The Telegraph: Once A Fine Newspaper, Hyperpartisanship Has Undone It

Forty years ago, a slickly-produced newspaper full of energy, colour and daring hit the stands in Calcutta, as the city was known then. The Telegraph, from the day it was published under a young and bold editor, Mobasher Jawed Akbar (or MJ, as he is still popularly known as), created a stir.

It was very well-produced with an appealing and uncluttered layout, covered a wide range of topics and issues, gave space to an eclectic mix of great writers, commentators and columnists, and struck an uncompromising anti-communist note from day one.

The Telegraph, in which a cross section of society found a voice and whose contents and concerns found resonance among people cutting across all age groups and divides, posed a stiff challenge to The Statesman, which was the numero uno amongst its peers in eastern (including northeastern ) India at that time.

The Statesman was, till that time, a venerable institution which had set many high standards in journalism. But The Telegraph’s rise coincided with the steady decline of The Statesman, a decline aided by many shortcomings, bad (business and editorial) decisions and the refusal of the latter to keep pace with the times.

MJ steered The Telegraph very ably in its formative years and gave the paper a distinctive identity as an incisive, fearless, stylish and wholesome newspaper produced with an elan that was missing in the industry in India at that time.

The anti-communist stance of the newspaper--though it also gave space to columnists with distinct Marxist leanings--made it popular amongst the Bengali bhadraloks. The newspaper’s coverage of the arts, heritage, literature and science was noteworthy.

The Telegraph was also distinctively pro-Congress in its leanings. By the late 1990s, however, it started backing Mamata Banerjee and infamously forecasted the demise of the Left Front in 2001 and 2006 Assembly elections. And when Banerjee ultimately unseated the Left in 2011, The Telegraph unabashedly cheered her ascension to power.

But when the Trinamool parted ways with the Congress--the two parties fought and defeated the Left Front in 2011 as allies--The Telegraph also turned against Mamata Banerjee. Within a very short time, it turned into a trenchant critic of Banerjee and the Trinamool government.

Also, by then, The Telegraph had become a highly political newspaper with very strong and pronounced leanings that reflected in its contents. Its screaming headlines often went overboard in lambasting or criticising not just the Trinamool, but also the BJP. That’s because both--the Trinamool and the BJP--were political adversaries of the Congress, a party that The Telegraph is widely perceived to be partial to.

The Telegraph’s headlines grew more and more caustic and the newspaper, especially its editor-in-chief Aveek Sarkar, seemed to have lost all objectivity and sense of balance (see some caustic headlines here). The newspaper went overboard while slamming Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool. And by 2014, it found a new object of scorn and ridicule in Prime Minister Modi who had inflicted a crushing defeat on the Congress.

The newspaper predicted that the Trinamool would get a drubbing in the 2016 Assembly elections and would be defeated by the Left-Congress alliance. Its helmsman, Aveek Sarkar, invested a lot of political capital in the defeat of the Trinamool despite most forecasts giving a comfortable victory to the Trinamool.

The Trinamool’s decisive win in 2016 was a huge setback for The Telegraph and Sarkar. Advertisements from the state government started to dry up and the state government allegedly enforced an unofficial boycott of the newspaper. Matters came to a head and Aveek Sarkar had to step down (read this).

There was a buzz in some circles that Mamata Banerjee had laid down Aveek Sarkar’s resignation as a pre-condition for resumption of state government advertisements to the newspaper. But though that could never be substantiated, The Telegraph turned a whole new leaf after that and stopped its strong criticism of the chief minister, her party and her government.

In fact, The Telegraph turned into a moderate supporter of the Trinamool government while its elder brother--the flagship Anandabazar Patrika (the Bengali newspaper)--continued with its criticism, though less voluble, of the state government and the chief minister. That, too, ended with the resignation of the paper’s editor under controversial circumstances (read this) amidst police summons in June 2020.

The Telegraph has since then reserved all its vitriol for Modi and the BJP. The newspaper’s contempt and ugly animosity towards the Prime Minister and the BJP grew in direct proportion to the marginalisation of the Congress in state after state and also at the national level. It lost all sense of proportion and objectivity.

The Telegraph, in its 40th year, is a pale and sorry shadow of its former self. It has seen its paid readership shrink drastically and during the pandemic, it was forced to lay off a huge number of employees and drastically cut the salaries of the few it retained.

The newspaper is now patronised only by lackeys of the Congress; the editorial space that the Congress gets is inversely proportional to the space it occupies in the country’s political landscape and its public support. Only diehard supporters of the Congress laud the paper for its biassed coverage.

The Telegraph had the potential and could have made a mark at the national level. But it faltered and fell because of the inherent biases, and idiosyncrasies, of its woolly-headed editors dwelling in ivory towers.

As it completed 40 years on July 7, those at the helm of affairs at The Telegraph should desist from any celebrations and reflect, instead, on the sorry corner they have driven the newspaper to. There’s little for The Telegraph to celebrate on its 40th anniversary. And there’s no guarantee that it will survive another decade to mark its golden jubilee.