Draft-Not to be Quoted
Job Insecurities of Media Workers in India:
Status, Determinants and Possible Corrective Policy
Babu P. Remesh1
I. Introduction
India is currently going through a `media revolution’. At present, the country is among
the prominent and emerging media markets of the world 2. Along with a steady growth of
the traditional constituents of media (such as radio, newspapers/publishing industry and
television), the recent decades also witnessed a proliferation of new media forms,
enabled by novel technologies and innovative modes of production organisation. All
these developments inter alia opened up a spectrum of new employment opportunities
in media sector, for a large number of educated and skilled youth. Among this growing
pool of media workers, journalists (in newspapers and television news channels) are the
most visible lot, due to their ubiquitous presence in the day to day lives of all consumers
(readers, viewers and listeners).
Journalists in newspapers and television channels continuously update us with new
information on all aspects of the society, which often includes issues of labour and
livelihoods - covering work and workers of various sectors and subsectors of the
economy. But, what is quite curious in these `labour-beats’ is the near absence of
information or a conspicuous silence of media on the issues pertaining to working
conditions of media labour. Does it mean that the labour standards of media workers in
India are too impressive to be reported? Is it a planned outcome or inadvertent
omission? Does it reflect the limits of freedom of the media workers on choosing the
contents of their news? Keeping these questions in mind, the present paper explores
into the `not much reported aspects’ of job insecurities and working conditions of media
labour in India.
The term, `media’ itself is elusive. In its broader meaning, the term, `media’ includes
several sectors and subsectors such as radio and television broadcasting, print-media
(newspapers and publishing industry), cultural industries (film, music and many other
performing industries), cable TV industry and a range of new media forms (e.g. internet,
mobile). Accordingly, in a broader sense, the set of `media workers’ can include a wide
array of workers such as: news room officials, editors, editorial staff, journalists,
producers, anchors, reporters, photographers/camera personnel, designers, art1
Associate Professor, School of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies, Indira Gandhi National
Open University, New Delhi. Email: babu@ignou.ac.in. An earlier version of this paper was presented in a
seminar held at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi (Remesh, 2015).
2
In India, as on December 31, 2012, there were around 93,985 registered publications, and 850 licensed
television channels out of which 413 are in the news and current affairs category. State-owned
broadcaster Doordarshan alone runs 37 channels. In addition, there are over 250 FM radio stations and
countless internet websites (Sharma, 2013).
1
directors, light and sound technicians, light-boys, cable TV network operators and even
the unskilled staff laying cable lines for television networks3. Nonetheless, the
discussion in the paper is largely confined to the work and labour issues of journalists
(in newspapers and television channels4), whose images come first when one thinks
about media workers.
The major data base of this paper is the primary information gained through in-depth
interviews of print and television journalists in Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR),
during March 2014 to May 2015. In the absence of reliable data sets on the quantum
and spread of journalists across categories and segments, the study was of exploratory
nature, without engaging any statistical sampling techniques. The respondents were
contacted mostly using personal networks and then through snow-balling techniques,
where contacts provided by earlier respondents were used to identify prospective
respondents. To gain a balanced picture, the respondents were drawn from both
English and Hindi segments of the media industry, despite the striking variations in their
socio-economic and human resource profiles5. Interviews were also held with some of
the activists of journalists’ unions and with a few media-researchers. The information
thus gathered, is supplemented with available secondary information and literature
concerning media and media labour.
Broadly, the journalists in newspapers and television news channels can be divided into
in-house journalists and the stringers (or free-lancers). As the name suggests, the
former category of journalists are those who work directly with the media firms, while the
latter represents an extended pool of workers who are often located far away from these
firms but are roped into the labour network, mostly through informal contracts and piece
rate payment systems. Based on their nature of appointment and terms of work, the first
category of in-house journalists can be further divided into two, permanent journalists
and contract-based journalists. Accordingly, the subsequent discussion in the essay
focuses separately on the job-insecurities of each of these categories of journalists.
II. Job (In)securities and Working Conditions of Permanent Journalists
In India, majority of the news papers and television-based news channels are seemingly
functioning within the organised sector, where the statutory regulatory and welfare
framework of extant labour laws are applicable6. However, it is wrong to assume fair
3
These broader conceptualisations are based on insights from Mosco & McKercher (2008) and
McKercher & Mosco (2007)
4 Though the labour issues of radio journalists and jockeys are very similar to their counterparts in the
print and television media, the present discussion does not focus on this segment of media workers.
5 Linguistically, most of the news papers and television channels catering to Hindi speaking states of India
could be clubbed into two segments, English news papers/channels and Hindi news paper/channels. The
profiles of journalists in both these segments vary considerably. In English-based media houses, most of
the journalists are from urban backgrounds with sound English-education from metros, cities and big
towns. As against this, a good chunk of the Hindi journalists are from rural backgrounds, albeit some of
them may have done their studies in a city or big town, for some time.
6 Workers in the organised sector are normally benefitted from the provisions of various labour
legislations applicable to the sector (stipulating minimum wages, permissible hours of work and so on).
Further, right from recruitment till repatriation of the employees, the firms have to follow certain statutory
2
wages and working conditions for all working journalists in the sector. In realty, the
payments, working conditions as well as job security vary considerably, across various
segments of workforce.
Permanent in-house journalists are the relatively more protected lot among the
journalists, who work with regular, salaried jobs - with secured tenure of employment
and better terms of work. Their working conditions are stipulated as per relevant labour
laws and applicable statutory norms. Accordingly, this segment of the journalists enjoy
better salaries, welfare measures and other fringe benefits (e.g. bonus, provident fund,
paid leaves). For instance, the salaries and welfare provisions of permanent journalists
working with newspapers in India are normally fixed based on the recommendations of
Wage Boards7 set up from time to time, under the provisions of Working Journalists and
Other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous Provisions Act,
19558 (WJA, 1955).
Due to their better salaries and improved working conditions, permanent in-house
journalists are with more `protected’ and secure jobs. They are free from employment
(tenure) insecurities, as the job is permanent till superannuation and the employers
cannot fire them at will – as they are bound to follow a series of procedure as per the
governing statutory guidelines. Naturally, this segment of workforce had been more
prominent in terms of their participation in trade union activities and organised collective
bargaining. Given this, in earlier times, the journalist unions were successful in realising
the stipulated salaries and benefits as per Wage Board awards, announced from time to
time. But this situation has changed considerably in recent times.
The recent episode of resistance of most of the big media houses to implement the
recommendations of the Majithia Wage Board9’s award suggests that even for the
permanent journalists it not easy to accomplish their lawfully eligible salaries and
working conditions. The award was firmly resisted by majority of the media houses citing that its additional burden would force the small firms in the industry to close down,
while considerably affecting the financial viability of big firms10. Ultimately the case was
norms governing the industry/sector. All these, together assures fair wages, terms at work and some
degree of employment-security.
7 The wage boards for newspaper and news agency employees (including journalists) are statutory in
nature. The prime responsibility for implementing the recommendations of the wage board rests with the
state governments and union territories. The first Wage Board for journalists was constituted in 1956.
8 Though the television news channels are not coming under Wage Board’s purview, the awards of these
wage boards normally set the broader terms and conditions of work in television industry also, due to
close linkages between the work and workforce of both these segments.
9 This is the 6th and latest Wage Board constituted by the Government of India for journalists, under the
Working Journalists and other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous
Provisions Act 1955. The 6th Wage Board was initially constituted with Justice Narayana Kurup as
Chairman from 24.05.2007. Later on, as Justice Kurup resigned the position with effect from 31.07.2008,
Justice G.R. Majithia was appointed as the new Chairman. Justice Majithia took charge of the position on
04.03.2009.
10 While this view was largely borrowed and propagated by some of the major media houses, the irony is
that some of the smaller firms in the Industry (e.g. Assam Tribune) had implemented the Wage Board’s
award much before the final verdict on this matter by the Supreme Court.
3
brought into the court of law, by some journalist’s trade unions, which was fought
aggressively by some of the big media houses. Though this case ultimately ended with
a verdict of the Supreme Court of India in favour of implementing the award, the media
firms could successively defer the implementation of the wage board’s
recommendations for about 4 years since its award in 201011. Even now, there are
several media firms where the employees are yet to get the benefits of the award, fully
or partially12.
Over time, the number of journalists protected as per wage board’s provision is steadily
declining in all the media firms, as new recruitments are mostly on contract basis. Most
of the media houses are actively indulged in luring the `wage board employees’ to come
out of wage borad’s protection by way of launching Voluntary Retirement
Schemes(VRS)13 and by introducing company pay scales14, with relatively attractive
provisions vis-à-vis wage board benefits. Several respondents told that many of the
business houses offer better remuneration for contract journalists, especially at higher
levels, mainly to tempt them to step out of the wage board schemes and to rejoin as
contract employees. In some larger firms, the managements were even found using
coercive measures to push permanent employees to short term contractual
employment. Quite often, such pressures (for opting contractual positions or even VRS)
are backed with threats of transferring those who are not falling in lines to far away
places. Thus, often, the firms are found create compulsive conditions for the `wage
board’ employees to forfeit their employment (tenure) security. This situation, along with
recruitment of new employees only as contract workers, lead to a situation where the
proportions of `wage board’ employees are strikingly on the decline in all media firms.
The activists of journalist unions are finding this process as `killing of wage board’ as
many of them doubt that there will not be any case for constituting yet another wage
11
Justice Majithia Wage Board submitted its report on 31.12.2010. Further to wage related
recommendations, there were several welfare suggestions in the Majithia Wage Board’s award such as
post-retirement benefits, suggestions for formulation of promotion policies, measures to improve
enforcement of the wage board’s recommendations, possibility of granting paternity leave to male
employees, extension of retirement age, exploring pension scheme possibilities and so on. On October
25, 2011, the union cabinet approved the recommendations of Majithia Wage Board. However, the actual
implementation of the award got delayed for years due to protracted litigation by some of the big media
houses and Indian Newspaper Society, a major industrial lobby. Finally, on February 7, 2014 the
Supreme Court of India gave its final verdict in favour of the implementation of the award.
12
Some of the interviewees pointed out that this act of non-implementation of Majithia Wage Board’s
recommendations amounts to the contempt of the verdict of the apex court, which categorically stipulated
that the revised salaries to be paid from April 2014 and the arrears to be settled in four installments within
a year since the verdict.
13
To some respondents, in certain firms `VRS’ often becomes `CRS’ (compulsory retirement scheme), as
the employees are coerced to opt for `voluntary’ retirement, by introducing conditions that prompt them to
do so.
14
The KSL scheme introduced in The Hindu and the company specific salary scheme offered in Business
Standard are certain examples for this.
4
board in the future, given the rapid rate of extinction of
employees15.
this protected category of
Mostly, the media houses are habitual in flouting the recommendations of awards of the
Wage Boards set up from time to time. Further to the absence of effective mechanisms
to ensure the implementation of awards of wage boards, there are also malpractices in
human resource management that hinder the workers from realising these benefits. For
instance, some contracts of hiring journalists even contain clauses that restrict the
employee from proceeding with legal recourse, in the event of non-implementation of
wage board awards (EPW, 2014). “We are unpaid workers dealing with paid-news!”.
This satirical statement by a respondent aptly captures the dilemma of the journalists in
contemporary times.
It is interesting to note that non-implementation of 6th Wage Board’s awards for a long
time did not even led to any visible protest or opposition from the working journalists in
the industry. Such a striking feature of docility of workers is unanticipated in an industry,
which has a long track record of trade unionism and collective bargaining, dating back
to 1950s.
The recent restrictions imposed by the Times of India Group on social networking
behavior of journalists also confirm the abysmally weak bargaining status of journalists,
besides reflecting on their awfully undignified positioning in the world of work. In August
2014, Bennett, Coleman and Company Ltd (BCCL) — publisher of the Times of India
and Economic Times - directed all its journalists to disclose the details of their social
media accounts (e.g. facebook; twitter) to the company. The employees are given with
an option of either surrendering the credentials of their personal accounts or creating a
new account for the organisation’s use. The employees were asked not to post any
news links on their personal social media accounts, where as the company can post
any material to these accounts as it deems fit. Subsequently, in response to the
agitation in social media and blogs16, the BCCL had to dilute its position with
amendments and compromises on its original stand. However, what is crucial here is
that there was not much overt opposition from the employees on the company’s
infringement into their freedom of expression in an industry which is generally vocal
when it comes to matter of freedom of press. This is a clear indication that the degree
of collective bargaining and job security in the media industry is too low to put an active
voice of workers in the corporate business policies.
15
Thus, the saga of Wage Boards and Working Journalists Act, 1955, as an enabling mechanism for
wage revision in the sector is seemingly nearing its end, with it natural death, due to non-availability of
eligible beneficiaries!
16 Interestingly this story was not initially covered by most of the mainstream newspapers or television
channels. It is only subsequent to reports in websites/blogs like Quartz India and Newslaundry, this
matter of blatant intrusion into the freedom of workers came to lime light.
5
III. Insecure World of Work of Contract-based Journalists
Available evidences suggest that, of late, in conformity with the global trends 17 and the
experience of many other service sector jobs in the new economy, the media jobs in
India too witnessed a strong shift away from regular employment to more informal forms
of employment. Accordingly, a considerable proportion of workers in media houses are
now working with short term contracts or with project/output based work assignments.
For instance, currently, as per rough estimates, it is only about 40-60 per cent of
journalists are in the protected category of permanent workers, working with definite
superannuation schemes, even in established media houses18.
Contractual employees are hired and fired at will. Payments are often done at
consolidated or piece-rate (project) basis, which are normally far lower than the
recommended levels as per Wage Board’s awards. For instance, the starting monthly
salary of young print-journalists in Delhi, on contract, was in the range of INR 7000-INR
800019 in 2013 (Agarwal, 2013). At the national level (when we include the small
cities/towns and regional press and television industries), the situation is still dismal20.
Quite often, even the meager payments are not paid regularly, which compel these
workers to look for additional sources of income21.
No uniform system of wage payments exists for the journalists on contractual work.
Accordingly, the modes of wage payment range from that of pure piece rate systems to
strange arrangements that mix elements of both piece and time rate payments. To cite
an example, PII (2009) reports the prevalence of a `voucher system’ in Madhya
Pradesh and Chattisgarh among the journalists working on contracts. In fact, the terms
of this system are much worse compared to pure contractual arrangements. As per the
`voucher system’, there are no written or formal contracts and the journalists take up
their work on verbal instructions and at the end of every month sign in the muster rolls.
The payment is given as a lump sum amount against a `voucher’ signed by the
employee22 and hence the name.
Journalists on contract/temporary work are usually over-exploited vis-à-vis their
permanent counterparts, and are not covered by protective labour legislations and
17
ILO (2014) reports that, globally, the media and cultural industries are now characterised by a strong
presence of temporary workers engaged through short-term contracts and project based work
arrangements.
18Even though there are restrictions for engaging contract workers in larger shares, these directions are
often sidestepped.
19
This is roughly about USD 110-125 per month. 1 USD = 63.92 INR - as on 26 May 2015.
20 For instance, as per a study conducted in 2009, the starting salary of young journalists was as low as
Rs.1500 and the proportion of those drawing less than Rs. 5000 per month was considerably high (PII,
2009).
21 Lower levels of payments (often coupled with inordinate delays) force many of the contractual workers
to supplement their income by moonlighting or by occasionally taking up some piece-rate assignments.
22 While this is the consolidated payment for the employee’s work for several months, the firms are free
from all the legal obligations and commitments that need to be fulfilled in the cases of permanent
employees.
6
welfare schemes available to permanent employees. Further, due to the constant fear of
non-renewal of contract, these temporary employees work more diligently, compared to
permanent counter parts. Short duration assignments and work on short-contracts
restrict the workers to have any long term bonding with the workplace. In such
circumstances, neither they can nor will they be inclined to entertain long term plans
with a particular organisation, thereby weakening the scope for organised collective
bargaining in the sector23. Accordingly, in most of the media houses, there are no
actively functioning unions/collectives of journalists. Even if there are any active ones,
their members are mostly those with higher degrees of job-security. Shorter spans of
contract also results in low levels of socialisation24 and emotional bonding among peer
workers, as most them believe that they will not be continuing in the same firm in the
future. “Humko kya lena dena hai? Hum to ithar sirf mermen hai” (We don’t have any
role here, as we are only guests”). This statement of a contractual journalist in a Hindi
news channel aptly sums up the general shying-away tendency of temporary
employees from larger issues concerning their work, firm and fellow-workers.
IV. Stringers and the Flimsy Features of Freelance Work25
The job insecurities become much more severe when it comes to freelancers or
stringers. Stringers are the extended pool of workers, located in far off small towns and
rural areas, who continuously feed news to the media houses. Most of the television
new channels in India (and to some extent the newspapers too) thrive on the services of
stringers, who often are not professionally trained for the occupation. Stringers normally
work without any formal appointments or work contracts and get paid on piece rate
basis, on the basis of number of stories done by them for the news firms26. Over and
above the job insecurities, stringers also suffer acute levels of pay insecurities. Most of
them work for firms on the basis of oral directions and get their remuneration irregularly.
Many a times, the stories filed by these freelance reporters are rejected by editors. In
such situations, they cannot even recover the production costs of the news item, not to
tell about a reasonable and dependable level of income to survive.
In their race in the extremely competitive business, the media firms generally do not
invest much on fixed costs (such as buying equipments) or training the stringers. In
such situations, many self-trained stringers work with their own equipments. In such
situations, to qualify as a freelancer, one has to have certain basic material resource
base like a motor cycle/moped; a tape recorder; internet connection and so on. Quite
23
It is widely viewed that the waning of the active phase of trade unionism among Indian journalists partly
owe to the large scale employment of contract workers and freelancers, who normally does not entertain
longer plans with their present job/organisation
24 The de-socialisation effects of contractual work are much deeper in the case of telereporters/journalists, who work from scattered and remote destinations. This aspect is further elaborated
in a subsequent section.
25
None of the respondents of the present study belonged to the category of stringers (freelancers). Thus,
the discussion in this section is purely based on information gathered from other journalists and key
respondents.
26 Quite often, firms do not even issue ID cards to these journalists, in order to avoid the provisions of
labour laws and other obligatory requirements.
7
often, possession of a digital recorder and a two wheeler is a desirable `infrastructuralqualification’ or more or less the `sole qualification’ to become a stringer. “Have you
seen `Bicycle Thieves’? Stringers’ case is like that - a job is assured only when you
have a bicycle and a ladder! 27“ , told a young in-house journalist, currently working on
contract basis, while referring to the plight of stringers.
Large scale employment of stringers or freelancers is a characteristic feature of most of
the media firms in India. The success of most of the media business firms largely
depend upon to what extent they can retain a sufficient pool of cheap labour force as
stringers, who work on piece rate wages and mostly without any appointment order or
formal tie-up with the parental firms. Engagement of stringers provides the twin
advantages of cost-efficiency and numerical flexibility to the firm and thus, in the present
competitive world of news journalism, maintaining a pool of cheap labour force is the
most reckoned advantage for any business firm to thrive on (Roy, 2011).
Stringers in the rural area get low levels of wages (even as low as INR 500 month28).
This force many of these workers to work for multiple news agencies or to combine their
jobs with some other income earning activities (e.g. running a shop), which may not
have any connection to journalism or media work. Due to lack of stable incomes and
inadequate protection from their firms, many of these `own account journalists’ have to
team up with local politicians, development functionaries and influential persons,
thereby relegating their status as mouthpieces of the local elite. Even if some want to
break this vicious circle of ill-paid and inferior journalism, they will find it very difficult to
continue, challenging the money and muscle of local politicians and business (EPW,
2014; Roy, 2011).
Despite all these, journalism continues to be preferred job for many of these youngsters,
essentially due to the glamour and sense of empowerment attached to this work.
Connecting their identity with a big media house is considered as a status symbol that
gives them a sense of empowerment. Roy (2011) points out that in spite of the lower
monetary prospects, affiliation to a powerful media house as a reporter, often provides
these youngsters an acceptance in their local society, which often provides them scope
for raising brokering charges to mediate with government officials and politicians or
sometime to fetch better `deals’ in the marriage market29.
This mention was about the acclaimed film ‘Bicycle Thieves’ (1948) by Vittorio De Sica, which
portrayed a situation where the unemployed had to own a Bicycle and ladder to get selected as daily
wage earner. In a pioneering study of domestic call centres in India, Remesh (2009) narrates a similar
situation where possession of motorcycles/mopeds and a mobile-phone set increases the employability of
job seekers in domestic segment of India’s call centres.
28
This amount is less than 8 USD. 1 USD = 63.92 INR - as on 26 May 2015
29
Majority of the stringers are male journalists, though this pattern is gradually changing in recent years.
27
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V. Insecurities of Media Labour: Some Defining Factors
The growing job insecurities of workers and worsening work conditions in the media
sector can be attributed to a multitude of factors. To begin with, the large scale
emergence of television industry and news channels in the last two decades itself had
some underlying employment implications. Further to challenging the print media’s
monopoly over news, the television channels also poached many journalists from
newspapers by offering better salary packages and benefits (EPW, 2014). As this
period was an expansion phase for news papers too30, retaining a few resourceful
journalists by offering attractive pay packages, but without considerably changing the
total wage bill of the firm had become a central strategy of survival for media-firms. This
inter alia resulted in a situation, where salaries of entry level journalists are hardpressed to the bottom. In fact, the roots of the present situation of acute pay inequalities
among journalists31 can be traced to this phase of cut-throat competition between print
and television media houses. With large scale exodus of journalists from print media
houses to television sector the strength and hold of trade unions in the news paper
industry also shrunk, which provided the required climate for informalisation of
workforce in the sector.
The past two decades also saw a discernible emergence of new technologies and
production methods in the media sector, which also arguably intensified the job
insecurities of journalists. Adoption and use of new technologies led to both positive and
negative changes in the media work spaces. On the brighter side, advent of new
technologies brought in new skills and opportunities for employees; allowed flexibilities
at work; and enhanced productivity and capability of the journalists. But, on its flip side,
technological change also implied skill obsolescence and redundancy of journalists
(especially when they fail to continuously invest time and resources to learn new
technologies and related skills).
Advent of new modes of work organisation such as outsourcing and tele-working also
resulted in new challenges, as these options provided cheaper substitutes for erstwhile
forms of news gathering, with less fixed cost on equipments and workers. Quite often,
these new arrangements bring in worker redundancies, thereby helping the firms to
eject some of the permanent technical staff, from the workforce. For instance, the role of
a permanent editor is virtually redundant nowadays in the news rooms, as the broadcast
reporters can independently record and edit sound and pictures, using new softwares.32
30
During this phase of emergence of television news channels, all over in the country, particularly in
Hindi-speaking states, new news papers were launched and existing ones multiplied editions due to
prevailing conducive factors such as rise in literacy, urbanisation and purchasing power (EPW, 2014)
31 It is widely acknowledged that pay-Inequality is very high in the media sector – where the salaries of a
few top class journalists in some of the media houses are even twenty to thirty times higher than that of
their colleagues at the lower rungs.
32
Similarly, purchase of a new press and recruitment of workers to run and maintain them becomes
unfeasible for a newspaper firm, given possibility of outsourcing its entire word processing operations, at
a lower cost.
9
The enormous scope for buying footage at cheaper rates from amateur and freelance
reporters allows the firms to get rid of permanent in-house reporters and staff. In the
current age of `Citizen’s Journalism’, where every person with a mobile telephone is a
potential reporter, a media house need not bother to maintain a pool of permanent
reporters at various places. Similarly, excessive use of graphics and other visual
material help many of the media houses to repatriate bulk of technicians and reporters.
In their place, young and easily controllable workers (who are ready to work for longer
hours and with abysmal terms) are inducted (Bhushan, 2013) to attain the dual objective
of cost minimization and productivity enhancement!
Many of the flexibilities for media employees, brought through new technologies, are
with sweeping implications, though in a first glance, they appear to be empowering and
enabling. The case of media workers on tele-working options is a classic case for this33.
One the positive side, delocalisation of work and flexible tele-work options make the
work more autonomous, independent and more productive than before. But, on the
other hand, such atypical work-organisations also mean the `isolation of workers’,
where one may not even know the whereabouts of his/her colleagues. Given this, it is
natural to see that these `technologically isolated workers’ are less and less part of
organised collective bargaining, and thereby more `productively docile’, from the firms’
point of view34.
The dwindling organised strength of workers also reflects the growing docility and
submissiveness of workers to the decisions of corporate management. Despite their
status as permanent journalists, job-permanency is only notional for many of the
permanent journalists, as they believe that the firms can easily push them out, as and
when required. The fact that many of them are not formally qualified for the work they
are doing35 also adds to the insecurity of workers. Without saleable skills and approved
credentials they often stagnate in the same organisation and find it very difficult to
migrate to other media-organisations. As the sector is characterised by a high degree of
inter-firm mobility and patterns of short term employment and free-lance work, missing
standards or absence of formal certification often generates constraints in free access
of employment. This situation forces many of the workers to continue with the same
organisation with stagnated career options and let down self-esteem36. Along with this,
Jeffrey (2014) views it as a paradoxical development in today’s “networked individualism”, realised
through digital revolution in sector.
34 Further to this, the overarching presence of new technologies in media workspaces brings in newer
possibilities of control and surveillance (e.g. CCTVs; networked tele-working), thereby further limiting the
freedom of workers and enhancing their submissiveness to the management.
35 There is a striking correlation between the age of journalists and the qualifications. A good proportion of
elderly and experienced journalists are without any professional qualification in journalism. Most of them
mastered journalism `by doing’. As against this, most of the new generation journalists are normally with a
graduation in a general subject and a post graduation or diploma in journalism or in a related subject.
Usually, most of the younger journalists have to work as interns or trainees for some time, before getting
into a more regular option as a contractual employee or as a permanent journalist.
36 Absence of qualification of media workers came to discussions recently, when the Press Council India
(PCI)’s Chairman Justice Markandey Katju set up a committee to recommend minimum pre-qualifications
for entering into the profession of journalism36. Though the primary thrust of this highly contested
proposal was to “ensure higher standards and professionalism in journalism”, on the flip side, it also
33
10
the possibility of easily substituting permanent journalists by the temporary workers,
from the vast reserve army of contractual workers (and, journalist-trainees37), provides
greater scope for the firms to control and discipline the workforce. In such a situation, it
is natural for the permanent employees to stay away from `undesirable’ collectivisation
against the interests of the employers. The organising scene of contractual journalists is
worse. While the constant fear about non-renewal of contracts prevents most of the
experienced contractual journalists from joining in collective movements (such as trade
unions), in recent times, even at the time of recruitment the young journalists are often
to sign contracts that prevents them from joining a union38 (Sujata, 2011).
Yet another factor that constrains the freedom of journalists and intensifies their job
insecurities is the active entry of business corporations in the print journalism and
television news broadcasting. With the spread of practices like advertorials39, paid
news40 and private treaties41, journalists have eventually lost their freedom to choose
news items and areas of specialisations. In such a situation where conventional editorial
functions are replaced by corporate business dictums, many journalists find it difficult to
freely work on topics of their choice or to practice the skills on which they are trained.
The sense of guilt and frustration in this context is evident from the words of a
respondent: “Don’t think that we are bringing you reliable information and truth. Nor are
we those who dare to expose anything unfair around. We are mere packaging workers
pointed out a core deficiency in the occupational labour market of media labour – i.e. absence of `certified
qualifications’ for bulk of the print journalists in India. Majority of the respondents though dispelled Justice
Katju’s view that “certified qualifications would improve professionalism”, opined that formal qualifications
would definitely help them to easily move from one firm to other (Thereby, avoiding a situation of
stagnating careers at a single firm). Interestingly, many of them added that to survive and succeed in a
given firm, more than professional qualifications what matters is one’s ability to gel with the industry’s
requirement and corporate ethos, which primarily demand docility from workers, along with efficiency at
work. To cite the words of a respondent: “Who told we are not qualified? We are qualified in many ways
– long years of unemployment; some years of unpaid employment and continued years under-paid
employment. Ready to work any time, any where and on any topic of Our Masters’ Choice; no hankypanky on anything, no unions and not even a single word of dissent. Don’t you think all these are good
qualifications?”
37 Engaging journalist-trainees with very little or no stipends is also a common system. A large chunk of
these trainees are not absorbed eventually in the permanent positions. Regular and abundant availability
of fresh pass outs from the mushrooming number of journalism institutes provides multiple advantages to
the firms. Firstly, it assures availability of free or subsidised labour, thereby reducing the labour-cost of the
firm. Secondly, it allows a cost-free recruitment of appropriately suitable workers. Thirdly, the system also
helps the firms to retain a potential pool of job aspirants, and thereby ensuring a substantial degree of
numerical flexibility to right-size the workforce, from time to time. The share of such trainees is likely to
grow in future given the changes in overall policy with respect to engagement of apprentices.
38
This is similar to `yellow dog contracts’, which were widely used by employers in the United States to
prevent formation of unions, till this practice was banned in early 1930s.
39
In advertorials, advertisements are presented as if they are genuine news items, by blending the
material for advertisement with editorial contents.
40
Paid News is a pernicious practice, where some of the news papers and broadcasters provide positive
coverage to some news items by accepting payments from the concerned parties.
41
Private treaties are a practice where media firm provides some dedicated advertising space to certain
corporate entities (and assuring against negative coverage), by accepting (free of cost) a definite per cent
of equity shares of those companies.
11
and salesmen, busy making X as an icon or Y as not-worth-a-penny, on instructions
from above.
In a sense, this can be viewed as a simultaneous act of `deskilling’ and `multi-tasking’42
– necessitated by changed business culture in the media sector. “We are like human
machines, making and selling news as directed by the company, without applying
mind”; `They don’t want `thinking’ journalists, they are only interested in “working
journalists”!’; “Going for your passion is not the fashion in media”, these were some of
the typical responses of frustrated young journalists, who had been working on matters
which are far from his areas of specialisation.
Since early 1990s, Indian media sector is going through a process of `Murdochisation43’,
which involves the `shift of media power from the public to privately owned,
transnational, multi-media corporations controlling both delivery and the content of
global information networks’ (Sonwalkar, 2002; Thussu, 2007; Thakurta, & Seabright,
2011). With increased participation of corporate capital in the media business, all firms
are in a rat race for earning more advertising revenues; attaining higher viewer rates;
and hunting more and more `breaking news’ and `exclusive stories’. As a result, the
demarcations between marketing and editorial departments are rapidly disappearing.
In this changed paradigm, `public service broadcasting’ feature of media is quickly
waning. Now, the viewers are treated as mere consumers and the broadcasting, as a
system of supplying media goods. Along with the corporatisation of the media business
and transformation of `news into commodities’, there is also a visible advent and
engagement of new business strategies including extreme localisation of
viewership/readership and restriction of news/contents as per the liking of the affluent
viewer groups (mostly consisting of middle class).
In this changed environment, the business culture in the newsrooms and media houses
becomes increasingly akin to that in corporate business houses. The advent of new
managerial styles, flexible employment and HR management practices 44 testify this
change45. As Bhushan (2013) reports, the increasingly promoter-driven television
networks implies several alterations in news gathering, a prominent one being the
marginalisation of the role of reporters in `news production’. It is viewed that with the
`manufacturing’ of studio-based news, the role of reporters in the industry is now largely
limited. Instead of hunting for news and reporting its details themselves, now their role
42
As, eventually, many of these journalists working as per dictums of business houses end up doing
something else than what they were originally trained /hired for.
43
The term is coined after Rupert Murdoch, who owned the Star (Satellite Television Asian Region), the
advent of which had transformed the news and television scenario of India since early 1990s.
44 For instance, unlike earlier times, strict demarcations between lower and upper rungs of the workers do
exist in the sector. In most of the media houses a “wall between the editorial team and management”
exists, which prevents daily intervention of the bosses.
45 Bhushan (2013) reports that even the designations in the newsrooms are aped from corporate, as
evident by increasing number of CEOs, Presidents and Vice Presidents in TV reportage and electronic
broadcasting sector
12
has been confined to that of a coordinator who arranges `external experts’ (for handy
delivery of details of the news) for studio-based programmes46.
Mostly, Journalists do not have any control over their own work-schedule, in their
continuous `run after news’. Working in night-shifts is a norm for most of the permanent
journalists. Assigning time-wise, individual and team wise targets is quite common,
which continuously force the employees to after their stipulated targets- word limits,
articles, news-clippings. Given this sort of a situation, weekly holidays normally
becomes `namesake holidays’ as most of them have to work for few hours on the
holidays (or off-days) too - to complete their weekly targets. Many of them have to
spend few hours on fishing out themes, data and material for next week’s work - as
there will be hardly any time for planning during a normal working day – where they
have to mechanically work for chasing the targets. Usually, owing to the peculiarities of
their profession, most of the media workers have no choice but to be always available
on call and willing to undertake field-based assignments, obviously setting limits to their
own free times and work-family balancing. On top of it, the pressure to produce
`saleable news’ leaves the workers with higher levels of stress47 and many of them
eventually find it difficult to continue in the industry for several years. “Don’t call us press
workers. We are hard-pressed workers!”. This was the response of a journalist, when
asked about work intensity in the industry.
The firms do follow any clear-cut policies (or statutory norms) neither for recruitment nor
for retrenchment. In the absence of stringent regulatory frameworks or restrictive labour
laws, the firms enjoy a higher degree of numerical flexibility, where hiring and firing is
done at will and whenever the firms can (not) afford to employ more. Accordingly, lay-off
is a common trend in the highly competitive industry48.
Promotions are often decided taking into account the employees `closeness’ to the firm.
Accordingly, instead of objective evaluation of performance of the workers, quite often
`bar-room bondings’ and `good-relations’ with decision makers are the defining norms
for going up in the career-ladder. In such situations, those who work diligently find it
difficult to continue, resulting in higher rates of their attrition, soon after the
announcement of each lists of promotion.
Pressing work demands and absence of defined time schedules make it difficult for
most of the journalists to balance their work and family obligations. In the patriarchal
society of India, of course, such a situation makes the work and workplace more
46
Again, this is a clear case of deskilling, where workers specialise on what they are not trained for. To
quote the views of Bhushan (2013), who himself is a former television reporter, “The progressive
deskilling of media labour has been accompanied by the scrapping of longer format, investigative reports
and in-depth stories. The only skill expected of broadcast journalists is the ability to cover events and
uplink sound bites. The reporter has never been as close to redundancy in India as he/she is today”.
47 `Peepli Live’ (2010), a satirical comedy film, portrays the continuous run of media workers (especially
field level reporters) to `manufacture’ `saleable’ news.
48 Sainath (2011) points out that during the financial meltdown commenced in October 2008, a minimum
of 2,000 to 2,500 journalists lost their jobs—have been sacked, laid off, or retrenched— though there was
no reports on this in the popular media.
13
adversarial for women workers49. Consequently, many of them are forced to leave their
jobs after marriage or during the time of pregnancy, maternity and child care.
IV. The Need for and Possibilities of Policy Interventions
The foregoing discussion suggests that the media revolution in India has been blooming
at the cost of worsening labour standards, with growing numbers of print and television
journalists having intense employment insecurities and dismal working conditions. In
contrast to the outwardly rosy picture of the sector and its workers, in reality, majority of
the journalists are hard-pressed and subjugated. New technologies, production
organisations, changing business culture and novel ethos of human resource
management together weaken the relative bargaining strength of the workers in this
sector. This calls for a closer review of the work in media occupations and the
insecurities faced by journalists, to design and introduce appropriate corrective policies.
As explained earlier, with the fast declining proportion of `wage board employees’ the
efficacy of WJA, 1955 is steadily on the decline. This underlines the need for devising
strategies to rejuvenate the Act and the wage board mechanism. The pernicious
practices being followed by the media firms to get rid of the wage board protected
employees need to be checked through introduction of effective clauses/amendments to
WJA or through enactment of new act(s), if need arises.
The fast-increasing trend of contractualisation of media labour is essentially the root
cause of most of the insecurities and vulnerabilities in the sector. Thus, there is a need
to have certain effective interventions to check the evil of contractualisation in the media
sector. Effective enforcement of existing legal instruments and introduction of new
legislations for regulating contractual employment is one possibility in this direction.
Another area that warrants immediate policy intervention is right to association of
journalists. At present, media labour is with acute levels of voice and representation
insecurity. The degree of collective bargaining and rate of participation of workers in
labour unions are abysmally low. On top of it, there are pernicious practices being
followed by media corporate, which prevents the journalists from joining unions. In view
of this, there is a need to strengthen collective bargaining in the industry. This warrants
active governmental intervention through facilitating social dialogue and tripartism in the
sector.
Both WJA, 1955 and Wage Board mechanisms date back to a time when the TV and
broadcast media and other new media forms (e.g.web-journalism) were non-existent.
Accordingly, the growing mass of journalists in the mushrooming television and on-line
49
Tabassum (2013) views that the very industry is not designed for women. Child care facilities and
maternity leave are still not a right in most media organisations. The author also cites instances of
termination and demotion of women workers, at the time of maternity. Citing a specific case, the author
shows that how a “responsible” women journalist became “not reliable anymore”, soon after pregnancy
and child-birth.
14
segments are deprived of the benefits of these protective measures. This situation
highlights the need for extending the scope and coverage of WJA and Wage Boards to
journalists in television and on-line segments.
Right now, the purview of Press Council, a watch dog institution in the media world, is
restricted only to print media. Given this, there is a need for expanding the terms of
reference and scope of Press Council of India by converting it as a `Media Council’, with
a mandate to cover not only the print segment but also other segments of media
economy.
The appointment of a new Media Commission to understand the current status and
issues of working journalists is yet another desirable policy requirement. Such a
commission can come out with effective policy prescriptions to correct various issues
concerning working journalists, including: growing informalisation of work; widening
pay/wage inequalities; lack of adequate social security measures; dismal working
conditions and so on. Such commission can also recommend on regulating unhealthy
growth of monopoly practices, cartelization and anti-competitive behavior in the media
sector.
Given the poor availability of dependable statistics on the sector, there is also a felt
need to develop comprehensive and reliable data base on the quantum and spread of
journalists across various categories. Availability of such reliable data sets will inter alia
facilitate a ground for formulation of corrective policies that effectively address and
remedy many of the job insecurities of working journalists of modern times.
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