One must acknowledge that, as media strategists, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Narendra Modi are streets ahead of their opponents. It helps, of course, that they have a pliant mainstream media that is ever-ready to play along.
In this last fortnight, yet again, we have witnessed this play out. On April 21, Narendra Modi made a communally loaded speech while campaigning at Banswara in Rajasthan, where, among other things, he called Indian Muslims “infiltrators”. His speech was reported, but there was barely a murmur in mainstream media about it violating the Model Code of Conduct or even that it was not befitting the prime minister of a country to use such coarse and hate-filled language.
Since then, mainstream media seems to have become almost comatose, sitting back and merely reporting such speeches and their disturbing contents. Apart from Narendra Modi, his lieutenants like Home Minister Amit Shah, have also not held back with openly communal language used to attack opponents, as this report in The Telegraph illustrates. The objective of this line of campaigning is evident; it is to polarise the voting population along communal lines.
Also clear is the BJP’s determination to keep Modi the focal point of its campaign. To do this, not only is the Prime Minister rushing around the country speaking at meetings and doing road shows, all of which are prominently covered by most media, but for a man who has shunned the media since he was elected in 2014, he has gone on overdrive to grant “exclusive” interviews to newspapers and television channels. Like the interview he gave last month to Smita Prakash, editor-in-chief of the news agency ANI, these interviews are clearly scripted, with little scope for follow-up questions.
This story was originally published in newslaundry.com. Read the full story here.
