The Hindu: The Siege Within

News media is still reeling from the shock waves at The Hindu. Barely 11 months into the job, editor Malini Parthasarathy quit amidst a storm of controversy in the first week of January. A member of the Chennai-based promoter Kasturi family, Malini took over the reins of newspaper in February 2014 from her cousin, N. Ravi. Aggressive and hands-on, the lady tried to redefine the ways of the venerable, old Hindu; in the process she hurt a lot of toes and egos as she stomped around the newsroom.

She also took on The Times of India by starting a full edition in Mumbai, in the latter’s home market. It rebounded. The Mumbai edition’s expensive but lukewarm launch was used to show her her place. In her resignation Malini said she was “disappointed” her “performance had been judged so harshly in such a short span of time”.

However, the exit of a stream of respected senior editors from The Hindu — P. Sainath, Praveen Swami and Rahul Pandita — spoke volumes. Pandita, the Op-ed Page editor, in his resignation letter, wrote: “Every article that comes to us or has to be commissioned has to go through your approval…I am bogged down with this hourly need to consult you... and I am also sick of this constant play of yours: to pitch one person against another for one week and then reverse it in the next. One is also tired of your changing goalposts.”

The Hindu has not been the best at balancing ownership with management and editorial functions. In 2011, the board voted to appoint for the first time professionals — Siddharth Varadarajan as Editor-in-chief and Arun Anant as CEO — replacing Kasturi family persons. Within two years the experiment was in tatters. By October 2013, the same board, by the narrow casting vote of chairman N. Ram, removed both Anant and Varadarajan, charging them with various counts of mismanagement.

The problems and issues that dog media houses that are run as closely held empires by the owners extend beyond The Hindu. It is quite an anachronism that while the rest of India is adopting and experimenting with corporate capitalism, where management is decoupled from ownership, the big media houses continue with ‘feudal’ capitalism, and family-run styles. The Times Group stepped back from a professionally-run outfit till the end of 1980s to one where the two brothers, Vineet and Samir Jain, exercised direct, day-to-day control. The Dainik Bhaskar Group, among the largest in media, is run by a cabal of Bhopal-based brothers — Sudhir, Girish and Pawan Agrawal. The group saw some controversy as the patriarch of the group, R.C. Agrawal, was removed as a shareholder in the holding company.

In India, there has never been that perfect ‘editorial independence’, the traditional separation of ‘church’ and ‘state’; and with plummeting advertising and competition, the erosion of editorial values have only increased. These dangers were highlighted by both the first and the second press commissions in 1952 and 1978, respectively. But the family-run mindset has increasingly muscled itself into the editorial domain emasculating whatever remains of a free press. Editors over time have become just one more set of functionaries, reporting to business heads or owners. It has led to the increasing and creeping power of extraneous interests into the realm of news reporting, something the independent editor was meant to keep out.

At the other end is the example of Financial Times and its former owner, the Pearson Group. Editorial was shielded from the board of directors not only by edict but by a multi-layered appointment process to ensure the board did not have a direct influence on the appointment committee of the Editor. The lofty ideal was ‘quality’ and ‘integrity’. With the takeover of FT by the Nikkei Group in July last year, in a £844-million buyout, the new owners have vowed to continue ‘editorial independence’; but among the editorial staff there are already concerns and calls for guarantee.

Time never seems to stand still.

(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 25-01-2016)