Mediatization of Politics and Paid News

Bhupen Singh
Journalism is often placed at a high pedestal as a profession guided by ethics, as if the profession brims with greatness. There are many myths related to this profession. It is said to be the fourth pillar of democracy. It is believed that the journalists bring out truth even at cost of their lives, that media has idealists who fight for a better society and so on. While doing this it is often overlooked that our news media is a product and reflection of the economic and political structure of society. The exposure of many corporate media houses and celebrity journalists have cracked this glorified image somewhat, however the whole truth is still elusive to us.
The phenomenon of paid news has put the relations between news media, political actors and democracy behind the dock. The relation of paid news with the state policies can be better understood with the concept of Mediatization. Mediatization, as a product of the liberal democracy has many complexities and layers. It can not be explained by only economic neo liberalism and corporatization. It is shaped by these, but to understand Mediatization, it needs further conceptualization. In Mediatization, not only the structural issues of media are raised, but an attempt is made to understand the effects as well. Mediatization is neither purely a politico-economic process of media, nor a cultural study of its impacts (Schulz, 2004). The process of mediatization enables us to fully understand the state of media in liberal democracy.

Mediation and Mediatization
Mediation and Mediatization are processes that are not only related to politics, but include different kinds of social experiences. Many a times, Mediation and Mediatization are used inter-changeably. But they are in fact different (Mazzolini and Schulz, 1999). The events propagated and highlighted by media shape the thoughts and behavior of society. This is in a way the process of mediation. Mediated politics is that situation in which media becomes the prime medium between the public and government. The people remain dependent on media for the political and social information. Also the politicians and rulers make use of media to get the people’s opinions. These kind of mediated relations have cut short the direct relationship between the political actors and the society. The political communication instead of being direct as in case of public meetings, rallies etc. has become completely mediated.
‘Mediatization’ was first used to understand the impact of media on the political communication. Kent Asp, a Swedish media researcher brought forward the concept of mediated politics. He developed this concept with the help of the term introduced by the Swedish Sociologist Gudmund Hernes- that is, media twisted society. Hernes used the term for the society as shaped by the relations between politics and media (Stomback, 2008).

Media logic versus Political logic
In order to understand the concept of Mediatization, it is essential to understand ‘media logic’. In Capitalist democracies when media actors become very influential they mostly think about their business interests, ignoring the social concerns. Media indulges in irrational activities to increase its ratings. This has brought many changes in the methods of news gathering and presentation (Althied and Snow, 1979). Using the media logic, media consistently experiments with its format to attract more attention. The frequent changes in formats of the Indian news channels and papers can be understood in this context.
Media logic tries to dominate all other democratic institutions. In this way, it gets in conflict with the political logic. The chief actors of political logic are the leaders, ministers and bureaucrats. They claim publically to be responsible towards the party, government and people. They do not give free reign to media, but use it for their own benefits. Thus, the capitalist media logic and political logic remain in a conflicting relationship. (Mayor 2002) The difference between these two logics is made evident by the recent competitive attempts of media owners and politicians to regulate the media.
On the basis of media logic and political logic, Stromback (2008) has proposed four phases of mediatized politics. These phases are in accordance with the western democracies. Still while comparing with the India democracy, the situation is by and large similar.

Four phases of Mediatized Politics
In the first stage, media is the most important source of information and communication. This communication takes place between the citizens, political parties and political institutions. In this situation, the politics is mediated. Mediation is important for the later process of Mediatization as it influences greatly the expressions, opinions and perception of the audience. In this very first step of Mediatization of politics, the perception of people starts getting shaped by the reality as projected by media. To understand whether politics has reached this first step of Mediatization, it is important to know whether media is the prime source of information and communication between the media-rulers and media-ruled. In this stage, the media, other than political media, is less regulated by political logic. But the political logic on the other meida is not so less, that they get regulated by media logic as well. Thus, in this phase, the profit centered media logic remains limited.
The second phase is marked by a media, freer from the political and government institutions. Now the media logic becomes operational. The capitalist profits become more dominating. A demand of professionalism from journalists is made. They are expected to be more realists rather than being loyalists to the politics. Attempts are made to innovate the news formats in order to appease and attract the audiences and readers. Still the media logic does not rule completely in this phase. The state laws and regulations create obstacles in its way. Media remains midway in terms of freedom. Although the political and institutional actors are strong in this phase, they do not rule the media and are not able to force their interests on it.
In the third phase, media is the most important source of information and communication for the various classes of society. The media becomes more independent than the second phase. This forces the political and societal actors to mould themselves according to media. The media logic starts dominating the political logic. The political actors start using news management and spin doctoring to meet their ends. This further pushes the acceptance of media in politics and society. The media logic becomes all powerful. Its role in the policy making increases and it becomes near impossible to overlook the media. The process of agenda setting and framing also starts. All these are initiated by media owners for their own benefits. Althied and Snow (1991) describe this situation as one in which all institutions appear to be media institutions. The institutional journalism appears to be disappearing. News becomes products. Rather than the news itself, their presentation becomes primary. In these circumstances, the political actors have to use news events to put forward their views. Sensations and celebrities assume prime importance in media.
By this phase, reality starts getting presented on the basis of media logic. Thus, a mediated reality is constructed, in which reality itself disappears. The mediated reality becomes more important than reality. As only mediated reality reaches people, they respond to that only. Lippon (1997) describes the mediated reality as an environment of façade and Nimmo and Comb (1983) describe it as a world of fantasy. In this phase the political and societal actors remain frustrated with the role of media. The conflict between media and political logic intensifies. The political actors treat media as an external element; still they remain dependent on the news. While the election campaign, formulating policies and in governance, they remain more concerned about the media rather than about their people.
By the fourth phase, media logic becomes so powerful that media starts breaking all boundaries of moralities for its benefits. In such a situation, often the political-societal actors forget the differences between media logic and political logic. Politics gets colonized by media. Political actors surrender before the media logic. The media is used to mould politics as desired.

Mediatization and Paid News
It is time for the people who believe media as fourth pillar of democracy to realize that this watchdog has instead become a corporate-lapdog. The process of Mediatization is at its peak. Media logic is operating at full steam to achieve its purpose of profit earning, even at cost of people’s concerns and democratic values. We cannot neglect the fact that media has the extreme power to influence people’s opinion. It can guide the opinions in the direction it desires. Thus, the danger behind the attempts of media to shape opinions in favour of an idea or person in order to further its’ own interests, is great.
After the advent of neoliberal policies, many media houses have been trading news, sidelining and molding the rules-regulations. Biggest example of this is the Times of India Group, which initiated the medianet and private treaty. In 2003 medianet was started, many supplements with the main newspaper were introduced. With this paper, a daily paper named ‘Delhi Times’ is supplied free of cost. This supplement prints only such news for which the newspaper gets money. The common reader has no idea that the Times of India and the Delhi Times are two separate newspapers. Both have separate RNI registration numbers as well as editors.
The news is manipulated through the private treaties as well. The corporate media houses buy partnership in other corporate companies in lieu of advertisements and promises of popularizing their brand name. For instance, the Times of India Group is in partnership with more than 125 companies through their company Brand Capital. It looks after the advertisement and promotion of these companies. At first the group did this in name of private treaties. Private treaty has become common for most of the newspapers and private television channels.
The year of 2009 saw the Parliament elections as well as Haryana and Maharashtra state assembly elections. These elections made evident how the media houses influences politics for their benefits, once the corporate media logic becomes powerful. The newspapers openly demanded money for including news favoring particular leaders. They had their rates for different candidates. Many political leaders and parties registered complaints of demands of money for favorable news on the newspapers. This phenomenon was earlier observed during the Uttarakhand Assembly elections of 2007, when media houses had started the practice of selling space in their publications. Some politicians paid money for getting publicity in news-form. This phenomenon is known as ‘Paid News’. A powerful BJP leader, Lalji Tandon, was surprised when Dainik Jagran, a paper that is considered pro-BJP, asked him for money during his campaign in the Lucknow Parliamentary elections. Press Council of India (PCI) prepared an inquiry report, under Srinivas Reddy and Paranjoy Guha Thakruta (Thakurta and Reddy, 2010) on this issue of ‘paid news’. They defined paid news as “Any news or analysis appearing in any media (Print & Electronic) for a price in cash or kind as consideration”
Paid news is the biggest challenge for Indian media in today’s scenario. Its roots are in the neo-liberal policies that created the space for media to be so unregulated. The political parties which overlook the media regulations should also realize that the mainstream media is now capable enough to overlook them. The politicians who are responsible to formulate legislations and regulations for the whole country are forced by the media to trade for space in news media. If this process of Mediatization continues like this, it will become more and more difficult for the common person to protect their already diminishing democratic rights.

Diminishing Public Sphere and a Search for Alternatives
The process of Mediatization is molding the society and politics as per its own interests. Even in the capitalist democracy, it is imperative that the flow of information between the ruler and the ruled remains intact. It is important that there remains a space for discussion amongst the people, and media plays role of a watchdog. In other words, we can say that the freedom of press is not for press, but also is needed to strengthen democracy (Baker, 2007). Public Sphere is that platform, which provides space for collective discussions about social problems. It impacts the political initiatives. Public sphere is the space other than market and state, for voicing of people’s concerns. The discussions in public sphere, at one hand, opine people and at the other hand, pressurize the state to take notice. Habermas (1989), the German sociologist, studied the European public sphere of 18th-19th century. In those times, coffee houses and salons used to be main centers for discussions. The growth of print media added new meaning to public sphere. Newspapers also discussed problems and concerns of people. In this way, the changes in media also brought changes in the public sphere.
In the last two decades Indian media has undergone historical changes. In the era of economic liberalization, media has propagated at unprecedented scale. Mediums like Newspaper, radio, TV, internet have become important sources of information. We have already discussed how the information through media that remains a toy in the hands of corporate, remain a facade. If we do not realize and oppose this situation, it will become more dangerous in coming days. Whatever public sphere is left with us, will also disappear. The mediated and mediatized information is capable to create people completely dysfunctional for the society and politics.
It is not that before the onset of this for of Mediatization, the politics in capitalist democracy was without problems. But now, the mainstream media plays an important role as an institution, for furthering corruption in politics. The civil society, responsible to check the capitalist democracy, is itself lacking in accountability now. An important element of civil society, the NGOs, is facing questions about their credibility, in view of the huge funding. The NGOs either receive funding from the Government or from the corporate houses.
The people’s movements for the rights of people on the resources and the extreme left movement are truly challenging the mediated reality. They are creating an alternative communication structure, however small. In these terms they are creating a counter-public sphere. There is sufficient proof that if a group of people are guided by a strong political ideology, they remain less influenced by the media (MacComb, 2004). These kinds of counter public sphere come forward with new agendas of social transformations. In these spheres, discussions are not one dimensional, but multi-dimensional. These spheres, unlike the bourgeoisie public sphere, are not regulated by a single class base. The counter public sphere keeps alive the alternative to the mediatized politics.

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