Journalism in India is definitely not in good health. Layoffs do not make news anymore and neither do they come as a surprise to the journalistic fraternity. Devoid of social security benefits, the majority of the journalists are today at a point where making two ends meet is nothing short of a herculean struggle.
While one gets to read about the plight of the journalists in the metros off and on there is hardly any reportage about the fraternity working in the tier two cities or in smaller centres or at the grassroots. One does get to read or learn from sources about the mass lay-offs from media organizations, more so the giant ones where the layovers are in the hundreds. This makes journalism a risky and scary profession now, a tragedy of the times.
A latest report in the portal exchange4media.com talks about how jobs in the media sector have gone from bad to worse. The graph is constantly rising, with a 15 per cent hike in job losses within a year.The print and television sector and the figure stands at 20% and 18% respectively. Even the digital media once seen as the ‘saviour’ has witnessed a 10 % increase in job losses.
The report rightly points out that these are not just numbers. These are livelihoods and careers. It further says that 200-400 media persons have been laid off across the media spectrum in the last six months alone.
It needs to be pointed out that maybe this figure pertains to the number that was formally employed as in those who were given proper appointment letters or were asked to put in their papers or asked to serve their notice periods etc.
What is happening in the informal set up across the media spectrum is unfathomable. During a career span of around 30 years this reporter has come across different sorts of means used by employers to make a journalist redundant besides the tools to exploit those working in the media establishments. Several people working at different levels in the media industry were once again contacted to understand whether there has been change in the modus operandi of the media owners.
There are several processes at work and these need to be put down in black and white to explain what actually is going on with the working journalists, their levels of job insecurity alongside the harassment they have to face all along. And also why all this is happening.
It will definitely come as a shock to many that a large number of vernacular dailies take it in writing from their work force in smaller towns that they are agriculturists by profession and are giving their services to the organizations voluntarily without expecting any remuneration. This undertaking leaves the journalists at the mercy of the owner of the establishment as to whatever he may deem fit to be paid to the workers.
A senior working journalist with almost three decades of work in the vernacular media explained, “The first large scale layoffs were witnessed in 2008. The owners found an excuse in recession to make people redundant. A major handicap for the journalists all along has been the contractual mode of employment wherein after every 11 months the staff is asked to submit their resignations and side by side they are offered a new contract for another 11 months with a remuneration hike. The hike is no compensation for the dangling Sword of Damocles as far as long term employment is concerned.”
The next major opportunity for the owners to exploit working journalists came during the Covid 19 pandemic where people were asked to work from home and many of them were not called back to join for duty later. When asked, the management cited economic losses while asking a portion of the initial workforce to resume duties at 50% or 60% of the emoluments that they were getting before the Covid outbreak. Burdened with housing and vehicle loans the journalists were left with no option but to join and ever since then the newspaper management have been sacking people at the slightest of pretexts. The reasons given are flimsy ranging from decline in circulation, a drop in revenue or any other.
In some cases they tell the workers they want to sack them, that they would be paid the entire cost to the company (CTC) for a few months, and that the latter would have to submit their resignations. Otherwise they achieved their motive through the threat of transfers to remote areas or to editions being brought out from other cities knowing very well that they would rather put in their papers than shift base at the same salary or a pittance of a raise.”
“At the same time those in the management, particularly the marketing staff continue to get the large chunk of pay hikes alongside other incentives including foreign trips. If the owner is shelling out Rs 100 as pay hikes, 40% goes straight to the marketing staff while the rest is distributed among the editorial, circulation, production staff etc,” he added.
Management professionals have no inkling of how news is gathered and processed, and have introduced some very very intriguing components in the pay package of the journalists. One of them is the target variable pay (TVP) which is almost never reimbursed in full after the completion of a year of service. Now how can news be defined in terms of quantified target? A reporter might file just one copy a day that might be a major exclusive. The same reporter on another day might file ten copies that have little news value and several of these may be dropped or carried as briefs. How will the management look at it?
Many journalists complain of being loaded with forms at the time of appraisals asking them to quantify which story of theirs had an impact, how it was different, what was its word length etc. Their attitude towards these data exercises is that of indifference knowing fully-well that these hardly matter when it comes to salary enhancement.
The scenario in the NRI media that has emerged over the last one and a half decades is no better. This media is broadly classified as offshore radio channels that take voice overs from reporters based in India in various Indian languages, or vernacular newspapers published abroad in Indian languages that take copies from reporters back home. These journalists go through an altogether different but equally harrowing experience.
“To begin with there is nothing formal about the arrangement. There is no appointment letter or any contract. The emoluments are fixed orally. They can ask a journalist to move out any day.
Most of these radio channels are run by people abroad having money bags looking for some kind of identity and clout among the Indian expats there or to play political and other games. There is hardly any seriousness. A radio host might as well ask you to begin the show with some joke. This is very frustrating for genuine journalists looking to earn some money. It is a very different scenario there,” explained Shiv Inder Singh who has been working for the Punjabi NRI media for more than a decade.
He narrated a very interesting experience about losing a job. “I had taken an editorial position in my report over the phone regarding the Kargil military operations during one of the Vijay Diwas celebrations. Since the owner had nothing concrete against me he told me to go saying why I did not suffix ‘ji’ after the Prime Minister’s name. My counter argument was whether any of the reporters suffixed ‘ji’ when talking about the then American President Donald Trump or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Journalists are removed on such flimsy grounds,” he added.
The scenario is dismal not only for the junior or middle rung professionals. It is equally bad or even worse for those hired at the senior positions. “There has been a drastic change in the entire professional scenario. Now you are hired not for your journalistic acumen but for your ability to get revenue or fix meetings of the owners with politicians so that they can work out mutual interests for the days to come. The whole emphasis for recruiting reporters in state capitals is whether they can arrange meetings of the newspaper owners with respective chief ministers and chairmen of various boards and corporations that can result in advertisement revenue and other benefits in kind,” said a senior journalist who recently moved out of a Delhi based daily that was once very prestigious and is now on the downslide.
“There is hardly any excuse with them to sack good journalists. They either make the atmosphere very toxic for the journalist concerned or come up with frivolous charges. By not giving any formal appointment letter they take care of any legal wrangle that may come up once they sack a journalist. In many cases they do not even give an identity card so that the reporter has access to offices and institutions for reporting. But news is never high on priority.
What has made matters worse is the fact that previously the owner editors or just owners also had some idea of news. Presently all that has gone for a toss and those at the receiving end are the journalists. If this is happening in the heart of Delhi you can well imagine what is happening in the rest of India,” he added.
Coming back to the exchange4media report, it was mentioned, “Revenue decline has been a major contributor to layoffs in the Indian media industry. FY 24 was a challenging year for TV broadcasting with both ad and other revenue falling. TV advertising grew only 7% in 2023, according to Pitch Madison report.
TV advertising revenue touched Rs 32886 crore in 2023 but its share decreased from 42% in 2020 to 33% in 2023. Many key players struggled.” It went on to state that the print media too faced similar challenges.
It also quotes a 2023 report of World Economic Forum saying that 44% of the media jobs could be automated by 2025 by application of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
These are all pointers to a bleak future for the journalists and also those aspiring to be one.
Cover Photograph from Nieman Reports