When Paper-Nazis attack: The Media and Selective Celeb-Bashing
This is a reprint of one of my old columns, specifically one of my BRAND BAAJA columns from an advertising-marketing publication called The Brief.
In terms of its theme, it still has relevance. You could replace Jeffrey Archer’s name with almost any other celeb who’s currently being bashed for reasons only the media know best.
The column is reprinted exactly as it originally appeared.
Only the post-heading above is new.
In case you didn’t get it, the term ‘paper nazis’ is my corruption of ‘paparazzi’.
I think it’s an appropriate term for the mob-mentality governing today’s Look-at-me-I’m-the-boss media.
And especially appropriate on the eve of the launch of The Mirror Cracked, the latest paper-nazi newsletter from the TOI-TOI-fish group.
BRAND BAAJA
Ashok Banker
The Fourth Estate’s Eleventh Commandment
Okay. So we all know that Jeffrey Archer has been a bad, bad boy. He’s been caught with his pants down and his hands in the till. And that’s a very difficult position to explain away! But this didn’t happen just yesterday, as most newspaper reports would have you believe. Not even five years ago. Or ten.
Jeffrey Archer’s shenanigans have been going on for a long time. Over twenty years to my knowledge. And I’m no expert on the man. Other, better-informed people could probably trace it back to his childhood–or even his past lives, as is fashionable today.
In fact, his first bestselling novel, Not A Penny Less, Not A Penny More, as you may recall, was based on his own bitter experiences with the stock market. In the novel, the over-eager investors pin the blame on a rich market manipulator and hatch a plot to ‘earn’ their money back from him. It’s a ploy that today’s weeping UTI investors must be wishing they could pull off in real life.
Archer wrote the novel with the sole purpose of earning a large enough advance to pay back his crushing debts. Using influence, savvy and his celebrity status, he wangled a handsome contract and advance. The word from the publishing world was that he couldn’t write a straight sentence and his editors had to rewrite the whole book, virtually writing their own publishable draft of his clever but illiterate manuscript. Whether that’s true or not, he hit the jackpot. The novel was a bestseller. The bankrupt Archer’s ploy worked and he ‘earned’ back all the money he had lost on the stock market, and then some.
Later, once he was established as a famous, rich internationally bestselling author, he turned back to politics, determined to leverage his literary fame into a prestigious career in public office. But even during this time of transition, his fondness for partying and quick-cash deals never abated. The rumours, gossip, and finally, news stories kept streaming out constantly.
But if you’ve been reading the newspaper reports recently, you might have formed the opinion that this scandal was his first major debacle. In fact, it’s the logical outcome of decades of scheming, wheeling and dealing. Archer’s not just been a bad boy this one time. He’s always been a bad boy.
So where were these reporters all these years? Why didn’t they report on his misdeeds earlier? Why wake up suddenly one morning and dump on him mercilessly? It isn’t as though a saint was caught committing a sin. Yeh to purana badmash hai.
The answer is painfully simple: Most journalists and reporters simply aren’t well-enough informed. I could tell you horror stories about reporters who make up entire interviews based on a single “Hi, hello, goodbye” encounter. Editors who rewrite quotes to make them “more readable”. And of course, we all know why some celebs get such lavish coverage so often while other, equally famous and newsworthy celebs are completely ignored.
But more puzzling than this is the way some celebs and industries are singled out for this ‘bash’ treatment while others are idolized like Ganesha idols during the festival. The reason why this happens, as we all know, is because news reporting isn’t as seedha-saadha as it once was, or as the newspapers, magazines and TV news channels would have us believe.
In fact, things have reached a point where you actually have to look for the ‘story behind the story’ in every major ‘scoop’, feature article or celeb interview. As in: ‘Who’s this guy related to–the editor’s sister?” Or ‘What did that poor bastard do to deserve this kind of press-bashing?’ This latter approach was on parade last month when even a Bombay Times reporter who had had one solitary encounter with Jeffrey Archer years ago thought herself fit to analyze the man.
The first question that came to my mind when reading that bash-piece was: ‘So why didn’t you say all these things in your article back then?’ But hey, it’s much more fun to swing sides and opinions when the tide turns against someone, isn’t it? And who cares about the old ‘I’ word anyway. (Integrity, you sap.)
Perhaps someday someone will have the honesty to pull the pants down on the murky goings on the media business too. Or doesn’t the camera turn back on the crew? Probably not. In fact, most of the country’s influential editors have an unwritten mutual understanding: Don’t rake up my dirt, I won’t rake up your’s.
That’s why, when it comes to rival editors, publishers or journalists, they’ll go hammer at tongs on the professional, competitive front. But never utter a word about their rivals’ personal goof-ups or problems. Muck-raking is reserved purely for celebs who have slipped down to the ‘Bash’ List. This is an unspoken unwritten Eleventh Commandment in publishing and editorial circles.
But if even a single journo did have the guts to cross that line and write about what really goes on behind the scenes in India’s Fourth Estate, you’d have a news story as melodramatic as any issue of Stardust or Showtime! Or even more than the average Jeffrey Archer novel.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 30th, 2005 at 10:22 am. It is filed under Ashok.
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