As 'The Telegraph' Completes 40 Years, A Look At Its Rise And Fall

As The Telegraph completes 40 years today (7 July), there's little to celebrate; the newspaper has become a pale shadow of its former self.

The start: Published under a young and bold editor, Mobasher Jawed (MJ) Akbar, the newspaper hit the stands in Calcutta.

• It was well-produced with an appealing and uncluttered layout, and covered a wide range of topics and issues.

• MJ steered The Telegraph 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 the time.

• The newspaper’s coverage of the arts, heritage, literature, and sciences was noteworthy.

The paper's tilt: The Telegraph was distinctively pro-Congress in its leanings and struck an uncompromising anti-Communist note from day one.

• By the late 1990s, however, it started backing Mamata Banerjee and unabashedly cheered her ascension to power in 2011.

• 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 Banerjee.

Poor poll predictions: The paper infamously forecast the demise of the Left Front in the 2001 and 2006 assembly elections.

• It predicted that the Trinamool would get a drubbing in the 2016 assembly elections and would be defeated by the Left-Congress alliance.

• 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 last decade: The Telegraph turned into a trenchant critic of Banerjee and the Trinamool government during 2011-16.

• However, when the funds began to dry up, it held back on its strong criticism of Banerjee, her party, and her government.

• In fact, it turned into a moderate supporter of the Trinamool government and reserved all its vitriol for Modi and the BJP.

• Since 2014, it has been ridiculing Modi, who had inflicted a crushing defeat on the Congress.

The fall: Aveek Sarkar had to step down and the editor of the paper's elder brother, Anandabazar Patrika, also resigned under controversial circumstances amid police summons in June 2020.

• It lost all sense of proportion and objectivity in its contempt and ugly animosity towards Modi and the BJP.

• It has seen its paid readership shrink drastically, and during the pandemic, it was forced to lay off many employees and drastically cut the salaries of the few it retained.

• Now, only the diehard supporters of the Congress laud the paper for its biased coverage.

• The paper faltered and fell because of the inherent biases, and idiosyncrasies, of its woolly headed editors dwelling in ivory towers.

• There’s no guarantee that it will survive another decade to mark its golden jubilee.

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