Are we living in the post-truth world?

Are we living in the post-truth world/Journalism in the post-truth world

Is truth really important?

Going back to basics what has always bothered me since childhood was whether ‘truth’ is important. Everybody will tell you vehemently that it is; every religion in the world has truth as one of its basics principles – I am not aware of a single religion that encourages lying and well most of the religions have stood the test of hundreds if  not thousands of years so perhaps truth IS important. Perhaps it is the very basis of civilization which is something I have realized only very recently. What shook my faith in truth in my teens and twenties was watching the prosperity of two of my  relatives; they had been born in poverty their father was poor but gradually by conning people big time, an art they learnt from their father, they built estates worth crores.  I may add that crore was a big number back then. They had occupied properties worth more than crores while we were going from bad to worse so much so that sometimes my father did not have the money to pay our school fees. It is not a story; a story leaves you with only so much impact but living inside a ‘story’ shakes you up. The very culmination of dishonesty of the family was when they occupied our land and it was with a heavy heart that my grandmother, a widow sent them a legal notice. It did not work however and the land is gone.  Truth was so alien to that family; the whole town knew them  and they were notorious as high level conmen. People criticized them behind their backs but no one dared repeat the words when they were around not because of any fear but because people respected them because they could con and earn big money! So moral of the story is my personal belief in ‘truth’ was shaken badly. Imagine if whole civilization started behaving this way what would happen. Perhaps in remote antiquity they realized this and without exception all cultures gave enormous importance to truth – that unfortunately is breaking down truth is the casualty.

What is post-truth?

The word that avant garde writers and journalists have invented for this phenomena is ‘post-truth’ world. There is no doubt that parts of the world are living in such a world which includes USA, UK in fact much of Europe, the rich Europe and literate India. Literate India alone is more in terms of numbers than the population of several countries combined. I was tempted to title this piece to make it look like our media is living in the post-truth world or the post-truth world has been built by media, really the mains stream media but that is not correct however the evidence that the world around us has become post-truth is most readily evident in how media functions these days.

How it used to be before post-truth

Back in late eighties while still in school I started writing for the local English newspaper. It was not a stroke of good luck but neither had I slogged for it –journalism I now realize was a passion for our family. By class sixth I used to read the whole paper including the classifieds. The written word was sacred to us as I am sure to many other Indians back then. Gradually I became addicted to news and discovered that my father was member of a magazine club which operated from his office. I used to go there and  gobble up all the magazines there while sitting in the canteen. No one doubted the written word back then; different magazines had the same set of facts on specific events. Journalists were poor but no one had heard of a ‘corrupt’ journalist at least not the man on the street. So when did it all change?

How it all began to  change

One day while going down to pick up the newspaper instead of the one paper I had grown up reading there was a new newspaper! It was pure horror for me. I flipped through the pages and noticed that the letters were much more neatly printed and instead of black and white there were coloured pictures! However the paper appeared ‘dense’ – it is difficult to describe perhaps it was because much more text had been crammed into a given space than I was accustomed to. Later however I realized that the difference was simply because the old paper was typeset by hand and the new one had a screen set by a computer. I pulled up the hawker the next day and he made all sorts of excuses. Since journalism was my passion I later tried to inquire in depth about his faux pas and well that is my personal mile marker for the shift in change of nature and spirit of  journalism from absolute truth gradually to post-truth and which later on brought us to the post-truth India we are living in right now. Well I missed on the details of the mile marker you must be saying here it is – the new paper had offered to bribe the hawkers big time with gifts ranging from table clock to a television if they could only seduce the readers away from their old papers. It was not something insignificant – it was the marketing department taking over or at least the beginning of the transition. Gradually my old paper died down maybe not exactly but after the change of management and change of premises that spirit left the paper. Now comes the deadly part and this is scary for me too because as I said earlier it was not a story I was actually inside the story; one of those relatives I mentioned earlier ‘bought’ the old paper I had learnt my journalism from!

How newspapers used to operate back then

Back in those days in the eighties certain very rich groups of companies owned the newspapers and allocated a certain budget to them – it was a kind of hobby for them perhaps, they never bothered about the paper unless a big amount was demanded by the editor for certain upgradations which was rare and put forth with great reluctance by the editor who used to be a very academic sort of man. It was to end though but so slowly one never noticed. I had a guru an old timer journalist who breathed and lived journalism – he quit just about the time these events occurred I was irritated with him but there was no place for such people in the new post-truth journalism which was just starting but was yet to reach its zenith.

How money crept into journalism

Perhaps selling news was an idea imported from the US or maybe the UK someone must have done some research on that and one day I will google it but a sea change had come over main stream media. Suddenly the marketing people became more important than reporters or photographers. Every square centimetre of space in the paper was pre-planned and sold with the help of marketing people. There were more adverts than news; it was not entirely new for me as I had read newspapers from UK sent in from there to British Council Library of which I was a very young member. They came in almost a fortnight late and they bored me greatly. They had many pages perhaps almost thirty six but most had adverts; Indian papers were entirely different they talked about issues that mattered whereas even at that early date the UK newspapers had started talking about movie stars and their love affairs and such in a big way. These were still taboo for respectable Indian papers.

Change finally comes

We have come a long way since then, even Hindi papers are full of frivolous news and articles; pages and pages of them; supplements are increasing and so is the frivolity. There is no need to describe what passes on as news in electronic media! Big question is why is this happening?  Question is big but the answer is simple news is being sold! News is getting modified to please the readership/viewers and nobody is trying to hide the fact. Big corporate houses, unscrupulous businessmen, builders, smugglers and criminals have their money invested in news. My journalism guru saw the future, he was a bigger news junkie than I can ever hope to be and he disassociated himself from it all. The junkie that he was he read more than a dozen newspapers everyday till the time he died.

Corporate practices creeping into media

So essentially journalism transformed from a fraternity of highly educated, visionary or at the very least honest and educated people into a trade where wage slaves worked. Next step and the most sinister part was forming of pacts with politicians. Being politically inclined was not something new to journalism it was always there but somehow truth was never a casualty till this new wave I was talking about because lies never sold well but this time it was different as it was a post-truth world. People, the general populace was never and will never be rational or objective partially because they will never be allowed to become rational or objective by the government.  In a country like India where education is a luxury that is how it is going to remain for a long time to come. People don’t value education for some strange reason. Some families are exceptions but by and large making their children ‘highly educated’ is not the ambition of most Indians unless the education is sure to rake in money, big money!

Man on the street not being objective or rational and being a customer of the new media truth was first diluted and then almost killed; I said almost because to make a lie look like truth there has to be a semblance of truth too only then it will be a very effective lie. The process was very gradual for print media but news channels responded to it in a bigger faster way. When you work for purely commercial gains and big gains you become blind, ruthless and reckless. I saw it in the behaviour of some of my relatives connected with building trade and in one specific incident recently where one of my aunt’s tenants first occupied her property and then started demolishing it endangering our house since it was on top of that property; when we approached the authorities they tried to respond but could not it later surfaced that one of the relatives of a senior leader of ruling party was thwarting government agencies from performing their duties. We were stunned to see him surface when the dispute started, we were afraid, we were shocked we entreated the man we literally begged him but he supported the errant tenant fully and we could make out that he had been paid well and was afraid that if we did not co-operate he would have to return the money. I dug my heels in and did not take back my complaints as he asked me to do he threatened me with dire consequences but somehow I stuck to my stand; we were all afraid for months we still are but moral of the story is that the said relative was absolutely blinded by money he feared no one not even the police who were on the scene and watched helplessly. Imagine if media houses are manned by such people what kind of truth would you expect? The same passion drives both earning money fast and lots of it.

Living in the zenith of post-truth world/Radiatapes

We are living as I said earlier in the zenith of post-truth world. Media houses chaired by monied people are working in cahoots with politicians both from ruling party and the opposition and are controlling the narrative. One may argue that is it plain speculation and that no one has proof that media houses are actually allowing corporate and politicians to influence them to them there is a one word answer – Radiagate. I do not need to tell you what it was – it was a nightmare for the country. A nightmare which the man in the street is not really bothered about because very few people if anyone in India or at least in my part of the world has the patience to go through the transcript of the long long and the very long conversations in the tapes. Main stream media was in absolute denial mode about the tapes not even allowing the R of Radiatapes to leak out but it gradually did tumble out; for me personally it was a horror I will probably never be free to think how deep was the nexus between star journalists, corporate houses and politicians and yes the high profile go-betweens. Post Radiatapes there should not be even a shade of doubt that we are in a post-truth India.

Star journalists these days have started living on either side of a Berlin wall like structure. Both factions can be grouped for sake of simplicity into ‘left’ and ‘right’ and they do not want to hear the other side. Both sides are pushing their own narratives which is scary enough but what is more scary is that this rivalry has come onboard social media mainly twitter which has become a battlefield. In this gigantic clash of egos of star journalist alongside their political associates truth has become a casualty. What is even more scary is that ‘twitteratti’ have become camp followers heaping the tweeters of the opposite faction with choicest of abuses. No one is bothered about the truth. No faction is even concerned with the truth they are just there to continue the narrative which they think suits their commercial needs which stems from what they perceive to be their loyal viewers. I must hastily add that no one individual is to blame for this. It is a juggernaut no one has a power over and it is a worldwide phenomena really.

Burning examples of the post-truth world

Take for example the Dadri lynching case in which one Akhlaq was killed on suspicion of killing cows for beef by a mob. The two rival factions of media houses and star journos either blamed the mob or Akhlaq but till date it is not clear whether the meat stored in the refrigerator was beef or mutton. No journalist seemed to have been interested in that and till date no one has conclusively proved what was the nature of stored meat. Star journos were shouting their heart out that Akhlaq was not a cow killer while the other faction of journos sitting hundreds if not thousands of kilometres away from Dadri along with their twitter camp followers said with conviction that Akhlaq had slaughtered the cow. This is just one of the examples of post-truth world we are living in right now.

A more recent incident that comes to mind is slapping of a girl student by the police for meeting up with a boy student belonging to another religion. The video is clear, no one is saying it is doctored still the narrative being built upon and around the incident is whether the girl should have an affair with a boy of another religion or not. The two factions are at it with the vengeance both on news channels and on social media. Ideally the question would have been whether the police were justified in slapping the helpless girl who is legally adult for meeting with a boy also legally adult and the answer would simply have been no!  The comments below the tweet containing video by star journos are really horrific where the two factions of twitteratti have inter alia condemned the police demanding that they be punished, some cheering the action of the lady cop and demanding promotions and prizes for the police team saying ‘Bahut accha kiya!’ (Well done police!) What horrifies me most is thinking how this post-truth thing will pan out around the elections in 2019!

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