Think of the times 10-15 years ago. You probably consumed good quality news from standard newspapers like The Hindu and Deccan Herald. If you were keen on entertainment and bollywood, you would be reading Times of India. Times of India was known as a relatively substandard newspaper. Some people referred to it as the “toilet paper of India”. There were advertisements where The Hindu made fun of youngsters reading The Times of India. The advertisement showed how the readers of Times of India couldn’t answer some basic questions like who is the vice president of India. But when they are asked as to whether Aishwarya (Rai) has a baby boy or a girl, they all say, “girl”. And then they are asked which newspaper they read. They all say “Times of India”, but the sound is muted when they speak. You can watch the advertisement campaign “stay ahead of the times” here.
Around 2000, we had 3-4 private news channels. By around 2004, the numbers increased. Around the time of anti corruption movement 2011-2012, Times Now and other substandard news channels also started. This is when the news debates kept going lower. Arnab Goswami should be credited for this in the English section. For Hindi, it is Aaj Tak and several regional news channels. In the 2010s decade, we thought the news has gone to the dogs. The quality has dipped. Come 2015 onwards, things went worse with more news channels getting sold out and consolidated by the Reliance group and other entities that are close to the BJP.
Things went so bad that people felt that news itself was toxic, so they stopped reading newspapers and stopped watching news channels. Now we had a new type of time pass – social media. The rise of social media influencers was through some funny videos or informative content that had nothing to do with politics. We all enjoyed this content for a long time because it came without any baggage of politics, religion and ideology. But then, after a point, when important events happened, these social media influencers had to cover those events. For example: RG Kar Rape incident in Kolkata or tax issues, murders etc. When this coverage of law and society happened, it had to turn political! Slowly these influencers had to become political.
It is said that everything that happens in the society is political. If you can say that politics doesn’t influence you, that’s also a product of the politics! It was Plato who said, “One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
Most of the creators who had stayed “neutral” or had claimed to be “apolitical” have been forced to take a stand on political issues. So, most of the social media now has political content disguised as being apolitical. Many influencers directly support political parties or leaders. Very few content creators now have not touched politics. Now every little information about law, governance and politics that people get to hear / watch / read comes from social media and social media influencers.
In the first stage, we stopped reading from the well trained journalists and well established news organisations.
In the second stage, we started putting all our time into social media and their influencers who are seemingly doing non political content. Thereby reducing the time we spent on consuming / reading / watching news from the traditional media houses. These media houses have suffered losses and are struggling to survive.
In the third stage, all of us are consuming politics and news from social media influencers who have no training in journalism. Their content is mostly misleading, clickbait and not properly checked. At this point, the traditional news media is almost dead because they don’t have financial power, nor people even notice them. Now, if any news has to become famous, it should be promoted by Dhruv Rathee or some other influencer or some celebrity! Irony of our times.
Take any field, we have got alternative personalities from the social media who have grown over the last 5-10 years. Of course, there are a few social media influencers who are doing a great job by giving quality content. One such person I would say is KK Create, whose real name is Kavya Karnatac.
By and large, now every sector has a social media star. Be it sports, politics, finance, entertainment. The ones from the traditional media or olden times are fading.
Take Trump for example, just before the elections he avoided going to the mainstream media debates and talk shows which were set as strong precedents by the earlier presidential candidates. Instead, he spent hours doing podcasts for podcasters with a huge following. Now Modi has followed his footsteps and done a podcast with an influential podcaster. He has been giving interviews to movie actors like Akshay Kumar and answering important questions like how to eat a mango. He’s given well planned interviews with Indian entrepreneurs like Nikhil Kamath.
Modi hasn’t faced the media for years and is now comfortable giving scripted interviews only. The well trained journalists waiting for years to get an interview won’t get anything! The podcasters are not rooted in public welfare. They want profits and promotions. They are good PR. People have also welcomed this PR style of journalism and news these days. So this is what they deserve.
