Thread by @gauravsabnis

The only reason Twitter, Facebook tag false claims or ban politicians in the US is

A. those in US power, constitutionally and institutionally, can't take legal action against them.

B. they get pressured & squeezed by stakeholders and media.

In India, neither is the case.

The US media is far from perfect, but it is old school, investigative, hard nosed journalism from the "mainstream" media that exposes sordid tech details, causing public outcry, leading to hearings and changes and investigations. From Standard Oil to Facebook, muckrakers do it.

Muckrakers (remember, it's a positive term, not an insult) are the reason there are what restraints there are on US capitalism. Ida Tarbell types spawned a school of journalism that didn't really exist till then. NYT, WaPo, NYer, etc continue that.

smithsonianmag.com/history/the-wo…

There was a story last year about how the tech-media relationship changed in an inevitable way that is just in line with history and reality, but tech bros are acting extra hurt, more than Rockefeller types did, because they remember the 90s and 00s when all coverage was fawning.

They don't realize that "aww, look at these scrappy young whizkids" stories of those days came from a different section and mentality of the media than "these mega corporations are doing sleazy shit" stories. The latter is a phenomenon that was fledgling in India once.

The last 7 years have hunted it into near extinction. There's still Caravan and a couple of others still doing actual investigation. But they are like Casabianca.

Unlike the US where despite the growth of right wing media in the Fox years, media still remains journalistic!

And again, I'm not saying US media is some lovely utopia. But there is still like that basic level of respect, interest, and most importantly, market for real journalism. The kind which produces Pegasus type stories at all levels, every week.
India's pegasus members - new media!

If you look at the Pegasus consortium, India is the only major democratic country from where not a single national newspaper OR cable news channel is involved. It's just @thewire_in.

So there is no sustained pressure from the media, like there used to be until a decade ago.

The billionaires in India just bought out everyone, installed their friends in government, who then sicced cops and courts and mobs on the few journalists still wanting to be Ida Tarbell types.

The billionaires in the US tried. They've tried before. And still try.

Murdoch was obsessed with buying NYT. Still is. Just like he was obsessed with buying the WSJ.

But the thing is, even under Murdoch, WSJ (always editorially on the right anyway, even pre-Murdoch) still has a lot of solid reliable neutral investigative old school reporting.

Bezos owns Washington Post. But doesn't seem to have any interest, at least now, in meddling with the editorial or reporting side. WaPo regularly carries muckraking news about Amazon.

But the thing is, Amazon is kinda not really in any real trouble. Not like social media ones.

The stories about Amazon are about their demanding work culture, squeezing margins, etc etc... Basically run of the mill capitalism stuff, in the larger scheme of things. Walmart occupied that spot once, as did Amazon, IBM, Standard Oil, etc. That's an ongoing battle forever.

Basically, Amazon & Bezos played no real role in any elections or any misinformation campaigns or any fake news. Except when Trump kept ranting that every WaPo expose of him was an attack from Bezos.
Even the right wing media didn't buy that lie. WaPo is, well, WaPo.

Sorry, that should be
"Basically run of the mill capitalism stuff, in the larger scheme of things. Walmart occupied that spot once, as did *Microsoft*, IBM, Standard Oil, etc. That's an ongoing battle forever."

It's not that billionaires in the US are more noble and really respect journalism a lot more or anything. It's just that it's impossible, structurally, economically, legally, even culturally, to just "buy out" the media in the US.

Cos there *is* a real market for journalism.

It might not look like it once did. Most people don't get daily newspapers in the US and not everyone is watching the evening news like in the old days, when Cronkite or Brokaw got more viewers than all current US news channels combined. The economics are changing.

But there still remains in the US this Ida Tarbell school of journalism that has evolved to the level of self-sustainability to not fear being hunted to extinction by the rich. They are like deer or rabbits. Sure, it's easy to kill *a* deer or rabbit. But not all of them.

In India, the media didn't really exist in that way until independence. Still, by the 80s & 90s, we had good thriving independent journalism and a largely neutral op-ed culture. What we didn't have was a big enough market base for "real" journalism to be self-sustainable.

The speed with which almost all the once respected, once principled media entities fell to the BJP-Billionaire invasion is reminiscent of the speed with which Western Europe fell to Hitler.

Looking back, Indian media was too young & still growing to even stand a chance.

(I'm too busy & lazy to pitch columns or post blog or write newsletters, hence these rambling threads BTW)

Anyway, my point is, it is pointless to scream at Twitter/FB about how they call out Trump lies but not BJP lies.

Because it's not like they do it in the US out of any real love for principles or democracy or the truth, even. They do it, cos US media, institutions force them to.

The New Yorker, which is basically a dense magazine with serious deep longform stories, is one of the few magazines that still makes more money from subscriptions than advertising! And their subscription base grew in Trump years!
As did NYT/WaPo online subscriptions.

I don't see that happening in my lifetime in India, I'm sad to say.

Have your ever tried to read the New Yorker or NYT or WaPo or the WSJ page to page? They are putting out sooooooo much real journalism content so frequently and still making money doing it!

BTW, a New Yorker annual subscription costs less than a Netflix subscription. Not just in the US, even in India. A Netflix subscriber is paying more in India, even in USD, on an Indian income, than I'm paying for the New Yorker on a US income.

It's a question of critical mass.

The Caravan, which costs less than 25% of a Netflix subscription in India, struggles to get enough subscribers to feel financially comfortable.

Sigh!

You can ask Jack & Mark till you're blue in the face, why don't you do the same things on moderation/factcheck in India that you do in the US, Europe.

Their honest answer should be - real tragedy is that US, Europe force us to do these things that we don't have to do in India!