News space was blatantly on sale in the run-up to the last Lok Sabha elections. Newspapers had fixed the rates for interviews with candidates, coverage of their rallies, reports on constituency tours and denunciation of rivals. Apart from a la carte offers there were package deals as well. Prabhash Joshi, the editor of Jansatta had the audience by their eyeballs and eardrums as he gave instances of paid election coverage masquerading as news in Hindi papers.

Joshi was speaking at a debate, 'Blurring the Line Between News and Ads' organized by the Foundation for Media Professionals (FMP) and moderated by veteran journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. FMP is an organisation (www.fmp.org.in) that has been set up by some senior journalists to promote quality journalism and uphold media freedom. The debate is the seventh in a series since December last year. FMP is concerned about media organizations chasing revenue any which way without concern for ethics. Readers/viewers pay for news. If they are tricked with advertising, it is an abuse of trust.

The Press Council has set up a committee to investigate these cases, its chairman Justice G N Ray, said. Aggrieved politicians have complained and so have senior journalists like Joshi, Kuldeep Nayyar and Ajit Bhattacharjea.

Hindi newspapers are not the only ones at fault. Outlook Editor Krishna Prasad said during the Lok Sabha election campaign a prominent English paper in Mumbai had instructed reporters to introduce the accompanying sales people to the politicians they interviewed. (If TV news channels were not cited during the debate it is not because they were innocent of the practice. Rather no one in the panel articulated such instances.)

Joshi said even Lalji Tandon, former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's protégé was not spared. Despite being for long years in public life he was told to pay for coverage by the very newspapers that would earlier seek him out for quotes and comments. Even the newspaper whose proprietor he had named for a Rajya Sabha nomination was graceless. Tandon defeated Uttar Pradesh Congress President Rita Bahuguna regardless, to become MP from Lucknow and sought a boycott of such newspapers at his victory rallies, Joshi said.

Harmohan Dhawan, former union minister and Bahujan Samaj Party's Lok Sabha candidate from Chandigarh (he lost), Atul Kumar Sing Anjan, contesting from Ghosi (UP) on a Communist Party of India ticket (he lost) and Mohan Singh, the Samajwadi Party nominee from Deoria (he lost) were also subjected to such media greed. According to Joshi, Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was most surprised when the report of an election rally that he had read was published a few days later in the same newspaper as a box item on the front page with borders in colour. A perplexed Hooda called up the proprietor who told him that the item was paid advertising!

"If you do not get independent opinion how can you choose the right candidates?" Joshi asked.

Advertising pro Santosh Desai, who is now the MD and CEO of (Big Bazaar) Kishore Biyani's Future Brands said the influence that media wields is a grant from society. Advertisers have always tried to break the wall between editorial and marketing. The difference now is that media owners have joined in. They see news as a product, like any other. But if that were the case, media would not have been vested with influence and the watchdog function. The business of news should not be divorced from ethics. Advertisers will find it pointless to penetrate editorial if it can be easily contaminated. Innovation in the grab for eyeballs should not compromise the integrity of news. Restraint is necessary.

Media organisations that want to appear respectable cover up their greed in an innovation called 'private treaties.' A private treaty is the swap of ad space by media entities for equity in firms that intend to go public so that they can profit from a stock market listing. It cannot be an innocuous deal. It presupposes a gullible audience that will fall for the image massage that media managers offer an advertiser ahead of a public offering of equity. The image is flattered either with news that is positive or by suppressing that which isn't. The moment the arrangement becomes public it loses it value.

An earlier attempt by FMP to debate the issue failed after the marketing head of an organization that had initiated the practice of 'private treaties' backed out. Consequently two of the other panelists - the owner of a reputed English news weekly, and the 'proprietress' of a newspaper group - declined. This suggests that media managers and owners do not want public scrutiny of a practice that they know is dodgy.

Former stock market regulator M Damodaran said he had mooted a proposal requiring media organizations to declare their vested interest in news reports they publish. He came up against the wall of 'media freedom.' But private treaties are a small part of the problem. Earlier as chairman of Unit Trust of India he saw motivated - and false - reports of UTI intending to sell its stake in cigarette major ITC, to its largest single shareholder, BAT, the UK company that has long wanted to take control. Upon investigation he found that the newspaper had an interest in a broking firm that had sold the stock after the report was published.

Before private treaties came into being, companies that intended to tap the market for equity would get around the so-called quiet period when they cannot talk up their share by getting feel-good news reports published that were actually undisclosed advertising. Damodaran had a good word for advertising: at least it is honest!

Krishna Prasad cited a Bangalore English newspaper whose recent promised serialized expose of an expressway failed to show up after the first piece. The price of the suppression: Rs 3 crore in advertising!

He said the Press Council has not teeth: "it cannot bite itself." Editors are like Kama Sutra characters: "they can take any position." Readers do not know what hits them. In a survey by the Centre for Study of Developing Societies 45 percent said they believed what is said in newspapers. "The damn reader does not care" in a country where they do not know the meaning between public and private space and people readily encroach. Senior journalists do not stand up enough "because they are happy with salaries."