Congress old hand at media manipulation By Praveen Patil on July 20, 2013 17 Print email Tags: Congress, Opposition, Youth Congress, Vidya Charan Shukla, Emergency 1975, censorship on Press, Information & Broadcasting Minister Manish Tiwari Congress old hand at media manipulation “Get her (Hema Malini). I want her here. This is an order!” VC Shukla had reportedly barked when told that the reigning screen goddess was not available for a dance performance in Delhi during the National Awards function. This is how Shukla functioned, he was the overlord of the spineless newspaper industry and the ever vulnerable film industry. His control was brutal and efficient, he knew how to bend everyone to his whims and fancies. For instance, when the legendary playback singer, Kishore Kumar, failed to appear at the annual Youth Congress music show in Delhi, his songs were banned on radio and TV. Vidya Charan Shukla was a true fascist in the fullest sense like his leader Sanjay Gandhi. Earlier Indira Gandhi had replaced the affable IK Gujral with Shukla as the Information & Broadcasting Minister in order to oversee the Press censorship. VC Shukla took charge of I&B Ministry at the stroke of noon on June 28, 1975 and he did not waste any time at all. He called for a meeting of newspaper owners and editors just fours hours later to impose draconian censorship on the Press. Among others, S Mulgaoker of The Indian Express, George Verghese of The Hindustan Times, Girilal Jain of The Times of India, Surinder Nihal Singh of The Statesman and Vishwanath of Patriot attended that fateful meeting. Emergency, Congress and media poodles As it has been famously quoted later, “When asked to bend, they (news media) crawled” for Vidya Charan Shukla. KK Birla, for instance, put up a special notification on the notice board at The Hindustan Times which expressly asked its employees to obey the emergency “in letter and spirit”. In most newspapers, there was double censorship – one imposed by the Government and the other, more stifling, self-imposed censorship. Communist-backed labour unions at the newspapers where used to ensure that the emergency was fully implemented. When news, features and articles were sent down for composing, the compositors would keep an eye on any adverse material and tip off the already Indira-compliant management. When newspapers like The Indian Express or Statesman resisted the Government’s censorship, they were dealt a body blow by blocking all Central, State Government and PSU advertisements. For instance, the ad revenues of Statesman fell from 9 lakh to a mere 36,000 rupees after such a blockade in August 1975. The other great Shukla brainchild was the merger of all the four news agencies (PTI, UNI, Samachar Bharati and Hindustan Samachar) into one ‘Samachar’ agency so that effective control of news could be exercised by the I&B Ministry. Opposition leaders, most importantly JP, had become pariah in the news media. Every news item was twisted to make it into a Congress-praising, Opposition-humiliating feature. Nobody in India believed the news peddlers then, as words began to acquire meanings contrary to those given in dictionary. Emergency years brought India together in defence of democracy Four decades later, Indians are having a sense of déjà vu. “Anna Hazare himself is involved in several cases of corruption!” was the stunningly ludicrous statement that the Congress spokesperson had made in 2012 during the height of anti-corruption movement in India. He had to later tender an unconditional apology to the Gandhian crusader. In the normal course of events, any political party would have reprimanded such a blunder, but in the Congress things work in a completely opposite direction. In Manish Tiwari, Congress had discovered a worthy successor to VC Shukla’s mantle of the I&B Ministry. On October 28, 2012, the Congress-led UPA Government, reeling under tremendous onslaught from all sides decided to ease out Ambika Soni and replace her with Manish Tiwari as the new Information and Broadcasting Minister. Since then, he has continuously innovated to keep adverse news media reporting at minimum levels. He has used the classic carrot and stick method effectively. Immediately after assuming office, he warned the media to show “due responsibility and maturity”. He then dangled the carrot of “self-regulation” when the Opposition demanded curtailing of paid media. Next he warned of cable-cartelisation methods to propagate “certain news channels that are adverse towards the Government”. His biggest brainwave till date has been hundreds of crores of ad spend by the UPA Government that has made the news media totally subservient. When asked to bend, these mediawallahs are once again crawling. Bharat ke is Nirman pe shaq hai mera On Monday, every news channel in town was debating just one topic. About six top-notch editors, nine top columnists and political commentators and assorted spokespersons were participating in various television studio debates. Their topic of debate was not any pressing concern that India is facing today. It was not about the falling Rupee or the ordinance route taken by the UPA bypassing Parliament, it was not even about the humungous expenditure that the proposed FSB would accrue to the exchequer. The topic of such a big debate was Narendra Modi’s “secular burqa” comment in his Pune speech. The entire Indian news media was concentrating on just one “burqa” comment in order to convert one political leader into a pariah – it was 1975 all over again. Has Congress left the Emergency mentality behind? The shamelessness of Indian news media is hitting a new nadir with each passing day. They are willing to give limitless coverage to such obvious fake-traps as a suddenly sprung up satire website on Modi playing victimhood. But none of them even mention in passing about the colossal tragedy of Uttarakhand and the lapses of the State Congress Government. The same news media which has been hounding not just the CM but the entire State of Gujarat for more than a decade for a thousand deaths in 2002, is maintaining deathly silence on a tragedy that is bigger by ten folds! This is how much Indian media has become Congress compliant despite no emergency or draconian censorship laws. When news organisations are all making huge loses and the vast pie of the Government advertisements are one of the best sources of revenue, neutrality becomes an unaffordable luxury. When a system starts to drown in its own propaganda, it loses its own innate sense of reality. This is what happened in 1975, when Indira Gandhi and the news-media-intellectual class fell into their own propaganda traps and declared a General Election after 19 months of Emergency. Everybody in the system were so convinced of the Congress’s victory that when the actual defeat came, it was mind-numbingly painful. On March 13, 1977, days before the Emergency was officially lifted, the film industry revolted against the dictatorial I&B Ministry. The Anand brothers (Dev, Vijay and Chetan) led this agitation against the Government and it was supported by Shatrughan Sinha and Pran among others in a very successful rally at Juhu-Vile Parle grounds. The impact of this rally was felt far and wide — in the I&B Minister’s constituency, cinema houses which were earlier supporting Congress became election offices for the Janata Party. When Vidya Charan Shukla lost the 1977 election at Raipur by a big margin, Bombay and the film industry celebrated with scores of victory parties. In this is a history lesson for the manipulative Manish Tiwari and his media cohorts. We are heading for a 1977- like wave of elections and no amount of secular “burqas” can cover the non-governance of a singularly corrupt UPA regime.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 13:40:00 +0000
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