Does the media need a watchdog?

More than a month has passed since Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders were shown to receive what resemble bribes. The images appear in a sting operation conducted by Narada News and features TMC members of Parliament. TMC candidates in the ongoing assembly elections also appear in the videos that were serially released. The exposé has stirred the political pot in West Bengal, but has not resulted in any casualty yet.

It is a hassle to comment on the record of the current government in terms of bringing about ‘poriborton’ or change – the buzzword that catapulted the TMC to power in the historic 2011 elections. The difficulty is due the to negative bias against the TMC and the government that it leads in a hostile media. But unfortunately, change is very evident in political reaction to a sting operation which has suggested grand corruption.

Operation West End carried out by Tehelka in 2001 led to resignations of then Bharatiya Janata Party president Bangaru Laxman (later convicted), Samata Party president Jaya Jaitley and defense minister George Fernandes. It must be remembered that even the TMC had withdrawn support from the central government citing the sting operation.

Prevalent confidence in the news media had impressed upon the public that the contents of the tape were authentic unless proved otherwise. It was this irrefutability of ‘seeing is believing’ that forced the resignations. Political reaction to damning charges of corruption has undergone a sea change.  For once at least, the swagger of an accused politician cannot be attributed to impropriety. Rampant misuse of technology, particularly by the news media, has given rise to a convincing alibi for the accused.

TMC has defended itself against the sting operation by putting forward three arguments. The first is the oft-repeated ‘political conspiracy’ line of reasoning, which can hardly draw any new commentary. But the other two are in keeping with the deteriorated contexts of news production and news verification.

In its defense the TMC has claimed that

(a) the videos released by Narada News are ‘doctored’ and that

(b) even if the videos are genuine then the money received is donation for the party fund.

It must be mentioned here that the TMC, so far, has not produced any accounting document that substantiates the “donation” claim.  Nevertheless, the TMC has publicly though not officially levelled two charges against Narada News:

(a) production of news content through ‘doctoring’ and

(b) lack of verification of the context in which big sums of money are shown to exchange hands.

If such arguments seem less ridiculous than they sound, then the blame rests squarely on the news media. There is enough evidence to demonstrate that both accusations leveled by the TMC are not baseless. For instance, it is now established that the videos which made it seem that Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar had raised “seditious” slogans on the university campus were doctored. Again, it is now proved that reports about the drunkenness of a policeman in a New Delhi metro train were unverified and false. The policeman was out of sorts not because of drunkenness but because he had suffered a stroke.

Such criminal coverage has raised doubt in the public mind about the genuineness of investigative footage. A betrayed public has begun to assume ‘fake until proven genuine’ and not vice versa. This is dangerous for the very survival of investigative journalism. A watchdog is no longer useful if its credibility is under scrutiny.

The first step towards restoration of public faith in the news media will have to be exhibition of intent and ability which is becoming of the fourth pillar of democracy. However, that cannot be enough since the media ecosystem has undergone a complete transformation. Any individual with a mobile phone is a reporter today. The massive volume of data generated on the internet means that editorial desks in the news industry have little control over sporadic networks of information dissemination.

It is imperative therefore that the public has the ability to make distinctions, at least rudimentary ones, between manipulated images and non-manipulated ones. For instance, blurs and lip-sync errors are easy to detect with the naked eye. Sudden dips or changes in the texture of the background sound are not impossible to detect either. Availability of softwares and online tools will also foster a ‘check it yourself’ culture with regard to the authenticity of footage.

If the news media acts cautiously then the public could play a responsible second fiddle much like Watson or our very own Ajit. But the problem is the super sleuths today are blindly following their assistants without double-checks and triple-checks. The real loss here is to the credibility of the news media. Reputations that have been built over decades are being chipped away at with regularity and in just a few years of social media, we are seeing media monoliths lose their stature. The big question is, though, can you trust the public to get it right every time?