EXCEPTION: Ravish Kumar is one of those rare journalists who is more highly respected than the topmost English-medium anchors of India

By Rajan Narayan

Ravish Kumar, who recently resigned from NDTV, describes the WhatsApp university as the biggest spreader of lies in the world. It is social media which is fixing elections all over the world including media for right price.

THE WhatsApp University is the biggest laboratory for fake news. In the laboratory, the process of vilifying anyone who stands in opposition to the bhakts of the present regime goes on constantly so that the robo-public, does not get a chance to shift its loyalties. All the possibilities of alternative viewpoints are run down and made invalid. In this university, the photograph will be taken and made suspicious, it will be circled in red and made to go viral. You will be presented as criminal to society.”
Ravish Kumar in his book “The Free Voice, Our Democracy, Culture and The Nation” (published by Speaking Tiger, translated from Hindi by Chitra Padmanabhan, Anurag Basnet and Ravi Singh, softcover, Rs350) from which the above excerpt is taken gives an example.
“I was covering the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in Patiala during the Punjab election of 2017. I and my cameraman were travelling in the open jeep with Kejriwal. A photographer positioned on a rooftop gestured to me asking that I get the chief minister to look up so that he could take a photograph. I did and the photographer got his picture. This photograph went viral with the caption that I was an agent working for Arvind Kejriwal and was helping him in his campaign. The photographer who spread the false news even had the audacity to call me up on WhatsApp and thank me.”
The WhatsApp university has defamed, vilified and abused journalists like Rajdeep Sardesai Rana Ayub Sagarike Ghosh, Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar. The handful of journalist who are only doing their jobs have been declared traitors. We have been blamed for every injustice committed in India. A new benchmark has been set up in the WhatsApp university as far as speaking out its concerned. What don’t you speak then and why are you speaking only now? With this whichever statement the public has been handed a weapon. People have been told any time you ask a question ask them where were you when it happened?

WHAT IS IMPORTANT?
THE Modi government and the BJP along with their bosom industrialist friends Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani have completely destroyed the print and electronic media in the country. Sunday, December 12, 2022 was an example. I was aware that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Goa to deliver the valedictory address at the 9th World Ayurveda Congress & Ayoghya Expo in Panaji. After that the prime minister was going to inaugurate Mopa Airport. None of the national electronic media covered the two events live. They were not important, either politically or in terms of news value.
How many people care about AYUSH. Why should people in the rest of the country be interested in a new airport opening in Goa called Mopa airport?
Instead, the news was all about the victory of the BJP in Gujarat. Indeed, in the last few days, ever since the BJP won the Gujarat election by a record number of 156 seats, most of the time the electronic media across all channel have been going Modi, Modi. The electronic media in the country has been converted into Modi media exclusively more rather than less.
The resignation of one of the country’s foremost Hindi journalists Ravish Kumar from “India Today” after its takeover by Gautam Adani is very significant. We elite English-speaking, English-reading newspaper public do not understand how much difference one Ravish Kumar can make in the politics of today. The English media is at the most read by a crore of readers in the country or may be even five crore to stretch it some more. It is the regional language reading which makes a difference to over 60-70% of the population of the country. The Hindi or regional language journalists whom the English media perhaps continues to look down on with some contempt are the ones who create mass opinion in the country. And in the Hindi media Ravish Kumar is extremely rare as he is one of the few media persons who has the courage to take on the Modi government.

DISTORT & DESTROY
TO get back to the WhatsApp university its siblings like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have distorted and destroyed more knowledge then the beginning of history. In the past, before the social media revolution, there used to be books. All information was communicated through the print media. When it came to writing in the print media people were very careful “as a moving finger having writ cannot be lured back to cancel half-a- line.”
If an item appears in print saying “Rajan Narayan is an enemy of Pramod Sawant” it will be taken as truth. Because it is there in black and white print. The fact that what I may have said is Rajan Narayan is seen as an enemy of the CM will not be reported. Particularly in social media this is how news is twisted and false news spread.
It is well known that Babasaheb Ambedkar persuaded the harijan people to convert to Buddhism as there was no chance that they would get any justice or fair play from the Brahmin-dominated upper caste Hindu groups. On WhatsApp the RSS bhakts have posted that Babasaheb Ambedkar asked the Dalits (as they were called after conversion) to return to Hinduism. Unlike the print media and printed literature, the social media hate university can cause riots within seconds. With false news that cows have been slaughtered.
On the other hand the social media can keep dramatizing the fact that Modi built a road where the heaviest aircraft would land. They will of course not focus on the state of the roads in Panaji when Modi came to inaugurate the Mopa airport.
The social media hate-mongering university is all about money. Ironically, it is not even humans who are creating and spreading the false news. The social media sites like WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter, are designed along engineered algorithms. Those of you who have done maths will recall the algorithms which are formulae used to make things easier. To the extent of abuse, this algorithm can be dramatized by the fact that Vijaya Gadde of Indian origin, who was chief of Twitter in the United States, has been accused of fixing the US election polls. There are many allegations against the IT chief of the BJP, Amit Malviya, who is very close to the BJP.
When you see posts on any aspect of the social media praising a party or a candidate, it may probably be an advertisement. Unlike in the case of traditional print media there is no scope for fact check. When a book is written or a magazine brought out every single word and sentence in the article is checked from names of the people involved to grammer to spelling and most important the factual accuracy. If I learnt that a policeman has beaten up a lawyer who had accompanied his client to evict an illegal occupant, I would double-check with all the parties concerned. Because it not usual for four policemen to have the guts to beat up a lawyer (in this case advocate Gajanand Sawant).
But WhatsApp and Facebook the chances of the news can be distorted and false news that it was the lawyer who hired goons to beat up the policeman may be flashed. How is the common man to make out truth from lies?

EVERYTHING RECORDED!
ALL the revenue of the social media companies come from advertising. Recent data posted on Facebook or on WhatsApp about your preference for this or that particular beauty product or any other product will immediately be sold to the rival company making similar products to counter. Social media is worse than Godi or lapdog media.
In case like me you have been wondering what Godi media news is, Ravish Kumar has explained in his book that it is media organizations living in the lap of the BJP government. WhatsApp may claim that whatever is communicated is encrypted from beginning to end. That no third party has access to the data.
This is not true for in social media there are robot mechanisms monitoring and recording everything. The exchanges between you and your friends or your family on WhatsApp or Facebook is all data material which may or may not be marketable by social media organizations. Social media saves a great deal of money on market research for consumer goods companies.
Again to quote from Ravish Kumar in his book, in conclusion: “What we have is a media that is no longer the Fourth Estate of democracy.” The constitutional belief is that beyond the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary it is Fourth Estate – the media in toto — which is the watchdog keeping a watch on the three other institutions of democracy.
According to Ravish the media has become “the first estate of the political party, thanks are due to BJP and Modi for reducing media into a spineless institution.” Ravish concludes “I’m tempted to ask you, like your favored Bollywood star, where exactly do you get the image of a fakir? Only someone without the care in the world can give a blessing to a media such as this.”