Media minions and their mass manipulation
It is not like media before the current Indian government was feisty and always asking questions of the government or standing up to them. It always has been a good follower of its masters
On Feb 6th, 2022, Lata Mangeshkar a.k.a. Lata didi (elder sister), who owned one of the most recorded and recognized voices in India, passed away. Condolence wishes and mourning messages flooded the internet. Twitter spaces, TikTok, Facebook, Insta were full of posts telling the collection of their favorite songs of Lata didi. People reminisced about the presence and hold her songs had in their life.
2 events happened around her passing which shed light on how media, social or conventional, can influence the psyche of its consumers. There are always bad and good tendencies in the political and social spheres of a country. The news and other popular media would enhance or suppress the effect of these tendencies. It can make or break the narrative and holds the key to dictate on what is socially and politically acceptable and what is to be ignored in any country at any time.
1st event was focused on Shahrukh Khan (SRK). At Lata Mangeshkar’s funeral, SRK prayed like any other Muslim person. But Arun Yadav, a right-wing leader and in charge of state of Haryana BJP, along with other right-wing personalities took the liberty to spew Islamophobic hatred and created a row about whether he spat on her or not.
As deplorable as it might be, the tweet was liked by more than 15,000 people and it was retweeted by many thousands.
In my online project management class, to understand what caused the problem, we were taught to keep asking ‘why’. Most of the times, by the 5th ‘why’ question, you will reach to the root of your problem. Using this method, let’s try to explore this. Why in the past few years, political leaders and famous personalities don’t feel the need to hide behind the curtain of decency and political correctness? Because it is seemingly okay to spew hatred and it even gets a decent acceptance from masses these days. Why is it acceptable to masses to be openly hateful towards any minority these days? Since we see these hateful messages cropping up from everywhere. WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook is filled with such a narrative and more prominently, most conventional news channels have frequently featured segments based on Hindu-Muslim tensions, Islamophobic narrative, Caste bashing without any accountability and repercussions. This line of messaging is normal now. 3rd Why. Why is the media, especially the news media is propagating this narrative? Well, it is not up to a debate that most powerful party in India these days, BJP, has a clear intention to magnify the hateful nationalistic propaganda all over the country. It also has smartly identified the mainstream news and the social media as the most effective tools to propagate their ideas without a hitch. A large amount of money from government is spent on TV and newspaper ads. They are one of the biggest sources of income for most of the conventional news outlets. Big TV anchors who have given into government’s narrative have been rewarded with access to prominent leaders of ruling party and in some cases PM Modi himself. Government has also made sure that the media channels pliable to their own opinions are easily available to viewers and dissenting voices are muted. Not only that but BJP has also created a powerful IT cell which builds effective social media bubbles of propaganda and misinformation, making it trend nonstop on Indian social media. They have made sure that notable social media personalities share their messages and make it more visible.
So, we got to it in 3 ‘Why’ questions itself.
One ‘why’ still lingers around. Even though the corporations always look for profits, why all TV anchors have become government’s slaves? Isn’t there a moral compass to the media/news personalities?
Siding with the ‘powerful’ ensures that their own power is maintained. Most of the news anchors on these TV platforms come from majority upper caste privileged background with no exposure to the hardships and realities of discrimination faced by minority communities neither they have been sensible enough to learn about it. Majoritarian language seems to validate their own religious, caste and class biases and they are gladly passing it on to their consumers.
Media has made it ok to be hateful. To not curb your most evil notions. To flaunt the pride of your power and show no compassion to less powerful, rather it has worked to bolster all the bigotry against the minorities. Previously, if not out of love, albeit out of fear of public embarrassment or criticism, the polite acceptance of the perceived ‘others’ was a crucial part of social and political agenda. Now it is no longer necessary. It is not a factor that majority masses need to worry about. If big, famous media personalities are doing it why can’t we? Minions of the media has delivered the most important aspect of any propaganda initiative. Get the minds of the majority masses on the government’s side and paint minorities as ‘the enemy’.
“This is the India people have voted for. This is how society always has been” narrative has a gap. While it is correct that xenophobic, casteist and classist forces have always existed and has had powerful positions. Open admission to them garnered disapproval and criticism before. Acceptance and normalization of such tendencies amongst masses has been successfully carried out by this particular media ecosystem. To be frank, they are not even doing anything out of the ordinary. They are just following orders. It is not like media before the current Indian government was feisty and always asking questions of the government or standing up to them. It always has been a good follower of its masters. In the past, their masters probably never asked them to promote hatred like they do these days.
The past of the media pretty much gives way to the 2nd interesting event around Lata Mangeshkar’s passing.
A tiny section of the social media, mainly from minorities, was critical of her politics. They mentioned her affinity towards right wing leaders. Some of her questionable, not completely corroborated actions, related to caste hatred were put into limelight after her passing.
Again, all I could think of is, ‘Why’. Why we know very little about her political past and we don’t have any corroboration of her alleged casteist actions when they first came to light, in any big news media platforms? May be because no one wants to investigate such a famous person or maybe covering caste related stories were not a priority. It directs us to a 2nd ‘why’. Why wasn’t it a priority? It again goes down to the representation of caste and tribe minorities in our media. It is, for all practical purposes, non-existent. Most editor and leadership positions in the media are occupied by people from upper castes. Even the political spectrum is mostly one color. Color of the majority. This upper caste hegemony inherently puts the coverage preference away from the caste related stories. Caste atrocities are either covered with a negative bias or buried away as if those events didn’t happen.
This time, it took us only 2 “Why” question to reach to the root of the problem.
Since masters of the media belong to a majority population, news media has always put caste narrations out of the minds of regular news consumers. It is the reason why allegations on celebrities like Lata Mangeshkar and co. are never tested. They spent their life without having to face any scrutiny. Without having to answer any difficult questions. It is the reason caste issues have stayed out of the public imagination even though majority of the population falls victim to it day in and day out. The cries of the caste minorities are lost inside the soundproof room of ignorance. Voices coming from the fringes were suppressed as ordered by the power bearers.
This phenomenon has led to an immense lack of knowledge about the scheduled caste / tribe and adivasi atrocities, their history and literature in Indian mainstream. People from upper castes get genuinely surprised to hear stories of criminal acts against SC / ST population. They get embarrassed and often offended when they are made aware of the casteist microaggressions they have got comfortable using their whole life. They refuse to accept the deep-rooted influence of caste in Indian society. They are not able to reconcile with the fact that caste and religious bigotry have always been around in India. They still can’t accept the generational advantages and cultural capital they have enjoyed. They believe only falsity of true meritorious ascension in life and are active supporters of the commentary against the affirmative action programs in India as well as anywhere else in the world. They still engage in criminal and dergogatory behavior against the minorities and believe in their own caste / religious superiority.
In one of the examples we saw, media was used to enhance a certain narrative by the people in power. They used all the tools in their bag to make bigotry and xenophobia mainstream, which used to be fringe and embarrassing to publicly own it.
In other example we saw that media ignored and suppress voices from minority sections. It was orchestrated by the powerful people from majority background. This has led to complete ignorance and apathy towards the issues of the minority population. Rather, the old notions of impurity and caste superiority are maintained and justified.
Even though leaders and masses from minority community now have their own voice on all the social media and digital platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., their resources are no match to the conventional media. Their following is significantly less since minority population still have limited to access these new avenues of information and majority have already gone way ahead of them in these spaces.
Ideally, news media should platform stories of the plight of the minorities, make everyone aware of their issues and contest majoritarian, monopolistic and oppressive ideas but we don’t live in an ideal world. Media is used by the powerful to grow the tendencies that will help them gain more power and destroy any dissent that poses a real challenge to them. Apart from few exceptions, news media has largely remained in the favor of its powerful masters. Masters might have changed but the subservient nature of the media have not. News cycles are curated to keep the oppressors happy and oppressed hopeless. Media itself is filled with people from traditionally privileged backgrounds and they are happily singing to the victory songs of the oppressors.