So, what’s happening here? Suddenly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not the top headline of the day. On some occasions, he is not even on page 1; on others, he’s a single column.
Most of his speeches are reported on the inside pages alongside Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and other election campaigns.
Television news, which usually followed Modi wherever he went, still follows him but goes elsewhere much more: be it Sam Pitroda on Wednesday, Kejriwal bail hearing on Tuesday, the Enforcement Directorate raids in Jharkhand on Monday; and Prajwal Revanna last week – these stories have received a lot of coverage.
It’s not as if Modi has been sitting in his air-conditioned Prime Minister’s Office in New Delhi all this while. He’s sunburnt from his campaign travels into Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Telangana, et cetera, where he has attacked the Congress and its ‘Shehzada’ frequently and even taken on leaders such as Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
At the same time, ‘Modi ki Guarantee’ advertisements that wall-papered the print media a month ago have disappeared from the newspapers and are only fleetingly visible on television news channels.
Why are PM Modi and the BJP no longer commanding the news the way they did at the beginning of the Lok Sabha campaign? Is this a deliberate pull back or has the news media changed track?
That’s the imponderable.
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Modi’s often not the lead
Back in the first week of April, the Prime Minister was the lead or second lead story in The Indian Express almost every day. In the first week of May, he’s not the lead item but there was this one big picture of his roadshow through Ayodhya.
There’s a fairly similar pattern across most Delhi editions of newspapers such as The Times of India, Hindustan Times, and The Hindu. Newspapers in the south, such as TheNew Indian Express or Deccan Herald, report on the PM’s campaign but rarely on page 1.
His 5 May visit to the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and the road show in the company of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath – events that received live coverage most of Sunday on television news channels – was the top lead story in Hindustan Times (6 May) but got photographs, only, in TOI and the Indian Express–The Hindu page 1 had just a pointer to a story inside. It was left to a Hindi newspaper like Dainik Jagran to give it a big splash with a five-column headline, photo and story.
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Who or what gets the space?
What are the newspapers choosing to report on, instead? On 6 May, it was the end of campaigning of the polls before Phase 3, or the attack on an Indian Air Force (IAF) convoy in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir. Alternatively, it’s the allegations of rape and sexual assault against JD(S) MP Prajwal Revanna; or TOI leading with the raging wild fires in Uttarakhand. All of these were given precedence over Modi.
On other days, there’s been the lifting of the onion export ban in HT; the allegedly doctored tape of a speech by Home Minister Amit Shah; the son of BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh getting a Lok Sabha ticket instead of his father-this, after the former WFI chief had been accused of sexual misconduct by top Indian female wrestlers; the Delhi schools bomb hoax (2 May); and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s bail plea in Supreme Court (7 May).
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has received considerable attention in this period – with an interview in TOI, for example, and one to the Press Trust of India, taken on page 1 by HT.
What’s interesting is that even on the inside pages, where the PM receives more extensive coverage, he has been sharing space with leaders from various political parties. A story about the PM could be side by side with one on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, or one on Mallikarjun Kharge, the Congress president.
And even when he is on page 1, he can get lost: for instance, on 8 May, TOI placed his Indore speech on RJD leader Lalu Yadav’s "full reservations" for Muslims half way down the page, with approximately 15 other stories. You have to search hard to find, "Lalu backs Muslim quote, PM says it exposes oppn’s intent".
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Meanwhile, the ever-faithful television news continues to cover Modi’s election campaign with live feeds from his speeches, but even here, there’s been a change.
There’s been no dip in TV news channels’ interviews with the PM, though: this week, it was the turn of Times Now Navbharat. Previously, there have been interviews on India TV, TV 9, and CNN News 18.
However, the PM often takes a back seat when someone else is attacking Congress, especially former Congress members. On Monday, Acharya Pramod Krishnam’s claim that Rahul Gandhi wanted to overturn the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya verdict and Radhika Khera’s tearful departure from the party overtook the PM’s speech in Odisha.
Similarly, the PM’s attack on Rahul Gandhi and Congress for keeping "mum" (India Today) on Ambani and Adani in the poll season made way for the full day coverage of Sam Pitroda’s comments on India’s diversity-or rather, excerpts from his comments.
Here’s something to think about: will TV news channels, which had promoted BJP, downplay a Modi speech in favour of attacking Pitroda, just to generate a controversy?
The author tweets @shailajabajpai. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)
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