‘Timepass’

OVER THE PAST fortnight, spanning the entire holiday season, my ‘timepass’ was catching up on YouTube broadcasts from around the world. Naturally, it was the turbulence in the Middle East and the ‘revolutionary’ madness in Bangladesh that dominated my viewing time. However, I must confess to being amused the most by the videos put out by impetuous supporters of President Donald Trump to celebrate the post-November 5 liberal meltdown in the US.

For those in India who nurture an unreal respect for the journalism practised across the Atlantic, the curated versions of how the major TV networks digested the victory of a man they were only too ready to debunk as a ‘convicted felon’ are worth watching. I noticed how early in the counting, the likes of CNN, CBS and CNBC were in a state of high excitement reporting a high turnout of voters in Puerto Rican localities and in the college campuses of Pennsylvania. Without explicitly saying so, it was suggested that these were votes that would see Vice President Kamala Harris cackle her way into the White House. The diverse panel, with its due representation of militant women, black activists and other sanctimonious citizens, was quite clear that Harris had run a ‘flawless campaign’ and would benefit from the entire feminine gender’s anxieties of reproductive rights. The Trump counter-revolution, they kept assuring themselves and consumers of the so-called legacy media, would get bogged down in the Red heartland.

These pundits based their optimism on opinion polls that suggested a close, perhaps even a nail-biting finish, with Democrats prevailing comfortably in the popular vote. The race for the 270 electoral votes needed to win, it was said, rested on the outcome in five states that Joe Biden had wrested from Trump in 2020. The opinion polls suggested that Harris enjoyed a small advantage in all the states, an advantage that was seen to have grown after a small-time Trump campaigner made a tasteless joke about Puerto Ricans at the grand Republican rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden. One opinion poll published about four days before the polls closed also suggested a 16-point swing to Harris in Iowa, a state that Republicans took for granted. Some insolent independent poll aggregators—who also hinted that the polls were underestimating Trump’s support and why this was so—pointed out that if this ‘gold standard’ Iowa poll were correct, Trump’s national vote would be around 35 per cent and he would join the club of George McGovern and Walter Mondale as the biggest losers.

Of course, it didn’t happen that way and I had countless hours of enjoyment seeing curated replays of the horror with which the networks greeted Harris’ clear defeat. I particularly recall the stunned silence when the CNN map showed that there was not a single county in the whole of the US where Harris had done better than Biden had four years before. It was also hilarious how, from praising Harris’ ‘flawless campaign’ it was now argued that Democrats talked down to voters, had overplayed the abortion card, had left economic issues unattended and, most important, had equated concern over uncontrolled immigration as being tantamount to bigotry. The pain and distress on the faces of the journalists on TV told the tale of why the legacy media is confronted with an existential crisis. This crisis will intensify and get worse if the media pundits decide that those who stand apart from the liberal consensus are a bunch of cretins who don’t deserve to be addressed.

At least in the US there are cheeky contrarians whose colossal importance is now being slowly appreciated, witness the impact of Trump’s long interview with podcaster Joe Rogan—an opportunity that Harris chose to miss. What should concern India’s legacy media—including those that lose their sense of balance when it comes to the assessment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi—is that increasingly more and more eyeballs are being diverted to offerings on YouTube. The prima donnas of the legacy media may well be asked to the lesser literary festivals and get harassed for selfies from bored passengers at airports, but they would be wise to realise that their impact is on a declining curve.

The media, not to mention pollsters, has operated on the belief that it is gloriously unaccountable. They can say whatever suits their convenience even if it’s misleading. They can also be wildly inconsistent. The advent of social media, especially after Elon Musk has freed it from the tyranny of liberal censorship, has ended this long honeymoon. The information world is now a cut-throat business.

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