Defining alternative media - (The Hoot.Org, 06/09/2003)

Alternative media should be defined by rediscovering the purpose of mass communication.

-- By Dasu Krishnamoorty

Ammu Joseph recently wrote an article in the Hindu about Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! radio and television program in the context of alternative media. She has not mentioned other active alternative outlets in the United States since her immediate concern was Goodman's good work. Nor did she tell us what alternative media (AM) are. This silence on the definition of the term is likely to lead to motley of interpretations, particularly the one that considers alternative media as anti-establishment media.

In India, the presence of alternative media is less than considerable and the people's awareness of such media is even less. There is no clear understanding of the AM concept in our country. The problem is with the origin of these concepts. They come to us from the West, from feminism to affirmative action to art and kitsch to democracy to freedom of the press and so on. For instance, freedom of the press is described in the West as the right to tell the government to go to hell. Can there be a greater profanity inflicted on a profound concept? Outrageous and innocuous at the same time, this definition portrays government alone as the agency with an interest in suppressing information. Thereby we are suppressing a truth: the State is only one among several agencies that conceal information. This explains the need to delineate the contours of AM with a view to separate pretenders from genuine adherents.

The AM concept originally arose from mainstream media's blackout of alternative opinion. It means more things than antiestablishment or underground press. Government leverage with information is minimal today compared to the control corporate mainstream media (MM) have over mass communication. It is the private sector that owns almost all information and broadcasting channels today. The network of private networks dwarfs the state information and broadcasting network in India. It is now acknowledged all over the world that the Indian media are the freest. Yet it is the free media that stifle alternative voices. Let us first define what are mainstream media(MM). Those groups that monopolise the means to produce and circulate agenda-setting information and dominate the media scene can aptly be described as MM. These groups have economic clout that helps them to own mass media as a means to further improve their economic base.

Mass Media are today part of economic theory. Advertisement expenditure is now an important item in determining cost of production. Therefore, it makes sense to own mass media instead of buying space/time in mass media. This explains the three decade-old rush of capital to 'corporatize public expression' in the country. In the end, capital sets up filters to screen information that hurts its growth. When we unwittingly support their demands on the government for greater freedom (deregulation), we are only abetting the transfer of the means of communication into the hands of economy helping its constituents to convert readers, listeners and watchers into unthinking consumers. We also let entertainment swamp meaningful information that is the bedrock of any democracy.

About MM, Noam Chomsky says, "They are the ones with the big resources; they set the framework in which everyone operates. Their audience is mostly privileged people, people who are wealthy or part of what is sometimes called the political class. They are basically managers of one sort or another. They can be political managers, business managers, university professors or other journalists who are involved in organising the way people think and look at things. What they interact with and relate to are other major power centres -- the government or other corporations or universities."

Alternative media should be defined by rediscovering the purpose of mass communication. Mass media have an information mission they can disown only at the risk of losing the freedom they claim in the name of that mission. This mission cannot be jettisoned by citing commercial logic or such romantic terminology as compulsions of globalization or demands of the market place. Once you accept market logic, in countries like India you are keeping out of media inquiry millions of people who are not buyers of goods they advertise. Common people know what they want more than the editors pretend to know. One has only to read letters to the editor to find that common people know their country and its problems better than the tribe of columnists. Any medium, print or electronic or Net, that refuses to acknowledge mass communication as a mission for the benefit of the common people forfeits its right to disseminate information and thus the right to be called media.

Today, we see mass media paying increasing homage to fashion parades, models, film and sports celebrities and the hyping of events, like Noor Fatima achieving a miracle that eluded Lal Bahadur Shastri and Ayub Khan; Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto; and Atal Behari Vajapyee and Gen. Musharraf or the column yards wasted on discussing whether or not Sachin's Ferrari deserved tax exemption. Such misuse of freedom of expression is a violation of Article 19 (1) of the Constitution. It sounds logical that alternative media should train their guns more against mass media than the government. It is conceded that neither the government nor the mainstream media have much respect for public opinion. Parliament takes care of this inadequacy by being a watchdog of government performance and also a forum for public opinion. The same cannot be said of MM, because the Press Council is a watchdog that does not bite. Even its bark is a whimper.

However, discussing important economic and social issues like malnutrition, maternity deaths, waterborne diseases, bonded labour, status of women or street children alone does not make alternative media. Every one of these issues lends itself to several interpretations. You cannot claim "we are alternative media merely because we publish material not readily acceptable to mass media." To deserve the AM label, the media need to accommodate the plurality of alternative views and not one or two that are acceptable to a section of the society. There are views on economy that do not readily fit into black and white slots of capitalist and Marxist excursus. Some media sporting the alternative label have a tendency not to suffer certain views gladly. Yet these views belong to vast sections of the society offering unorthodox solutions to problems facing the country. One must understand that people privileged in many material ways may not be privileged in terms of access to media. To deserve the AM label, alternative media must provide access to all those who clamor for it. AM in India continue to be a vertical pattern of interaction between the audiences and themselves, very much in the manner of mass media where "the big guys tell the general masses what to think."

Back to Ms Joseph. By bringing in the 1975 emergency, she has supplied a frame that shows AM as different from what, I presume, she had intended to show. She says, "That was Amy Goodman, co-host of Democracy Now! (DN!), introducing the June 25, 2003 edition of the habitually hard-hitting news and current affairs program on radio and, more recently, television. Coinciding as it did with the anniversary of the day India woke up to its brief tryst with dictatorship nearly three decades ago, the above broadcast - headlined "The Two Georges, Orwell and Bush" - and its anti-fascism theme may have had a special resonance here had it been available on the airwaves (affirmed as public property by the Supreme Court of India in 1995)."

In my humble view, the reference to the emergency anniversary while discussing AM is likely to imply that alternative media mean antiestablishment media and also to confer the benefit of this label on newspapers which made much of their martyrdom during the emergency. In reality, alternative media are pitted more against the mainstream media for not doing their job well and for barring alternative opinion than against the government. AM is a movement against the monopolisation of media space and time by a few media giants and against media deregulation. It is dedicated to democratisation of communication. It is protest against a minority pretending to represent the voices of the majority. One could understand Ms. Joseph's reference to emergency to highlight press repression during the emergency. But somehow that reference obscures the fact that it is those 'victims' of the emergency that now own the mainstream media.

Alternative journalism is not the same as adversary journalism. I have some alternative views on the folklore of media defiance during the emergency. Those days were darker days not only for but also of the media when even according to themselves they crawled when they were asked to bend. The emergency historians do not mention the embarrassing story of Samachar, the merger of four national news agencies into one. Newspapers that claim today the 1975 halo own both PTI and UNI that became part of Samachar without protest.

In the first few weeks of the emergency, instead of fearlessly publishing what they wanted to publish and courting arrest like the editors of the freedom era, newspapers came out with blank spaces. It was a kind of self-censorship, one they did not have the courage to extend to Sanjay Gandhi. One newspaper of courage meekly accommodated V.C. Shukla's nominees on its board of directors. Also, the emergency received support from some of the radicals who are today in the alternative press. It is the reference to the emergency in Ms. Joseph's article I am not comfortable with. Alternative journalism is not only antiestablishment content but also content that the mainstream media refuse to publish.

AM too will be denying room for alternative opinion with the same finesse as MM do if they go solely by antiestablishment criterion. AM should mean such media which accommodate not only content unacceptable to MM but also views not in agreement with their own. They should be free and open forums for all shades of opinion. Then only they can claim to be alternative media. Can you deny the people views that are not acceptable either to MM or AM? Just as the Internet offers a free run for everyone who has a viewpoint, alternative print media, to deserve that label, should offer space to everyone with a viewpoint. The AM concept is not about adversary role as much as it is about plurality of views.