ABSTRACT
Even as media systems and journalistic practices vary across diverse national contexts, the coverage of scandal—defined as an action or event regarded as morally or legally wrong—has come to constitute a major focus of journalistic activity globally. Certainly this is true of India, where an emphasis on uncovering “scandals” via sting operations has emerged as a staple of news coverage, notably on television. This chapter—which examines the relationship between media and scandal in India—analyzes both the underlying imperatives and practices associated with this type of coverage and briefly addresses the implications of this development for the country’s news landscape. Broadly, in this chapter I will seek to make the case that, although some initial as well as a few contemporary stings no doubt highlight issues relevant to the public interest, television stings in India have increasingly emerged as an innovation employed by outlets to present sensationalized information primarily aimed at attracting viewers. This has resulted in a normalization of the notion of the “scandal” to the point that it has little meaning. In other words, the constant construction of “scandal” has become a routine mechanism for news organizations to gain a competitive advantage in a financially challenging media landscape. Yet India is by no means singular in this regard. As Just and Crigler (2014, 3) put it, “attention grabbing news helps to maximize audience size and hence the revenues of media outlets.” In fact, such patterns of news coverage that offer viewers scandal-as-news, typically presented via dramatic episodic narratives, have become pervasive globally, primarily due to the growing commercialization of media systems worldwide (Thussu 2007). Arguably, this development necessitates an expansion of the analysis of scandal within the broader journalism studies literature that goes beyond the examination of issues related to the manner in which scandals are covered to an understanding of scandal coverage as an institutional response engendered by the constraints of economic uncertainty and competition that characterize journalism as an organizational field.
