts to subtly sow the seeds of discontent and later disruption of territorial integrity. These western broadcasts were particularly antagonistic to the Soviets as they feared the rise in home grown terrorists. While movies like “Red Nightmare” were actively shown to students in the west to ‘educate’ them about the ills of Communism, Soviets had their own ways to show their own cultural and economic supremacy to their own population. The USSR had many international Radio stations operating from within its territory. They also actively used soft power to create a sense of love and awe for Mother Russia using their rich literary heritage. Numerous book festivals were organized in countries like India where translated books were sold at subsidized costs to familiarize populace of Russian culture. Any Indian kid growing up in 70’s, 80’s or even 90’s will tell you his or her familiarity with tales having ‘Babushka’, an soldier fighting ghosts or ‘Baba Yaga’ before John Wick made it famous. Tolstoy, Chekhov and Russian Folk tales were pretty famous in India.
Gone are the days when Media used to be just books, magazines, newspapers and radio which were by and large centralized or could be controlled by a central authority, for example, censor boards. Today everything is media. Home grown Tiktok and Instagram influencers paid to peddle something or the other will tell you that. Movies, Music, Television, Internet, everything is media today and it is used to shape your our opinion. It is exactly as preferred by the spooks of second world war wherein the idea was to keep the origin of news a secret. Hypothetically, if you live in US and are friends with six people who head these corporations, you have influence over 90% of media. In 2010, the Big 6 had the revenue of $275.9 Billion with tentacles in Europe, Asia and Australia. And this is not a new problem by any means.
Our Job is to give people not what they want but what we decide they ought to have. – Richard Salant (Former President, CBS News)
During the gulf war, AP journalists were told to comb through countless hours of video footage to find one where they could see soldiers laughing. A message had to be given to the American public that the war was going good. Morale was high. Similarly when an Israeli soldier killed a Palestinian boy without any reason, the entire story was quashed. When an Islamic separatist terrorist organization carried out a terrorist strike in Xinjiang province of China in 2014, CNN very curiously reported ‘Knife-wielding attackers kill 29, injure 130 at China train station‘. Since when did a planned attack is not called terrorist activity but anything else? This has been a constant trend. The fact that Xinjiang is home to 40% of natural resources of present day China is something to ponder upon as well.
Back home, with the expose of Radia tapes which were recorded between 2007-2009, entire nexus between power brokers, ministers in the government and journalists came out. High-profile journos like Barkha Dutt were caught red handed trying to act as middlemen in a high profile 2G case while other High flyers like Vir Sanghvi was caught saying,
“So I will link it to the election verdict. The fact that there has been so much Narega, that Sonia has committed to including everybody, that it should be inclusive growth. It shouldn’t just benefit the few fat cats. It shouldn’t be cronyism. It shouldn’t be arbitrary. That’s how the message for this five years of Manmohan Singh should be-that you have to put an end to this kind of allocations of scarce resources on the basis of corruption and arbitrariness at the cost of the country, otherwise the country will not forgive you. “
You can hear the entire conversation as leaked by Outlook here.
This brings us to the question, can we trust the media today? Let us assume, for naivete’s sake, that media is unbiased. But the current model is such wherein they are dependent on our clicks and views. To enhance them, sensationalism is frequently used as a tool and bizarre events are pushed in the name of news to unsuspecting masses. We are consistently inundated with doomsday predictions from aliens attacking to economy crashing and sectarian violence. What if I tell you I am okay with it? Then what am I not okay with? Biased media. What? Is it even true for today’s day and age? Sadly, yes. In the Indian context, every media house has a preference. While, as human beings, you cannot rule out ideological preferences, there is a big monetary influence as well. The pro and anti governmental news don’t depend on policy alone, they also depend on funding sources. If you ask me, I would prefer sites which clearly tell you that they have a right leaning structure than anybody who claims to be neutral but shows the world through left tinted glass.
In all, I have decided to go in one of the two ways. First would be to ignore all news and enjoy the bubble that comes with it while the second would be to subscribe to all points of views and try to infer the truth myself. Truth be told, the first way works for me better these days. I leave it upto you, o wise reader, to devise your own ways or form your own opinion.
