Extracts from the paid news report

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. At the end of 2007, the media company boasted of investments in 140 companies in aviation, media, retail and entertainment, among other sectors, valued at an estimated Rs 1,500 crore.

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.