India: 'Paid news' scandal hits major newspapers

Rahul Gandhi the scion of India's ruling political dynasty, campaigned in a Delhi constituency during the parliamentary elections earlier this year. The candidate, Sandeep Dikshit, was the son of the state's high-profile female chief minister, Sheila Dikshit. A cinch for a spot in the evening news in the world's largest democracy? Not really, or at least not unless the candidate agreed to pay a large amount of cash to a TV news channel.

"The channel even said they would arrange the crowds," the incredulous Mr Dikshit told Outlook magazine, which recently ran a cover story on how newspapers and TV news channels take money from politicians for election coverage.

Despite the economic downturn, India's media have continued to grow, albeit at a slower rate in the past two years, though PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts a return to double-digit growth in 2010. Indian newspapers are thriving and TV news channels, both in English and in Indian languages, are multiplying. Competition is cut-throat, but the established groups are raking in huge profits.

Media exposés have shown that several organisations have been selling news space to politicians at election time, disguising what are essentially adverts as news. The Press Council of India has set up a committee to investigate violations of the journalistic code of fair and objective reporting.

"We have complaints against some of the leading newspapers in the country," says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a member of the committee. "But this is a cancer afflicting media as a whole, including television. It is undermining … the very process of democracy."

The "paid news" phenomenon also violates an Election Commission rule that limits a candidate's expenditure. The Hindu newspaper reported that while the chief minister of Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan, in elections to the state assembly, showed an expenditure of just £72 on advertising, stories extolling his achievements appeared for several days in rival newspapers. If the stories had been advertising, as they appeared to be, Chavan's bill would have been many times higher.

"The papers even have rate cards for election candidates," says Thakurta. "These are rates for different types of news coverage – for interviews, for reporting rallies, even for trashing political opponents."