The hubris of being a journalist in India is getting out of hand. A random graduate from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication tends to advertise himself better than Star Sports does for Virat Kohli.
It is all about ‘reading at the number one communication institute of India’ and ‘coming from a marginalised background’ narratives. The romanticisation of such a minor stride in life is so huge in modern-day times that the IIMC degree sounds more like a honeymoon trip to those who are not aware of technicalities.
One side effect of romanticisation is the assimilation of falsity into narrativisation. If a fact, no matter how absurd it sounds, can be put in the public domain and used for narrative building, it tends to act as gospel truth for modern-day journalists as well as old-school journalists acting as YouTubers.
One such narrative being played out is the demonisation of electronic voting machines. Each and every election, Congress and its aiding parties start to claim that they lost because EVMs were tampered with, hacked, or something else. That narrative is falling flat as multiple constitutional bodies like the Supreme Court of India and the Election Commission of India have debunked it.
The Apex Court is about to impose crores in fines on reckless misuse of Public Interest Litigations and Special Leave Petitions for this purpose.
Now, Newslaundry has come up with a new exclusive investigation piece. Their reporters went to Farrukhabad, Meerut, and Chandni Chowk to check the religion and caste of those voters who were knocked off the voter list. Yes, they went fully communal on the issue.
According to them, over 32,000 voters from the 2019 elections voter list were absent from the 2024 voter list in Farrukhabad.
Newslaundry wants to establish that this number is significant since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won by only 2,678 votes. Then they went to do a small sample survey and found that deletion rates were higher in areas having Muslims, Jatavs, Yadavs, and Shakya voters compared to localities with upper-caste voters.
To put it simply, more voters of the Indian National Inclusive Developmental (INDI) Alliance were knocked off the list than BJP voters.
Before we go ahead, here is the problem with the data. Their sample survey is small, and Newslaundry itself admits it. Common sense tells us that an exception is not an example. Secondly, did Newslaundry perform this survey on camera or in the presence of an independent, politically neutral authority? We don’t know, and neither will Newslaundry tell us.
So, opaque data collection methods, a small sample survey, and a communal angle. It does not qualify as the last and forced submission for a credible science journal.
Their second claim is that in Meerut, fake voters added to the list helped BJP. They did a survey of two booths—yes, only two booths—and found that 27 percent of voters were bogus. Apparently, more than one lakh voters were added, which they believe helped BJP win by 10,000 votes.
Even if we consider that their claim of 27 percent bogus voters is true, then what stops people from trusting the randomisation of EVMs? It is also the same process extrapolated to the whole constituency and is, in fact, a fairer process since ECI people do not do it with any bias in mind.
Their third claim is that at Chandni Chowk and Model Town, Muslims and backward voters were three times more likely to witness their names being cut off from the voter list than Punjabi and upper-caste voters.
Newslaundry did not even describe how it arrived at this conclusion in these places.
Based on these observations, here is how Abhinandan Sekhri’s channel concludes: “Areas with a higher share of voters from religious and caste groups who were less likely to vote for the BJP saw disproportionate deletions.”
Towards the end, it does describe its methodology, which is again a hogwash and falls short of any neutral investigation. As the report itself says, BJP has agents on most booths while the opposition does not care about it.
Somehow, this article is widely being shared on X as a hinting proof that ECI and administration are working in tandem with BJP.
At the time of writing, ECI has not considered this report worthy of responding to. After all, it is only a conjecture and extrapolation of biased thinking against the body.
But ECI had responded to one such hit job by the infamous The Wire portal.
After the Maharashtra election results, The Wire claimed a mismatch in the results and alleged that over 5 lakh more votes were counted than actually polled. According to The Wire’s article, it had claimed 6,40,88,195 votes were polled in 288 assemblies, and 6,45,92,508 votes were counted.
Thumping their chest, the portal did subtraction and came to the conclusion that 5,04,313 additional votes were counted by the EC.
However, the Election Commission stepped in to clarify the issue, explaining that The Wire ignored postal votes in its calculations. The EC explained that ‘votes polled’ were EVM votes, which did not include 5,38,225 postal votes.
It added 6,40,88,195 votes polled in EVM (which The Wire claims to be the overall votes polled) to 5,38,225 votes, which results in 6,46,26,420 votes, which is more than the number of votes counted (6,45,92,508 votes).
The report was clearly misleading and careless, pointing out the importance of verifying facts before publishing.
Finding facts must be one of the ‘Fundamentals of Reporting’ taught in ‘Understanding News and Reporting Techniques’ unit of IIMC. It is as fundamental to reporting as holding a bat for a batsman or observing humans before writing a story for a writer.
But for most journalists, facts are more about the story of an apple falling from a tree for Newton to discover numericals for gravitational force. The story is such that everyone believes it to be true because it is soothing to the ear but, most importantly, makes it possible to assimilate those kids who do not understand core science into the class.
Incidentally, such journalists also claim to believe in science and claim rationality to be above any dogma. This is how the lie is spread. Keep abusing science through actions but also keep saying nice and appreciative words about scientific thinking to gain more fame. In the end, the subject gets a bad name, but these journalists build their careers getting right into the prime minister’s palace.
So, what is the real science we are talking about here? I will explain what level of rigorousness science actually demands.
The first level in any scientific journey is the invocation of a query in our minds. We think something and need to test whether it’s true or not. So, here Newslaundry or The Wire have apprehensions about election fraud, which is not bad per se, but yes, distrusting each arm of the Indian state and considering themselves above it is bad. But still, in the name of science, that will work.
The second step is going on a fact-finding mission to see whether it’s true or not. That is where these ideologues are committing massive scientific blunders. They do go on a fact-finding mission, and as soon as they find something which can fit into the narrative, they pick it and present it as a full picture.
That is not how scientific thinking works. A conclusion needs to be verified by at least 95–99 percent of test subjects and then checked for methodology of data collection and bias. If any of the above holds true, then the whole fact-finding is repeated.
But that rigorousness is absent from journalists these days. In fact, data, video clips, and anecdotes, among other evidences which do not support their point of view, are deliberately hidden by them. The new phenomenon of clip cutting and broadcasting out of context is now becoming a source of major disruption.
That level of uneducatedness is something to ponder for our top media schools—of which IIMC is most famous. On the face of it, the syllabus can’t be blamed that much for this malaise. It even teaches Ideologies of Mass Communication and Research Methods.
What it lacks is the integration of Artificial Intelligence and large language models in the changing world. In their absence, each portion of the syllabus tends to get redundant.
Communication schools get two types of children—one who wants to do real journalism and one who failed in other streams and so takes it as a backup option.
The second category is large in number, and they are only interested in learning for their bread and butter in immediate terms. Long-term goals are missing, which is why they become easy victims to the vultures of the former category.
Those who want to do real journalism have two subdivisions—one subcategory is people interested in specific technical domains like Finance, Economy, and Sports, among others. However, the other subcategory is of politically motivated journalists who want to join the course to build political contacts and propagate a certain ideological point of view.
These people are the ones who, instead of reading, engage in protests, book burning, hoisting political party flags, and quarrelling with administration and others. They pick those for whom communication is a second priority and organise ruckus in the campus. They do get traction with these tricks and later carry it in their professional careers.
Ravish Kumar calling a Muslim goon of Delhi Riots a Hindu is not a statement of fact. It is a statement of ideological submission on Ravish’s part and ideological subversion by leftists. The fact does not really matter; their twisting in a particular matter does. There are now truckloads of YouTube channels that engage in such cherry-picking and are well-known communicators due to ideological narratives.
The malaise takes a new turn when any factually aware person objects to it. Suddenly, the identity of the particular person is invoked in the name of victimisation. One can remain certain that such tactics are not taught in communication colleges.
Heck, they are not taught in political science classes either. It is the politics being played out which has become a problem. These tactics are killing the essence of journalism, which is why in places like rural areas of UP and Bihar, even citizens are developing a deep mistrust of journalists.
Earlier, it was reserved for politicians, then bureaucrats also faced the same mistrust, and now media. The villagers or average citizens can’t be blamed because what they say is broken down into small segments, and the person’s own idea takes a back seat.
There is a definitive need to depoliticise our communication schools. It is now imminent to introduce the Scientific Process and AI as compulsory subjects. Secondly, ideological wars should be reserved for debates and discussions outside campus only.
Lastly, teachers need to fail students if they need to but don’t let the quality of the batch go down. It is a matter of reputational crisis for the media industry.
A real science guy, Elon Musk, already killed it in the USA. It’s happening fast in India unless the media mends its ways.
Why give power to those who do not even understand the difference between average, exception and rule?