The NDTV Davos Junket

Davos is an important mile stone in the global business calendar.

Every year the most powerful businessmen in the world hob-nob with equally powerful political leaders and discuss global economic policy. Fortune 100 CEOs become accessible to the media. Philanthropy gets discussed and the rest of the world is reminded about how policy decisions that affect their lives gets shaped without their participation.

The cream of NDTV – Barkha Dutt, Vikram Chandra and Sreenivasan Jain  along with a few others from NDTV were in Davos. A rich and creamy delegation indeed.

They spoke to George Soros (a man convicted of insider trading) about Commodity Trading and it’s links to inflation. *Bangs head on table*

They spoke to Melinda Gates on philanthropy and how wonderful it is that world’s richest people who have made billions will promise to give away a portion of their wealth after they die. How they made their money in the first place and why they can’t channel it back right now – did not seem to be pivotal to the discussion. One topic that should have come up in the NDTV interview with Melinda Gates – is their interest in vaccines – that are targeted at first world diseases but tested in countries like India. (e.g. the HPV Vaccine. Path International – an organisation behind the tests is a recipient of Gate’s benevolence. See open letter on HPV trials from Indian Journal of Medical Ethics here).

They spoke a lot about Good Governance with Indian business Tycoons. Why and how an Indian business Tycoon who gets subsidies in the annual budget would want to talk about good governance – beats me.

They interviewed Indra Nooyi of Pepsi Co. Of course it would not be polite to bring up (and play hard-ball) on the issue of water conservation with one of the largest water miners in the country no? The green theme is (obviously) meant only for viewers and not advertisers. (See this piece in ehmmm NDTV)

As the studio jockeys were having a field day or should we say “a day in the field”, the real stories were breaking in Nothern Africa. CNN and BBC were running non-stop coverage of Egypt and Yemen – while our crew from NDTV was giving air-time to advertisers in the name of economic policy.

If they had sent their journalists from NDTV Profit or their lifestyle channel, it would have made sense and been a fair investment of air time. But to send all their editors most of whom are political pundits seemed a little odd.

Maybe it was an internal business decision to start getting international exposure. Maybe it was an effort to become a news channel that looks beyond India. Maybe it was seeking out new funding and wanted it’s dream team on display. The coverage unfortunately ended up looking like a junket for journalists.They were all in the wrong place at the wrong time as North Africa was in the grip of a revolution.

It would have been nice if we could have seen Sreenivasan Jain on the streets of Cairo covering a rapidly breaking story. He once covered a US election very well...yes I remember the glory days of NDTV.

Many of us in India are waiting for Al Jazeera. Hopefully their entry will put news back into news rooms in studios with potential (like NDTV).

On a relevant side note, after the greenwashing of “Greenathon” and “Save the tiger”….
We now have the “Coca-Cola-NDTV-Support My School” campaign. My issue with this programme is once again the choice of partner. Why do I have to remind NDTV about Coca-Cola and the people of Plachimada? While the people of Plachimada and the toxins that they drink thanks to Coke will be forgotten – you and I will be told that they really care about our children. What about the children of Plachimada? I predict lots more of Suhel Seth on air (his company Counselage has Coca-cola and NDTV in their portfolio). We may also see a lot more of Shashi Tharoor (the man who batted for Coke as residents were complaining about toxins in the groundwater in Plachimada).

Dear Ranbir - (for your Youngistan challenge) | #pepsithegame |

Dear Ranbir

My challenge to you is -

• Get Pepsi Co, it subsidiaries and partners to stop extracting ground water in bottling plants anywhere in South Asia
Reference - | NDTV | Kerala: Cola giant Pepsi exploiting ground water? | Dated - Thursday March 18  2010, Raw Link : http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/kerala-assembly-panel-puts-curb-on-pepsi-17932.php  

Many folks have taken on this challenge and success has been difficult to find. I hope you enjoy the challenge!

****
UPDATE: Link above seems to be disappear every once in a while.  Just in case link not working here is a .pdf version 

UPDATE 2: It comes as no surprise that this entry to the #PepsiTheGame contest got rejected.  I don't blame Indiblogger, they have a business to run. I will however, still object to the beverage companies profiteering from our groundwater.

UPDATE 3: Have written a post for @mohanbn's blog about Pepsi's Games.  Do read and comment. There is an interesting debate brewing.

********

An Open Letter to Prannoy Roy (another rant on the Media)

Dear Mr Roy

At the outset I must place on record that you and Appan Menon have done more for the media than most others. Appan Menon was my favourite journalist and he had the potential of becoming one of the greatest journalists that South Asia has produced. Fate unfortunately had different designs. You were able to catalyse radical change in India. You changed the media because both you and Appan Menon were brutally honest. “Those were the days” as far as Indian broadcasting is concerned.

I cannot understand how and where NDTV compromised on the honesty quotient. I understand that the “free-market” does impose restrictions. Your listing on the bourses has meant that investors are a more important stakeholder in the business than your viewers. Your expansion into areas such as advertising (NDTV Media) and lifestyle programming (NDTV Good Times) does pose a lot of restrictions on your ability to critique institutions that use these two vehicles. It must be difficult to prevent an incestuous relationship between some of these companies.

I appreciate that there is no need to make a public admission around the dilution of values. You must have found a conveniently rationalized answer to the challenges that competition and free-market have brought to NDTV’s doorstep.

As a viewer however I must confess that there is much to be desired. Allow me to place before you the most obvious of examples

• NDTV regularly runs stories on Infosys. You do not disclose that Narayanamurthy is an independent director on your board.
• You stooped to astro-turfing when you chose to use the world’s largest auto-manufacturer as a sponsor for NDTV Greenathon. 
• Your crew crossed some moral and ethical line in journalism during their coverage of 26/11. 
• The biased coverage of the Afzal Guru case raises a whole set of questions, especially around your willingness to send a man to the gallows without a fair trial. There are numerous other examples of your studio's obsession with kangaroo trials where anchors get to play judge, jury and prosecution.
  
• NDTV has been willing to paint some of the most democratic movements in this country in the same paint as extremists (read naxal). What’s amusing is that you do this on shows that run advertisements for companies that these democratic movements oppose.
  

One can rationalize a defence for every single one of the above examples. The fact of the matter will remain that there is some truth in each of the examples.

May I suggest that you ask your team some tough questions. I think it is time that you brought the journalism that NDTV is known for back on track and left the entertainment to bollywood.

Anand

NDTV Greenwash

This article of mine, originally appeared under the Title "Go Green or Smoke Screen" at the TheHoot.org. The link to the complete article is here. Since they are making their greenwash campaign an annual affair, I thought it would be worth a re-publish in my own blog.
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Go green or smoke screen?

Is it logical to have the leader in one of the most polluting industries in the world as a sponsor for an environmental campaign? ANAND BALA has a problem with NDTV's choice of a partner for its green initative.

Posted Thursday, Feb 12 13:38:17, 2009

The choice of Toyota as a sponsor for the NDTV Greenathon, was conspicuous. The automobile industry in not the cleanest of industries when it comes to the environment and Toyota produces a lot of diesel fumes in India.

Before I get into that, I would like to congratulate NDTV on roping in such a large number of celebrities for such a noble cause. I hope that some these celebrities decide to give up on their SUVs and settle for less polluting modes of transport (even if it has four wheels). NDTV has kindled something positive. Thank you.

I am sure when the pundits at NDTV debated the choice of Toyota and it must have crossed their minds that it does not make logical sense to have the leader in one of the most polluting industries in the world as a sponsor to an environmental campaign. They must have come across reasons(s) above and over the sponsorship fee. I am hoping they will be able to share those reasons at some stage. I am not too sure if this was a CSR initiative of NDTV. If it was I think it raises a few questions.

Fact: Toyota is the world's largest auto maker.

News reports in late December and early January indicate that Toyota is the world's largest automobile producer with over 8.9 million units produced in 2008. The silver lining is that this was a dip of about 4% compared to the same period last year. These figures (other than the decline) cannot have a positive impact on the environment. Let us do some math with this number of 8.9 million units. If we were to get very conservative with this number (assume all these cars are small cars, they all run on petrol, they all clock less than 10,000 KM a year and they sold only 8 million cars) we would need to plant 96 million trees a year to offset the carbon emissions! (This is a global figure)

Fact: Toyota sells/has sold a lot of diesel engines in India.

Japan (the home country of Toyota) has a ban on diesel cars in some urban centres. This is in an effort to reduce rising pollution levels. Some Indian cities have made attempts to ban diesel cars but this has not yet happened.

There are over 160,000 Innova vehicles on the road. The vast majority of which (to my understanding) run on Diesel. Let us assume that they have sold 100,000 diesel cars, each clocking up approximately 15,000KM/year (conservative again as many Innova vehicles are taxis). We would need about 1.7 million trees to offset the carbon footprint of the Diesel Innovas! This excludes the Qualis (now out of production) and petrol variants of the Innova. If Toyota wants to make a profit out of India they should (at the very least) plant about 5 million trees a year to offset emissions from all their models and past sales.

Pundits will argue with me on the assumptions that I have used to arrive at these numbers. In my defense, these numbers are about as conservative as you can get and if we were to sit down and make these calculations the number of trees required would be much higher than 5 million in India and 96 million globally for Toyota. I have been very generous is selecting the footprint calculators on the net and have discounted some of the results as well.

I believe that Toyota chose to sponsor NDTV because it felt it was a great Corporate Social Responsibility vehicle. Toyota, like any other company that has ever been in India, has the right to advertise and engage with the media. The onus of taking a position and choosing the right company as a sponsor should be with the media. Will NDTV be willing to run a researched piece on the number of trees required to offset the total number of cars that Toyota has produced over the years?

Toyota has a green image. That image however has more to do with environmental norms for cars in Japan than with anything else. Their hybrid models are available in certain countries and hopefully will make an entry into India someday soon. If they were truly green they would have phased out diesel engines on their cars. Unfortunately, hybrids are still polluting. The electricity that we use for these cars still needs to come from a thermal power plant or hydro-electric plant (read as large dam). Both these have an environmental cost. The question about cars is not about how clean they can get, but about how we can take them off the roads and substitute them with mass public transport.

Toyota is trying to be green. Good for them. They need to be told that they are doing what is expected of them (the bare minimum). Anybody who produces millions of vehicles should not be cast as an environmental champion, particularly by the media.

To end, let me give a rather extreme analogy. Dow Chemicals has a lot of CSR initiatives. But the Indian media would hesitate to engage with them because they manufacture hazardous chemicals and companies under their control have a disastrous environmental track record (especially in India). Should they be considered "green company"?

I would venture to say that cars are a big issue when it comes to pollution and we need to be careful when we paint their manufacturers as champions of the environmental cause.

Astroturf - A better term for Manufacturing Consent

The Hindu ran a piece today from The Guardian on Astroturfing titled "Dealing with Fake Support" [original here].

The Astroturfing principle is very similar to Chomsky's manufactured consent and is a more vulgar manifestation. Astroturfing is about lobbyists and PR firms creating artifical grassroots support for an issue of public interest such as the environment. Astroturfing @ wikipedia


My last two pieces on Air India and the Facebook Messages are good examples of Astro Turfing. The Facebook messages on healthcare in particular is a good example.

Here are some more examples of Astroturfing -

• NDTV Greenathon a.k.a NDTV Toyota Green Campaign
  The world's largest manufacturer of cars wanted to convince us that they are really concerned about the environment. An article that I wrote on this available here.
  
• DNA, TOI and Bartering
  Both DNA and TOI barter ad-space for either vouchers or an equity in the company. For example if I were running a retail chain - TOI would run wonderful articles about me in exchange for either vouchers or equity depending on the volume of coverage that I desire. You would see "active" discussions on their websites as well with some amazing feedback on my store etc etc etc. The perception of "public support" based on articles that have actually been bought that makess it astroturfing.
  
• India Shining and BJP
  India shining will remain the best known example of Astroturfing from an Indian perspective. The year they ran the India shining campaign was the worst for farmers and availability of food grain was less than what it was during the Bengal Famine. We had the entire media talking about how wonderful everything was based on sound-bytes from ordinary citizens from urban India. The fact that this was staged and fake came out in the elections. QED.
  

In a nutshell Astroturfing will be prevalent and enabled by social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. We will see increasing noise about schemes such Unique ID in these spaces. Beware. We have to watch out for how these messages are manipulated by firms that specialize in marketing through social networks.