The Independent Media Trust which is a subsidiary of the Reliance Industries Limited advanced a loan to the Network 18 Group in 2012. The loan was advanced by way of Zero Coupon Optionally Convertible Debentures or ZOCDs. These debentures, at any time in the next 10 years could be converted into equity. This loan was advanced to the said Group to pick up stakes in the Andhra Pradesh based Ramoji Rao’s Eenadu Network in which Reliance Ltd. already controlled some stake. This move did not come as a surprise as the ‘Eenadu Network’ is the most widely read Telugu daily and Reliance wanted to garner support for the major gas projects it wanted to set up in Andhra Pradesh which faced a continuous backlash from Congress which ruled the state at the time. This was not the first time a movie like this took place and certainly was not the last. In the same year as the above transaction took place, Aditya Kumar Mangalam Birla and Abhay Oswal acquired stakes in TV Today and NDTV. The KK Birla group by then had already acquired stakes in Hindustan Times. Anil Ambani has an investment in UTV Bloomberg through Reliance Capital. Media houses have become more of a profit-making industry which has displaced the primary purpose media, which is information delivery in an unbiased manner.

It is an indisputable fact that unbiased media is important for a fully functioning democracy and which is why, when non-media corporations with other interests which centre around profitability acquire stakes in media outlets, it becomes a legitimate problem. For instance, when the ‘Coalgate scam’ dominated the news headlines in almost all newspaper outlets, the only major outlet which did not mention Kumar Mangalam Birla on its front page was Hindustan Times. Hindustan Times, as mentioned above, has a stake controlled by KK Birla. In another similar instance when Subrata Roy was arrested regarding the non-refund of Rs. 20,000 crores. The news of Subrata Roy getting arrested was on the front pages of every newspaper and a headline of every TV news channel except for one major news network; Sahara Group’s network. These are selected instances among numerous examples of corporate influence over media functioning and journalism. These corporate ownerships start manipulating editorial decisions and affecting the objectivity of the content.

A problem which stems out from the problem mentioned in the last paragraph is the emphasis on favoured perspectives on issues. Media outlets have to present information from different perspectives. Instead of fulfilling their duty of covering different perspectives, media outlets choose to broadcast perspectives on an issue which fit their interests. Media outlets have turned themselves into propaganda machines for their corporate owners and their political associates. This was seen in full force for the first time during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when Narendra Modi received significantly more coverage than any of the other candidates. When information delivery is disproportionately focused on one person ignoring others, misconstrued ideas of political parties and candidates are inevitable.