SOME Telugu dailies in Andhra Pradesh allegedly earned a whopping Rs 350 crore in less than four weeks last year by publishing unaccounted advertisements in the form of ‘paid news’. The advertisements were issued by candidates of various political parties and independents during last year’s general elections between March 28 and April 23, 2009. Neither the candidates nor the managements of the dailies, however, acknowledged these as advertisements in their account books.
The revelations were made by the Andhra Pradesh Union of Working Journalists (APUWJ), which carried out a study. The APUWJ submitted its report to the Press Council of India (PCI) last month. The report says the dailies adopted a similar strategy during the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections held last November and pocketed Rs 10 crore in the form of paid news. Not to lag behind, Telugu news channels also made around Rs 50 crore by telecasting publicity campaigns of candidates in the garb of news reports during the Lok Sabha and the municipal polls. “Though this practice is often referred to as surrogate advertisement, the APUWJ preferred to call it paid news because these dailies published ads in the form of news,” said K. Srinivas Reddy, secretary general of the Indian Journalist Union and member of the inquiry panel set up by PCI last year to probe paid news allegations.
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, the other member of the committee, said the APUWJ study was meticulously and painstakingly done by collecting a lot of circumstantial evidence, which exposed the financial frauds of the newspaper managements.
“The PCI sub- committee did an in- depth study of the report and formulated draft guidelines.
The draft will be approved at our next meeting in Indore on March 31, after which it will be circulated in Parliament,” he said. This is how the ‘paid news’ phenomenon worked: The candidate gave advertisements to the dailies about their achievements, chances of winning and how people were giving them rousing reception during the campaign.
The ads were published in the form of news along with dateline and credit line to mislead the readers to believe they were news reports. The newspaper managements collected money for the space according to their ad tariff without acknowledging that these were advertisements. “The marketing managers of the Telugu dailies entered into ‘ contracts’ with political parties to publish the publicity materials of their candidates in news format. Some newspapers offered different types of ‘ packages’ to suit the requirements of contestants,” APUWJ secretary K. Amarnath said.
As part of its study, the APUWJ team scrutinised the news items published in the dailies — Eenadu, Andhra Jyothy, Sakshi, Vaartha, Andhra Bhoomi and Surya — during the period of electioneering and segregated the ads published in the garb of news items. It was not difficult for the team to identify such ‘ news reports’ — these predicted the victory of different candidates from the same constituency and were published in the same edition. In some cases, similar stories appeared in different dailies, making it apparent that the story was planted by the candidate of a political party.
For instance, in West Godavari district, Andhra Jyothy carried a story on the front page of its tabloid edition on April 23, 2009, which said Telugu Desam Party ( TDP) candidate for Narasapuram parliamentary constituency was going to win the seat. In the same edition, a story on the back page said the Congress candidate was sure to emerge victorious.
“One could understand if the reports attributed the claims of victory to the respective party spokespersons or leaders. But how can the same correspondent file two stories on the same day predicting the victory of two different candidates from the same constituency?” Amarnath said.
On the same day, Eenadu , in its West Godavari edition, carried two similar stories — one predicting the victory of the TDP candidate and the other of the Congress candidate from the same Narasapuram constituency.
Clearly, the candidates had planted similar ads in the form of news items in different dailies.
The electronic media, too, joined the bandwagon to make quick money. Many channels allegedly collected money from the candidates and aired special packages extolling their virtues and achievements. They did not acknowledge that the packages were promotional and paid for.
(Courtesy: MAIL TODAY)
