‘Corporates operate behind PR wall, making business journalism harder’

Apart from link between businesses and politicians, the inability to access corporates, as most of them operate behind a PR wall, has made business journalism tougher, experts said on Friday during a conclave organised by the Editors’ Guild of India (EGI)

The Guild, which is an organisation dedicated to protecting freedom of press and raising the standard of editorial leadership of newspapers and magazines, held an online conclave on ‘Media Controls: Regulations, Denial of Access & Curbs on Press Freedom.’

In one of the five sessions held during the day, senior journalists expressed concerns over the challenges of business reporting in India considering the government’s hostility towards the media.

Laying the landscape of the environment in which the business media operates and the kind of controls they are subjected to from corporates, T N Ninan, former Editor, Business Standard, said that it is harder than before.

“Business reporting is harder than before as apart from links between businesses and politicians, corporates are not easily accessible. Earlier businesses were easily accessible but now they all function behind the PRs making reporting tougher. Reporting also gets tough because of the links between businesses and the political system, he said.

The other sessions of the conclave were on films, politics, sports and legal reporting challenges.

During the various sessions, speakers expressed concern over the tools being used to control the media and curtailing the access of establishments and government to media houses.

“We have a public that believes in what we do. While business journalism is a part of general journalism, it is also a specific subset of its own specific environment. Reporting on markets is easy as you have a functioning stock market. There are regulators and auditors who are trying to get to the truth so there is a functioning ecosystem putting out reliable information. So it is easier than it was two-three decades ago. Business is less good news as they now operate from behind the PR wall,” Ninan said.

Sharing a similar view, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, senior journalist, said if the business entities are advertisers and if the media house depends on them, then journalists are often told not to do stories.

“When business groups are close to politicians, there can be pressure to not dig deep and throw muck on a person.  It is challenging and things have become worse. Life is tougher for independent journalists. Sometimes businesses also arm twist journalists to gag them by filing defamation suits and taking other kinds of legal actions,” Thakurta said.

Discussing the consequences of these legal actions and if they prove to be successful in acting as a deterrent to journalists or are just intimidating tactics, Ninan said no defamation suits with large penalties have come to any conclusion.

“These are only intimidating tactics. It is harder for independent journalists to stand up and fight against them compared to big media houses,” Ninan said.

Elaborating it further, Thakurta said that the process of tackling these cases is “a punishment itself” as filing responses, court proceedings are time consuming.  

 The session was moderated by Anant Nath, Editor, Caravan.