Over the past few decades, the global media have developed an embedded conflict of interest. This conflict increases the propensity to distort news leading to the view that the media mislead people.

The media entered their southward trajectory through choices made in recent years — an excessive profit focus, a conglomerated structure and a lack of self-regulation. The unintended result has been to increase the media’s propensity to distort news.

During my younger days, a media career was ennobling and society regarded journalists as conscience keepers. Do you remember the blank editorial in one newspaper after the declaration of Emergency in 1977? Do you recall the announcement of the death of “L.I. Berty”? Those days seem like innocent days with the press as the sentinel of freedom. Irving Wallace’s 1982 novel, The Almighty, was about Edward Armstead, a power-hungry media-owner. The target of his newspaper, New York Record, was to overtake the New York Times. He achieved this by generating news and pandering to his obsession to shape, manipulate and control news — with disastrous consequences to the world.

Journalism has never fully enjoyed independence from commercial pressure. That is why Noam Chomsky referred to big media as “lapdogs of commercial interest”. However, until the 1980s, through a separation of the editorial function from business, a ‘wise and powerful’ editor decided what is in the public interest, what must be foregrounded or backgrounded. He helped ordinary people navigate the world — remember Sham Lal, Prem Bhatia, B.G. Verghese?

With the Thatcher-Reagan model of super-capitalism in the 1980s, high profits, similar to an alcoholic beverages or cigarette business, became the mantra of the media. For sure, the media’s independence requires reasonable commercial success. However, the pursuit of high commercial success creates an in-built paradox because the logic of business, then, is to draw everything into the commercial web and to use marketing principles to maximize profits. Some decades ago, the ratio of circulation revenues to advertising was 40:60. These days, it is closer to 20:80.

In 1953, there were 127 daily newspapers in India. Today, there are 60,000 dailies, 70 news channels and radio channels as well. There are lots of publications chasing stories, thus increasing the chances of small stories becoming big. That is why TV channels are constantly “breaking news”, even when the news itself has become broke.

Fifty years ago, the media verticals were distinct and separate. For example, the publishers of dailies, magazines, and books were distinct. So too were the radio and TV channels. The motion picture production companies were quite separate from the distribution companies. Now there are media conglomerations, which have the capability to cross-sell and bundle.

Although the number of players has increased, the market power of the top players has increased. This has resulted in market concentration. You combine conglomeration and concentration in a market, add an increased profit-orientation — it becomes difficult to deliver balanced and correct information as a ‘pillar of democracy’ is expected to.

The media expert, James Curran, wrote in 1991, “By implication, media conglomerates are not independent watchdogs serving the public interest, but self-seeking, corporate mercenaries using their muscle to promote private interests.” The media can increase market share, geographical coverage and conglomerate without too many restrictions because “they are sentinels of democracy”. If you try to regulate the media, you will have the biggest brouhaha on your hands. Rupert Murdoch’s media empire was assembled through the kind of dynamic business acquisitions that one would associate with an industrial company. He used his power brazenly, for example, by backing the Australian Labour Party in 1972, and then turning against it two years later.

In such a situation, self-regulation would be very appropriate. I quote the doyen of journalism, B.G. Verghese: “There has been a dumbing down of serious reportage, a trivialization of news and events, sensationalism and prurient invasion of privacy, trial by press, resort to rumour, gossip and innuendo without verification, and disregard for fair and balanced reporting or prompt correction when in error and the right of reply.... Publishing has changed from being a mission to a business concerned with peddling influence and power.”

Every media house today should have an in-house ombudsman, who will rap the careless reporter on the knuckle, and whom the reader can approach for any redressal of a grievance. As a result of the way in which the media have evolved, there is a decline in professionalism. Greater investments in professional training, mentoring inexperienced journalists and nurturing of ethics policies can lead to better standards of professionalism.

Until 1970, the media in India meant the print medium, unlike other countries where radio and TV had become well established. Everywhere the media market was a non-competitive oligopoly, which was dominated by a few players. Logically, this should have led to a distorted market in which the free flow of ideas and news, so essential for a democracy, should have been inhibited. However, this was not a widespread concern in society because of the separation of the editorial and business functions.

A seasoned editor vividly recalls the early days at The Washington Post, “Researchers were given days, often weeks, to research stories; the editing process was exhausting because it passed through at least four pairs of hands. Phrases such as ‘it is understood’ and ‘sources close to the situation’ failed to cut the mustard.”

After the American elections of 1972, when Richard Nixon trounced George McGovern, investigative journalism cracked Watergate. There was an unintended but dramatic development in the media. Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein became heroes and celebrities to a generation. Hollywood honoured them through the film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, All the President’s Men.

An unintended side-effect was that it turned the eyes of the press on the press itself. To be a celebrity became a goal to which many journalists started aspiring. During the last 20 years, many top reporters and anchors have themselves become celebrities, who identify themselves more with their VIP subjects than with their readers. Journalists started to seek personal visibility, openly and ceaselessly. One leading English language newspaper compiled a list of the 50 most important people in India. Position numbers 28, 31, 37 and 38 went to four media personalities.

Today, young cub reporters aspire for story bylines, if necessary through a trivialization of news. We are thus fed national headlines when two brothers shake hands, stories about the emotion of the moment when Raj Thackeray stepped out of his Mercedes into a police van or about what Monica Bedi ate for dinner the previous night.

The chief justice of India has expressed his distress regarding the way in which the media run parallel trials. So society does have a problem: because of the embedded conflict of interest, the media are prone to mislead some people, some of the time; luckily they do not mislead everybody all the time — not yet.

Nothing short of self-imposed reform can restore to the media the role that they have happily forsaken over the decades — the equivalent of the economic reform of the 1990s. Professionalism in the media can be restored through three methods: the separation of the editorial and commercial roles, the re-invention of the ‘wise and powerful’ editor, and self-regulation.

The author is executive director, Tata Sons Ltd.