How Modi government is awarding and punishing the newspapers

Exercising financial control through Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP), Modi government is rewarding and punishing the newspapers based on their ownership and ideological leanings, according to a report published by the Cobrapost.

Modi government, according to the report, increased advertisement by more than 50% for 896 newspapers and at the same time cut the advertisement for more than 2664 newspapers by more than 50% after it came to the power.

Incidentally, the report said that “the government budgeting for advertising flagship schemes such as Swachh Bharat, Skill India, Make in India, Indradhanush, Mudra, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, among others, has registered an increase of 36% between 2014–15 and 2015–16, from ₹250 crore to ₹350 crore.”

The report divulged that the newspapers with owners close to the ruling parties have higher shares in advertising spend and the pattern in the distribution of advertisements showed communal bias as well. “Panchjanya, the RSS mouthpiece in Hindi language, witnessed an increase of 466% in the mean advertising spend share when the BJP government came to power. Similarly, Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece in English, had an increase in spend share of 214%, while Janmabhumi, a Malayalam Daily close to the BJP, saw a 413% and 1194% increase in share of advertising spending for its Kottayam and Thiruvananthapuram editions, respectively,” the report stated.

It further pointed out that there is a high fluctuation in the advertising spend share for many newspapers, describing it as an unhealthy trend that directly hits media’s independence and its long-term stability. For instance, according to the report, The Indian Express, faced a cut in its ad spend share across most of its editions. “Similarly, Andhra Bhoomi, a newspaper close to a Congress MP, faced cuts across its editions in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana,” the report stated, adding that the change was calculated as the difference between the average spend share for each newspaper for three years before 2013 and three years after 2013.

“At the same time, only 10% of the Urdu newspapers saw an increase in advertising spend share of more than 50%, while on average 14% of the newspapers saw an increase of more than 50%,” it added.

Incidentally, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is not immune to using advertisement money as a leverage. The Bihar government spending on Pindar, an Urdu daily, rose from 1 lakh to ₹24 lakh after it sacked the editor who called Nitish Kumar the Editor-in-Chief, the report mentioned.

“In the case of media, the reliance on government advertisement as a major source of revenue means that they are at the mercy of the government’s spending decisions. Any fluctuation in this key revenue account hinders long-term stability of the newspaper and investment in high-quality journalism,” the report said, and referring to an estimate, added that “a newspaper that sells for ₹1–4 costs at least ₹15–20 a copy to produce. Therefore, it is advertising, and not subscription, which ensures the survival of newspapers.”

Suggesting that most media organizations pride themselves in keeping a façade of neutrality, it asserted that it is difficult to determine media bias by qualitative studies of media content. “Instead, following the advertising money flow from government enables us to attribute a bias to the media organization based on which party is in power and which newspaper are they giving more advertisement to,” it remarked.