TOI and the Mystery of the Missing Minister

That Narendra Modi is a no-nonsense Prime Minister is hardly a secret. His paternalistic approach to his cabinet is equally well-documented. So it came as a surprise when The Times of India (TOI), a paper that makes the grand proclamation “Let Truth Prevail”, ran a story broaching these very points and raised more questions than answers.

The article appeared on page 13 of the Delhi edition of TOI under the headline “Narendra Modi pulls up minister for gifts to journalists”. The headline itself is quite juicy, coming, as it does, mere months after the recent Lok Sabha elections that were plagued by paid news controversies. So why would such a story end up ignominiously buried on page 13 amongst announcements for government tenders? The answer to that is reasonably simple – had the journalist concerned not written anything beyond the headline, the story would hardly have been any more (or less) informative. Sample this first para:

A damp squib as far as today’s age of damning journalistic revelations go – no mention about anything nefarious, no mention of the name of the minister – not even a clue in the form of which portfolio he handles. In fact, the reasons Modi likes him so much provide the most tangible clues as to who the mystery minister is. Luckily for us, the article is only 169 words long so they have to cut to the chase soon, right? Wrong!

The rest of the article brings us no closer to the identity of the minister in question – all we learn is that “the gifts were rather inexpensive and would have been politically kosher in earlier times” and that Modi being a “hard task master” still came down hard on the minister. Points that do less to highlight the serious ethical implications of politicians doling out freebies to journalists and more to reinforce the point that it doesn’t matter if you “enjoy the trust of Prime Minister Narendra Modi” because Mr. Modi will not tolerate any indiscretion.

Those more charitable than I am might defend TOI protecting the minister’s identity, but even they would probably do a double take were they to know that Business Standard already carried a report on the minister’s actions where they named him as Piyush Goyal.

That being the case, and given that the story carries little to no journalistic impact, the article begins to look less like news and more like a public relations exercise aimed at cementing Modi’s desired image – that of a strict headmaster who will not hesitate to rebuke even his favourite students.

Since the story wasn’t credited to a journalist but to the Times News Network (TNN) instead, we decided to don our detective hats, bust out our tobacco pipes and do some sleuthing to find the person who filed it. What we found instead was that TNN was an entity that is evidently as nameless as it is faceless. When we contacted the Bureau Chief responsible for the filing of the story, we were told that it was a “collaborative effort” by his team. That, we were told with more than a slight amount of irritation, is how these things work.

Apart from him stonewalling us, what really boggled the mind was that in a major newspaper bureau, entire teams, we were to believe, collaborated on a 169-word story with just one actual nugget of news. That’s either an example of phenomenal teamwork and exceptional application of management theory or…that filing stories under the TNN banner helps journalists avoid responsibility for glaring shortcomings in a story – it affords them plausible deniability. This is why Newslaundry has me writing this piece under my actual name and not under the banner of “NL Team”, because if this article is rubbish, you deserve to have a name and a face to ascribe to it. It’s about transparency in an age where the credibility of news is being questioned at every turn and the fact that a bureau chief prefers to hide behind the TNN banner rather than face any questions or responsibility doesn’t inspire faith in the motive behind carrying such a thoroughly neutered article.