Disdain for media has spread to the villages: Ex-ABP News scribe who quit in protest

On 27 February, Rakshit Singh, a senior reporter with ABP News, gave his resignation from the channel in a dramatic announcement from the stage of a mahapanchayat. The mahapanchayat, being held in Bhausa village in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut district, was part of the ongoing gatherings across north India in support of the farmers’ protests. Singh, who had gone to cover the protests, ended up becoming the story himself, as a video of his speech went viral. In the video, Singh says, “My parents spent their hard earned money to educate me, and I chose this profession … Because I wanted to show the truth.” He said that the channel did not want him “to show the truth,” and that he had been asked to show that the number of people at the mahapanchayat were far lesser than the actual attendance. The channel denied his allegations in a subsequent statement.

In late March, The Caravan’s Sunil Kashyap, a reporting fellow, and Shahid Tantray, a multimedia reporter, spoke to Singh about his reasons for quitting. Singh said that the overall media environment in the country had been vitiated by the actions of a few media houses who “have an agenda.” An edited excerpt from the conversation is reproduced below.

I started working as a journalist around fifteen years ago—first with a newspaper in Dehradun, and then I worked for a year with a newspaper of the Rajasthan Patrika. I also worked with News Today. My graduation degree was Bachelors of Commerce, so I reported on business. After about a year there, the Dainik Bhaskar group launched a business newspaper, Business Bhaskar. I joined that and reported for them for five years. I covered the telecommunications and automobiles beat there, and continued to cover business and economy news. After that, I worked in a news channel, and there also my focus was primarily on business news. I covered Uttar Pradesh for around two years. I even covered the assembly elections of some states. I was a special correspondent.

I have been working in the media for the last 14 to 15 years, and as of today I am an independent journalist. I am on the streets today because I am trying to make a place for myself, however small it may be.

When I started in journalism, one of the main reasons was the honesty associated with the profession. And even more important than that integrity, was the respect one got from society. At that time, I had reached the final stages of the Officer’s Training Academy of the Indian Army exam, twice. After that I prepared for a Masters in Business Administration and got a decent score in the Management Aptitude Test. I was getting admission in good MBA colleges but despite that I chose journalism, knowing fully well that it is a low-paying profession. Even though there is less money in this job, it gets respect in society, and that honour is more than enough. I picked up journalism then and have been in the profession since then. And in the future also, I will keep doing independent journalism.

What I said in the panchayat that day holds true for the entire media environment. What is the media environment today? There are a few channels that are standing and reporting two kilometres away from the border where the farmers are sitting. Is reporting done by standing two kilometres away? The channels that are standing and reporting from two kilometres away have an agenda. Maybe they do not play a very big role in mainstream media but they have given all of us a bad name.

Before the farmers’ movement, I had seen the Anna Hazare-led India Against Corruption movement. I think Anna’s movement was small compared to the farmers’ protests. It may have been a big thing for its time but it was probably nothing compared to this. Pick up its coverage and compare it to the coverage of this peasant movement. For two months, people did not even know how far the protests had spread apart from the Tikri, Singhu borders; where in the country the farmers’ protests were happening. Was the coverage of the farmers’ protest the way it should have been? The simple answer is no.

When you go among the farmers, they do not care which brand’s identity card you are carrying. You can see how many videos have come since the farmers’ movement started, how the farmers behaved with the media. And the words they use will prick the heart of any self-respecting person. That had started bothering me immensely. I spent so much time thinking about what they were saying. For so long, I could neither understand nor plan my course of action. I did not know what to do.

Today, there is a clear-cut division—either you are on this side or the other. Nobody is willing to listen to talk of the middle ground. No one is ready to accept you as neutral. You go for reporting, you are a senior journalist who likes reporting—till date I have never worked on the desk because I used to enjoy my job. And now, you go among the public and you have to listen to abuses directed at your mother and sister. How could this happen? A profession which was considered to be the most noble profession ever—everyone keeps calling it the fourth pillar of democracy—that fourth pillar now has to listen to abuses like these? I did not want to be in a place like that.

Due to these few media channels, everyone else has to suffer through this environment. I was facing it, and so is the public. I suppose I had reached my limit—some may have reached their limit before me, some may reach it after me and there may be some who are not bothered by it at all. I did what I thought was right.

If you see my old reporting, when I was working with newspapers, you will see I have written a lot on farming issues, agriculture and allied activities. I have never done any anti-farmer report. What can you possibly say against farmers? Everyone knows the condition of the farmer. Today, with this divide between pro-farmer and anti-farmer, all one gets is abuses from all sides. When you get caught in this divide, what will you do? Either you listen to the abuses or you quit. I chose the path of quitting.

Today, all journalists are being viewed from that lens, from that point of divide. No matter what you do, how good your work is, you are bound in that lens. But this division did not come about in a day or two. Today, this divide has reached monstrous proportions. You see the troll army—the division is absolutely clear-cut on Twitter and Facebook.

Look at the level I was at, professionally, and where I am now, literally on the roads. I will have to start from scratch all over again and there are going to be so many problems ahead. But I am finally at peace in my mind; I am satisfied with what I have done. All this turmoil of the past two months, at least I have been rid of that now. At least I am not wandering around with the burden of this media environment anymore. Now, when I go to the Tikri border or the Ghazipur border, I am not treated like that, with disdain, anymore. Perhaps this was the biggest reason.

When I first went inside the Tikri border in December, that is when I realised how big this movement is and how they prepared for it. Due to this peasant movement, the fabric of the villages, their brotherhood, has been strengthening. And all of this is coming out only on social media; no mainstream media is showing it. And the distrust of the media is not limited to the protest sites at the Delhi borders. Wherever panchayats or mahapanchayats are being held, everywhere the media is being treated with disdain. And it is not limited to the borders or castes; it has spread to the villages.

As told to Sunil Kashyap and Shahid Tantray