The paid news report which was hitherto kept hidden was made public after direction from Central Information commission without much publicity. It is available here. The report is 71 pages long. Below, I am listing out few extracts from the report.
In the 1980s, after Sameer Jain became the executive head of
Bennett, Coleman
Company
Limited (BCCL), publishers of the Times of India (TOI) group of publications,
the rules of the Indian media game began to change. Besides initiating
cut-throat cover-price competition, marketing was used creatively to make BCCL
one of the most profitable media conglomerates in the country.
The media phenomenon that has caused considerable outrage of
late has been BCCL’s
2003 decision to start a paid content service called Medianet, which, for a
price, openly offers to send journalists to cover product launches or
personality-related events. When competing newspapers pointed out the blatant
violation of journalistic ethics implicit in such a practice, BCCL’s bosses
argued that such advertorials were not appearing in newspapers like the TOI
itself, but only in the city-specific colour supplements that highlight society
trivia rather than hard news. There was another, more blatant justification of
this practice not just by BCCL but other media companies that emulated such a
practice after BCCL started it. If public relations (PR) firms are already
bribing journalists to ensure that coverage of their clients is carried, what
was wrong then with eliminating the intermediary, in this instance, the PR
agency – it was argued.
Besides Medianet, BCCL devised another innovative marketing
and PR strategy. In 2005, ten companies, including Videocon India and Kinetic
Motors, allotted unknown amounts of equity shares to BCCL as part of a deal to
enable these firms to receive advertising space in BCCL owned media ventures.
The success of the scheme turned BCCL into one of the largest private equity investors in India
Even as the private treaties scheme was apparently aimed at
undermining competition to
the TOI, a number of the newspaper's competitors as well as
television channels started similar schemes. The private treaties scheme pioneered
in the Indian media by BCCL involves giving advertising space to private
corporate entities/advertisers in exchange for equity investment- the company
officially denies that it also provides favorable editorial coverage to its
private treaty clients and/or blacks out adverse comment against its clients.
Examples of “paid news” from the
press:
In one particular case, the commission observed certain
press advertisements appearing in a leading national daily, which did not
disclose the name of the publisher of that advertisement. The commission
considered it to be a violation of the said Section 127(A). When asked by the
commission to give the details as required under Section 127 (A), the newspaper
refused to part with that information on the plea that the said Section 127 (A)
did not apply to newspapers. When the
Press Council of India contacted Shri S.K. Mehndiratta, Legal Adviser to the
Election Commission of India, he stated that the newspaper being referred to by
the Commission in this context was the Times of India and that the letter had been issued
by the Commission to the newspaper before the 2004 general elections.
A news item headlined, “Young, dynamic leadership”, eulogizing the Maharashtra Chief Minister Shri Ashok Chavan appeared using
exactly similar words from beginning to end in three competing Marathi
newspapers – Lokmat,
Pudhari and Maharashtra Times. If a
question were posed to these three newspapers as to how the exactly same
articles appeared in their pages, their reply would be customized. They would
say that accidentally one of the press releases of the Congress party went
directly to the press without passing through the copy desk and therefore the
same news appeared in a similar manner in all three newspapers. But, had it
been a press release, it should have been circulated to all newspapers and not
just three. The question, therefore, arises as to how the press release found
its way only to three newspapers. The news was published by Pudhari on October
7, 2009, whereas, the other two newspapers had carried it on October 10. Is
there a practice among these newspapers to carry three-day-old press releases?
The election expenditure statement submitted to the Election
Commission, Maharashtra Chief Minister Shri Ashok Chavan, disclosed that he had spent less
than Rs 7 lakh on his election campaign. The expenditure limit in terms of
election campaign that is imposed on a candidate by the Election Commission of
India is Rs 10 lakhs. Of the Rs 7 lakh, Shri Chavan stated that he had spent a
mere Rs 5,379 on newspaper advertisements and another Rs 6,000 on
advertisements that were on cable television networks. These figures, according
to Shri Sainath, are clearly at odds with the unprecedented media coverage the
Chief Minister got during the election campaign. “I have with me 89 full pages
of news which are devoted just to Shri Ashok Chavan. Most of these news items
are printed in colour. A substantial number of these pages have been culled out
from those editions of the big
Marathi daily newspaper Lokmat, which is the fourth most widely
circulated daily in the country according to the National Readership Survey of
2006” said Shri Sainath.
English dailies like the Vidarbha Plus (a supplement of the Times of India)
published advertisements for candidates in the form of news. The Vidarbha Plus
carried an advertisement disguised as news on the Congress candidate from Amravati assembly
constituency, Shri Raosaheb Shekhawat, son of the President of India Smt
Pratibha Devisingh Patil. The report carried a headline “Motorbike rally marks
conclusions of electoral campaign”. The contents of the news item, that
comprised endless praises for Shri Shekhawat, make for interesting reading. No
regular reporter would ever use the language of this news item which says, for
example, that “Shekhawat epitomizes politeness, potential and promise” and that
“he is blessed with extremely charming personality and a charisma (that)
attracted huge crowds throughout his campaign”. This news item was published on
the very day of polling in the assembly elections.
Yet another Hindi language newspaper, Hindustan , published by HT Media,
had prominently carried advertisements of a politician, without identifying him
as such, in its Varanasi
edition – the text size and the font were designed to give it the look of a
news item. On April 30, 2009, the day when elections took place, the Varanasi edition of Hindustan carried an item
that deceptively looked like a news story on top of its front page with a
headline that suggested that there was a “wave in favour of the Congress”. The following day, the newspaper later apologized to its
readers for the mistake and said that it made a distinction between news and
advertisements. The representatives of Hindustan
told the Press Council of India that when they realised their mistake they were
quick to point this out to readers.
On April 13, 2009, the Ranchi
edition of Dainik Jagran
published two news items on page 7, both relating to the Chatra Lok Sabha
constituency. The first item was in favour of the RJD candidate Shri Nagmani
with the headline stating: “Nagmani is getting support from every class and
section” virtually declaring that he would become the undisputed winner. The
same page had another news item claiming that Shri Arun Kumar Yadav, a
candidate belonging to JDU, who contested from the same constituency, would
emerge a clear winner.
On April 16, the Patna
edition of Hindustan
published a banner headline stating that the Congress is ready to create
history in Bihar but curiously, there was no
news item related to this headline.
The Rohtak edition of Haribhoomi published a news item on October 8,
2009 in favour of Congress candidate Shri Birendra Singh. Shri Singh was
contesting assembly elections from Uchana constituency. However, this news item
carried no byline. This news item claimed that Shri Singh had been getting
support from all and sundry in society. Detailed descriptions of the plans of
his election campaign were also mentioned. Using the same format, Haribhoomi
published a news item in favour of BJP candidate Shri Meva Singh the following
day, that is, on October 9, 2009.
