By Rajan Narayan

THE debate on freedom of expression is a continuous one. There has always been conflict between management and editorial in any media organization. Even in media groups which claim to be committed to independent journalism. I have worked for newspaper proprietors for the first four decades of my career. I’ve also promoted and managed Goa’s only independent media organization, the political weekly Goan Observer from 2003 in print and right up to today in 2024 but post-Covid lockdowns we have been staying alive and kicking mostly online.
Whether you are part of a media house owned by a large business corporation or as small independent media company, the challenges are similar. Your publication has to earn its skills in communication with words and visuals. Also, no media organization can survive if it cannot support itself. Newspapers and magazines have to gain the acceptance of their readers.
Only if it enjoys a large readership it will attract advertising. The cover price of a newspaper will not even pay for the salaries of staff, forget about printing every issue. The lifeblood of a newspapers daily or weekly or monthly depends on how much advertising it can attract with its media reporting and analytical stories and the names who write for them. I learnt the hard way that it is not the management alone which decides what is to be published. Ultimately, it is the advertising or marketing department which calls the shots.
I started my career in the Financial Express, the financial daily of the Indian Express group. Financial dailies are very sensitive to the corporate sector. This is because any news relating to the performance of a company can affect its share value. The shares of companies can swing finally not only depending on the performance of the company. But even rumors about the performance of the company. The stock market is also sensitive to the performance of the country and in globalized times the performance of the global economy. For instance, the recent drop of over a 1,000 points in the Dalal Street stock market index is because of concerns about a sharp decline in the American economy.
If the IT Industry in the United States catches a cold the whole world will sneeze. Conversely, if there is a change of government in India it could affect the United States markets. But at a more basic level in day-to-day working journalists have to be sensitive to the impact their reports and editorial writing could have.
I discovered early in my career in the media that reporters acquire a lot of power. Especially the business pages editors and reporters who are pampered by business houses seeking positive publicity and write-ups about their products. So they all believe in keeping even a junior reporter of a local daily happy.
In my memoirs of the working at the “Financial Express” in my early years in journalism in Bombay we reporters were e encouraged to go to press conferences. Those very early years one would be struggling with bus fare to return to the humble paying guest room, there was no question of eating out in a good restaurant.
But here’s the irony, as a newspaper reporter I could always attend a press conference at the Taj or Oberoi hotels which offered lunch or dinner or high tea to media people before or after the event was over. Newspaper offices get all kinds of lunch and dinner invitations from various business houses and it mattered little if the media reporters were dressed shabbily or nattily. Whether your shirt and trousers were ironed or not or your kurta crumpled and hair combed or not. We are always welcomed because we were the print media and later on the multimedia. Media people are generally speaking treated with a good amount of respect as long they behaved with circumspection.
You may not be rude to bosses and write nasty reports after a press conference, if you did you will have to face the music from the management – that is, if your story however objective and clear, is published at all. All stories have to be screened and pass through several speed breakers at the editorial table or so to peak. There are the sub-editors, chief sub-editors, assistant editors, chief reporters, and finally the news editor who is the boss. In the 70s and 80s, the editors sat in their cabins and did not get involved in the day-to-day functioning of newspapers. They stuck to writing editorials and there were the daily meetings where all presented themselves.
In financial newspapers every news item is scrutinized for sensitivity. If you carried a report claiming that the company was doing badly you will immediately be hauled up. Any negative report on a company’s performance could affect its share price. Companies were particularly sensitive when they approached the public for funds. This is normally done through a public offer of shares. This is called an initial public offer.
A large part of the revenue of financial newspapers comes from the share offers of companies. For instance, in the last two days recently there have been front-page advertisements in all the leading papers in Goa over the public issue of the Bajaj Finance company and PNG jewelers. At a sensitive time when the companies are approaching the market any negative reporting or commenting in the newspapers may well destroy them.
This does not mean that the media should uncritically recommend all public issues. Recently, a host of dubious public issues have been raised by small and medium companies. A small company which has an automobile dealership and cash flow problem got over Rs1,000 crore as public subscription. Similarly, a small unit in Gujarat got support from investors far beyond its earning capacity. I’ve had the experience of being at both marketing and receiving end of the marketing of company public issue.
I recall I was part of the media when Dhirubai Ambani floated a huge convertible debenture issue running into several crore. I was involved in marketing the public issue of two Goan companies, namely Sesa Goa and Fomento Resorts. The latter was a new venture by then little-known Goan industrialist Avdhoot Timblo. The hotel industry particularly in Goa was not seen as very profitable. I remember we had to promote the marketing of the Fomento Resort very aggressively. As far as I can recall the shares of the company were not fully subscribed.
I was far too junior in the Financial Express to influence content matter. My first major encounter or confrontation with the management took place when I joined Onlooker as an assistant editor. The new editor was a good friend of mine, N Rehman. Both of us decided to drop the nude which was carried in the magazine in the belief that it stopped women readers from reading the magazine.
We were shocked when the circulation of the fortnightly magazine brought out by the Free Press Group dropped by 80%. Most of our readers used to buy “Onlooker” only for the playmate pictures. At that time the monthly “Debonair” which was trying to model itself on the American “Playboy” did not exist. “Onlooker” set a male entertainment policy by carrying the female nudes or near nudes. When Rehman and I decided to drop the nude page the angry owner of the magazine, a coal merchant from Kolkata by the name of R Karnani, asked both editor Rehman and assistant editor me to leave. Unlike the editor I was given a little time to find another job. I was lucky enough to get a job as the editor of the “Mirror” monthly which was a publication of the Eve’s Weekly group of publications.
The “Mirror” was a very simple magazine modeled on the far superior Reader’s Digest, an American franchise family monthly. “Mirror” as a magazine aimed at young people in small towns. It had carried article on self-improvement and excerpts from bestselling books, articles on how to gain confidence, etc. It also carried sweet romantic stories by a Parsi lady, Thrity Bharucha. The paper did not carry any controversial stories. I recognized that my predecessor, the 80-year-old managing director, Japheth, had created a very good revenue model for the magazine.
Well, I had learnt my lesson at the “Onlooker.” As editor of “Mirror” I did not make any major changes but in fact concentrated on making it even more personalized. Those were the days when there was no Facebook or WhatsApp or internet. So I had introduced a Pen Pals column. Readers filled in a coupon with their name, sex, address and hobbies. When this details were published in the “Mirror” readers started writing to each other as pen-pals. The 80-year-old former editor used to patiently answer each letter which come in from readers. The letters were very charming as a young girl from Goa would write that a boy smiled at her, would she get pregnant? Like my predecessor editor I too decided to reply to each and every letter to reassure young men that they could wear full pants and girls would smile at them without any major risks. There was no scope for confrontations in a magazine like “Mirror.” I played it very safe. This made the owners happy because the circulation of “Mirror” upped from two lakh to five lakh within a year. I arrived as a successful editor of a magazine.
This led to a job letter from RV Pandit who owned the literary magazine “Imprint.” “Imprint” enjoyed a lot of prestige being edited the well-known writer called Ruskin Bond from Dehradun. However this was not practical and based on my success at the “Mirror” I was offered as editor of “Imprint” with the incentive of a doubled salary.
I converted the “Imprint” from a literary magazine to an in-depth investigative magazine. We used to carry stories of 5,000 words each on major issues. One of my first stories was on job rackets involving people who wanted to work in the Gulf countries. It was my “Goodbye Bombay, Hello Dubai” issue which carried an illustration by Mario da Miranda on the cover. We also carried the interview of Anees Ibrahim, the brother of Dawood Ibrahim. Anees would dress up like an Arab, take a room at the Oberoi and cheat those who wanted jobs in the Gulf. Aneez gave me an exclusive interview sitting in an Aunties Bar in Dadar, Bombay.
“Imprint” continued to carry book sections where we carried excerpts from bestseller books. I recall that the “Imprint” was the first publication to carry a major excerpt from psychoanalyst Dr Sudhir Kakar’s book on alternative approaches to mental health, titled “Temples of Healing.” The problem with “Imprint” was that owner RV Pandit was a Hindutva fundamentalist. Never mind that by birth he was a Goan Catholic whose name was RJ Rodrigues.
R V Pandit was very close to the very senior BJP leader Nanaji Deshmukh. Over a period of time, I came under pressure to carry articles in favor of the BJP. I was also required to publish large excerpts from a book by Arun Shawlin on the Hindutva version of Indian history. It was made clear to me that ideologically I did not fit into the philosophy of the owner. I was virtually forced out under some flimsy excuse of cheating the company. My crime was I paid a few hundred rupees extra to our proofreader Hari who needed money to finance the education of his children.
My biggest challenge came when I joined “Business India” as deputy editor. The first business magazine in the country was owned by Ashok Advani, an Oxford-educated Sindhi lawyer. I got into trouble with my very first investigative story on Dhirubai Ambani and the Reliance Empire. I managed to uncover all the dirty tricks that Dhirubhai employed to rise up the ladder to build his fortune. Dhirubhai believed that everyone was for sale and every politician could be bribed. So he bribed every important politician whose help he needed. He manipulated the commodities and stock markets. Dhirubhai was so powerful that he would get the government’s import policy on the import of textile machinery changed just for 20 days to benefit him.
Dhirubai was a totally ruthless businessman and brought up the management of all newspapers. In every newspaper, he looked after not just the editor but the news editor and the entire editorial staff. It has been alleged that even the mighty Girilal Jain who was the editor-in-chief of “Times of India” accepted over a lakh shares of Reliance from Dhirubhai Ambani. They were not gifted outright but the banks gave the editor a loan to buy the shares guaranteed by Dhirubhai.
My cover story in “Business India” appeared. Actually, Dhirubhai Ambani intercepted it at the Tata Press. He first approached me requesting me to withdraw my story and when I refused he threatened me. I lodged a police complaint. Then Dhirubai Ambani approached my publisher Ashok Advani and when the publisher stood by me Dhirubai approached the most powerful Congress leader Rajni Patel, who was close to Indira Gandhi. Eventually I was forced to dilute the story but the essence of it remained.
Never mind that all advertising from the Reliance Group stopped. A much greater victim of the Reliance advertising ban was the Indian Express Group. Ramnath Goenka, the owner of the “Indian Express” was shocked to discover that Ambani was manipulating his staff. Goenka started a campaign against Reliance. The immediate impact was all advertising from Reliance to the Indian Express Group was stopped.
It was in “Business India” that I learnt how a publication can be affected by the withdrawal of advertising. More recently we know how the editor of “Outlook”, Vinod Mehta, was kicked upstairs or so to speak. As editor in chief of “Outlook” Vinod Mehta has antagonized none other than Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group.
I realized the sensitivity of both politicians and advertisers some more when I moved to Goa, to take up the challenging task of converting the Portuguese paper of the “OHeraldo” into Goa’s first English daily newspaper dedicated to investigative political reporting in 1983. But that is another story.