The Murdoch Syndrome

Till the phone hacking scandal broke out, Rupert Murdoch was dominating the global media space. The disgrace came suddenly and took away all the reputation he had acquired through right and wrong means. Finally the man had bow down his head and accept a heart quake. For years, his group has been doing all the dirty work to capture world eyeballs. Unfortunately they couldn't sustain their model of media dominance. The verdict is out, Murudoch is clearly out of the good books of the public and Government corridors atleast for the time being.

Robert Cohen writes in The Deccan Chronicle on 20 July 2011

Peter Oborne, writing in the conservative Daily Telegraph, recently suggested that the Conservative British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was not merely in a mess, he “is in a sewer”. That seems about right. Cameron lost it over Rupert Murdoch. He showed staggering lack of judgement in hiring Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor, as his first director of communications at Downing Street, a hubristic decision made against the best advice and apparently with a dual aim: to show he was not an old Etonian “toff” and to get favourable treatment from the 37 per cent of the British print media owned by Murdoch.

He then spent a fair chunk of time during his first year in office in 26 meetings with various News Corp honchos, including Rebekah Brooks, who was arrested by the British police on July 17. Brooks happened to be part of the Chipping Norton set, well described by Oborne as “an incestuous collection of louche, affluent, power-hungry and amoral Londoners, located in and around the Prime Minister’s Oxfordshire constituency”.

When I was at Oxford University many decades ago, the surrounding countryside was still just that — countryside and a delight. That was before the masters of the universe starting acquiring their Cotswold gems as weekend homes and gentrification went into overdrive, complete with helipads, of course. Brooks and her husband live a few miles from Cameron’s constituency home. Matthew Freud, the public relations guru married to Elisabeth Murdoch, also has a weekend home in the area. Chipping Norton was the limestone British Camelot. Who would have dreamt it?

Cameron’s judgment is in serious question. His coalition’s earlier green light for News Corp.’s acquisition of the 61 per cent of British Sky Broadcasting that it does not own — a deal now aborted — demands further scrutiny. It is hard to resist the impression that Cameron was completely in the thrall of Brooks, Murdoch and his son James Murdoch. I had thought there was more to the Prime Minister than slickness.

But it is not only Cameron who is in the sewer. The culture of the United Kingdom as a whole has been reeking pungently of late — its venal, voyeuristic, reality-show-obsessed, me-me-me nature thrust under the magnifying glass by revelations about what the tabloid press would do to satisfy the prurience of its readers, hacking into phones at any price, even the phone of a 13-year-old murdered girl. It may be debated to what degree Murdoch created this culture, or reinforced it, through his ruthless, no-holds-barred approach to journalism — and its ultimate deviation into criminal activity.

Certainly he had a significant role. The police and members of Parliament were compromised. But would Western societies, including the United States, be betraying these same characteristics — obsession with celebrities (and especially their sex lives); blurring of the lines between news and entertainment; extreme self-indulgence (I am my Facebook Wall); a dearth of political principle and a surfeit of political attraction to money — without Murdoch?

I suspect they would.
The Murdoch story is a cautionary tale for our times that goes well beyond the now-compromised fortunes of News Corp.
The United States, after all, has been doing its own good impression of life in the political sewers recently. Republican ideologues with no notion of the national interest do their brinkmanship number as the country hovers near an unthinkable default. The only thought in their heads seems to be: How will all this play next year in the election and how can we hurt US President Barack Obama without being blamed for it?

Is the calculation of these Republicans that different from Cameron’s? It’s all about the next news cycle, and spin, and ego, and where the money for political campaigns is, and a total absence of judgment. What it’s not about is responsibility and the commonweal.

Murdoch is a flawed genius whose very ruthlessness has now led him to his comeuppance. He knew, more viscerally than anyone, what postmodern societies wanted to satisfy their twisted appetites and he provided that material in all its gaudiness. I don’t think he created those appetites. But he sure fed them.

Something deeply insidious and corrupt is at work that has been on view in both Britain and the United States. It involves the takeover of politics by money and spin and massaged images and privileged coteries. It is the death of statesmanship.

Murdoch’s Fox News has played a big role. But all the major technological and other forces in Western societies are pushing towards polarisation. Google is profiling you through your searches and directs you to the material most likely to reinforce your world view and ideology. Increasingly, we live in our political comfort zone. Debate and dialogue die. The sordid dance of Cameron and Murdoch has ended up revealing deep flaws in the British society that are also deep problems in Western societies as a whole. Will the two men recover? Cameron is much younger and so in theory he should be able to claw his way out of the sewer. But I’m not sure he will get over this. Murdoch has more backbone and so a better chance, even at this late stage.

Truth Infront of the Idiot Box

The reality shows are getting dirty. For the sake of fame, people are willing to fool themselves infront of the television cameras which are telecasted across the world.

Amrit Dhilion writes in The Times of India ( 3 August 2009)

As someone who believes we should take our secrets to the grave, i watched 'Sach Ka Saamna' with appalled fascination and a queasy stomach. The
participants bare their souls, admitting their misdeeds, betrayals, lusts, envy, hatred and evil thoughts in front of millions.

Most of us recoil from confronting such stuff even in the privacy of our own minds, wincing in pain if we go anywhere near those dark, deep, secrets because who, among us, has never done, or thought something, to be ashamed of? It is difficult to fathom what prompts the participants to reveal intimate secrets that horrify their loved ones, sitting opposite them, eyes wide open with disbelief.

Maybe fame or the prize money on offer. But even in these celebrity-obsessed and materialistic times, most people do not go around destroying precious, lifelong relationships in pursuit of fame and Mammon. Perhaps it's the urge to confess. Few things, apart from a long massage, are guaranteed to make you feel as light, refreshed and at peace with yourself as a good confession. Or, maybe, it's the thrill of playing with fire. A recent participant said that he had agreed to appear on the show for the 'excitement' of telling the truth.

The truth is indeed thrilling because it is more destructive than a thousand nuclear bombs. Its flames singe and burn. The Bible says ''the truth will set you free'' but it also unleashes utter devastation in our personal lives. Few relationships can survive the onslaught of truth, which is why i am firmly against too much of it. With the exception of three places our own minds, the courts and curriculum vitaes i'd say the less truth we have the better.

Who wants to hear what our wives, husbands, children, parents and friends really think of us? Who wants to know the crimes and transgressions committed by the people we cherish? Because truth has been overrated and elevated to a sacred principle, when people speak it, they feel little compunction about the suffering it causes. In fact, the only time people can go around breaking hearts and stabbing souls while feeling pious and self-righteous is when they are blabbering the truth. Uttering the truth is regarded as a moral licence to hurt.

But i can see how the thrill of revealing your innermost secrets could be intoxicating for some perverse individuals. You throw the dice and wait to see the results, to see the power you possess to shock and disappoint. Will the shattered best friend still love you after hearing that you slept with his wife? Will your daughter recover from the pain of hearing the lie detector proclaiming daddy to be a liar when you claim to have been a good father? The participants may have some obscure reasons for appearing on such shows but even more mysterious is why the people in their lives agree to their public humiliation. But i'm not wasting any sympathy on them. They have chosen to make spectacles of themselves.

The programme has shattered some of my illusions about India. I used to think, living in the UK some time ago, that two moral concepts shame and honour were disappearing there. There seemed little that people were not prepared to do. But, i used to think shame and honour were still alive in India where people were, in any case, culturally more reserved and private. This was a society where, to avoid shame and dishonour, you hid the truth even from your nearest and dearest. Yet here they are, unburdening themselves on national television.

As for what happens when they get home, God alone knows. If only the cameras would follow them home, we would see how the wife who told the world she wished her husband was better endowed sits down to rajma-chawal with him, and her in-laws.

Media in Crisis

Sixty seven 24x7 news channels in India more often create nuisance than feeding information. Its strategies to survive in the business clouds media ethics. Result of the fight for media survival is the loss of credibility. In most of the cases news channels breach their line of control and end up in messing up others lives. The sixty hour coverage of Mumbai shootout proved to be the final warning to the media. The Government of India is ready with a law to rein in the media during the crisis hours. All socially concerned people will welcome this decision but the government will be cautioned not to use its control to crush the required media freedom.

The information & broadcasting ministry has finally put in a draft after securing the green signal from the law ministry. The draft is an amendment of the cable television network rules 1994. After receiving inputs from other ministries and public the draft will be put into final implementation. Instead of allowing news channel to cover crisis situation freely an authorized officer will provide information with footages. This is sensible and should be implemented with adequate sincerity to provide information to the public.

The programme code proposed in rule 6(1)(o) forbids telecast which:
Contains live coverage of war, violent law and order situation or operations where security forces have to overcome terrorists or other hostile groups. However, with the approval of the authorized officer, such delayed carriage of live feed as may be specified may be permitted at its discretion.
Contains details of identity, number and status of hostages or information regarding the number of security personnel involved or the methods employed by them in a hostage situation.
Contains live-contact including live phone-in calls and interviews with victims or security personnel or other technical personnel involved or the perpetrators of crime,arson, violence while the violence or the criminal activity is in progress.
Contains coverage of operational details in respect of war or any other security operations except as disclosed by the authorized officer.

The News Broadcaster Association has the same set of rules to be imposed on its members. Apart from forbidding the live telecast of terrorist operations, interview with terrorists or victims near ones the proposed law prevents channels from repeated telecast of archival footage carrying the world ‘live’.

The draft also prohibits “close-ups and extended images of blood or gore, dismembered or disfigured limbs of bodies or images of the dead or seriously wounded people or violence which may seriously distress or offend substantial number of viewers or cause public panic and incite further violence or compromise the dignity of the dead”.




It is doubt that the media must be prevailed upon to avoid heavy social damages. At the same time the Government should not misuse its media reining in act to fudge in the information. The officer in-charge should be responsible for all the information sharing. If there is any leakage of information to select channels then he should be held responsible and punished immediately. Apart from triggering government control of news flow the act may trigger a large-scale corruption in the news feed. Under these circumstances an independent media regulatory mechanisms should be put in place for the better functioning of the news channels.

Shutting down the media jingoism

There is no limit to media excitement. With no lines drawn to the media society there is often breach of tolerance levels. The 24x7 media channels without differentiating the problems adopt a uniform approach in their coverage. Whether Mumbai serial attacks, or multiple murder tragedies or extramarital affairs case, media channels penetrate into the private spaces without any hesitation. This has been a long term irritation for the one and all. There were talks about reemploying state control over media operations. Those who have experienced the negative impact of state media are vehemently opposed to this idea. An impassionate analysis shows that both the solutions – state control or full media freedom is detrimental to the viewers.

The gun battle in Taj Mahal and Trident hotels in Mumbai in November 2008 were telecasted as cricket matches. Without understanding the depth and breadth of the problem, our media personnel complicated life for most of the people. They were regularly giving the updates which include the arrival and operation points of the security forces. It gave good information to the terrorist holed up inside the hotels. The media role facilitated the terrorists who had all the technological access to complete their operations. Today the Indian electronic media channels enjoy the maximum freedom in the world. With 140 news channels in the country there is a severe competition to give spicy news than presenting facts straight.

In a death house, media personnel jumps over and shows the video camera to the mother of the dead. “How do you feel”? is the first question of the journalist in a tone which is unsuited to the ambience of tragedy. She is unable to open her eyes and mouth. A relative speaks. Please “leave her alone”. The journalist is not leaving. He takes the camera to the victim’s brother. A boy of fifteen says “why don’t you get last”? These reprimands were not enough to the duty bound journalist. Still he is hanging over the place. Finally a man who proclaimed as a distant uncle of the victim says “She was having an affair with the policemen. That’s what I heard”. This one bit of explosive information was enough for the journalist to cook up the story. The headlines take a different turn “Shweta murder case takes extra affair turn”. An innocent girl who was murdered was murdered multiple times by the media. The entire episode gave months of sleepless nights to the family and relatives.

The trial by media is definitely a nuisance to the public. A friend of mine who is serving as the Superintend of Police in a sensitive district said “life is complicated. Everyday the newspapers give totally contradictory story and completely divert our attention from the work”.

In short media has complicated lives of everyone. The evil media needs to be sanitized and sense infused. It is better if the media organizations come together and do self-regulation. The time is running out and the state may be compelled to enforce strict regulations on it which will be difficult for both the media and its viewers. One thing comes clear during the cause analysis for outrageous media role. Without adequate training media personnel were inducted. The training process is very short without substance. The crucial ethical component of the media training is missing. Additionally the work culture in the media organization is cut throat and every hole open situation. A journalist is encouraged to gather information either hook or by crook. This is common among all the media people cutting across hierarchies. In fact the topmost media personnel don’t exhibit the minimum ethics and etiquettes. They talk more and listen less. The most irritating part of their role is inviting high profile guests to their studio and does not allow them to talk for more than 20 seconds. In that short duration there are hundred interruptions and questions by the anchorer. In my view media needs to be disciplined. It won’t come naturally. A mix of regulations without affecting their freedom should be put in place. The sooner it is done the better for the people and society.