Why did the Indian media give a miss to the damning Australian documentary on Adani Group?

On October 2, the Australian national broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) showcased a documentary on the Adani Group. The channel’s Four Corner team had investigated the financial and environment crimes allegedly committed by the group. ABC, while releasing the documentary, said, “While attempting to film and gather information about Adani’s operations, the Four Corners team had their cameras shut down, their footage deleted and were questioned for hours by police.”

While the documentary is being talked about on social media, Big Media in India largely chose to ignore it. (While The New Indian Express, The Economic Times, The Tribune and Business Standard carried an IANS copy on October 3, The Indian Express carried a report about the Four Corner’s team being questioned by the Gujarat Police for nearly five hours on October 4.)

It is important to note here that there are precedents when the Indian media has picked up such news breaks in the international media, leading to serious ramifications for the parties involved. In 1987, for instance, a Swedish radio channel alleged that a company had bribed top Indian politicians and defence personnel to secure the Bofors contract. This newsbreak was followed up by the Indian media and it shook the Rajiv Gandhi government in the late 1980s.

In 2005, Congress leader K Natwar Singh was forced to resign as the External Affairs Minister of the United Progressive Alliance government after the findings of the Paul Volcker committee report were reported by the media. The committee was formed in 2004 by United Nations to investigate the administration and management of the Oil-for-Food programme in Iraq. The report alleged that Singh and his son received kickbacks when he was part of the opposition delegation in 2001.

This has not been the trend, though, when it comes to stories on the Gautam Adani Group. In August, The Guardian published an “exclusive” story on alleged financial frauds by the group. The story claimed, with documentary evidence, that the Adani Group allegedly siphoned off up to Rs 1,500 crore through shell enterprises controlled by the chairman and founder Gautam Adani’s elder brother, Vinod Adani. Newslaundry had pointed out then how the Indian media chose to ignore The Guardian‘s “exclusive” story.

You can watch the ABC report here and decide whether this should have been deemed newsworthy by Big Media, especially the financial press.

Update: This short has been updated to reflect the stories carried by TNIE, ET, BS, IE and The Tribune.