Sab mere ko hi bol rahein hain

November 30, 5.30 pm. On my balcony taking a break from work. A grandmother is trying to mediate between two fighting children. And one is saying, `aap sirf mere ko bol rahe ho, usko kuch nahin bol rahe'.
November 30, 10.30 pm. Am watching NDTV's The Buck Stops Here, where the show's usual host, Barkha Dutt, is being questioned by a panel of editors (including Manu Joseph of Open) on her figuring in the Radia tapes. As I watch her alternate between playing wronged victim, being churlish and brazen I am suddenly reminded of that little kid: aap sirf mere ko bol rahe ho; Manu aur Vinod uncle ko kuch nahin bol rahe.
If NDTV organised this to give Barkha a platform to show she is being targeted unfairly, it backfired badly. Barkha behaved badly throughout the show. She first tried playing the injured innocent (`I did not know that much about Niira Radia because I am a essentially a political journalist'; it was a `mere error of judgement', `innocent error of judgement'). Then as the questions got tougher, she kept interrupting (especially Manu, who was ticked off for interrupting her whenever he insisted on his questions being answered), trying to divert attention from her role by talking about media ethics, defamation, questioning of her integrity (when everyone, including Manu, kept saying that her integrity was not in question). As Manu Joseph kept pointing out, she was obfuscating issues. Finally Sanjaya Baru was forced to point out that he had not been invited to a discussion on media ethics but for a discussion on the way NDTV handled  the Radia tapes. Did that silence Barkha? No. `But isn't it connected?' she interrupted. It is, said Baru, and I made that point in the Karan Thapar show, which was a different format.
When two editors made the point that Radia chose her and not any other journalist to convey messages to the Congress, she retorts immediately: how do you know? Only these tapes have been made public. Once again, an attempt to show only she was being targeted.
She also expected the editors and the viewers to believe that she, `a cynical political journalist' as she described herself, didn't know exactly how Radia functioned. `When I look back, with hindsight, with everything that one knows about her, I made an error of judgement.' So now Radia is at fault for being a good professional by someone who blurred the ethical boundaries of her profession, seeing nothing wrong in journalists conveying messages, depending on the content of the message or in not doing an obvious story (a corporate lobbyist lobbying on behalf of a political party in cabinet formation). And being brazen about it: `I am not accepting error of judgement in not doing the story'.
She claimed that she never passed on any message. But when one of the editors read out a portion of the transcript that appeared as if she had, she immediately countered with `I was fibbing (to Radia).' As veteran journalist T J S George pointed out in an article: "Is a veteran networker like Radia so easily fooled? Obviously she is close to her journalist contacts and must have had promises from them before. She wouldn't waste her time if she knew that they were promises not meant to be followed up."
Since Outlook's Vinod Mehta didn't come on the panel, Manu Joseph was alone to bear the brunt of her attacks: "You do journalism where you don't contact the person you report on"; "I don't think you have a full understanding of how political journalism and politics works".
When Baru made the point that everyone makes mistakes and she would have come out better if she had on Day One, expressed regret, she said `In my personal statement I spoke about what I learnt from this.' But that personal statement did not come on Day One. That day there was only a statement from NDTV, which threatened legal action. Her personal statement came much later.
Sonia Singh was an ineffective moderator who couldn't stop Barkha from constantly interrupting and sidestepping questions by attacking others.
Ultimately Barkha Dutt came across as an ill-mannered brat. And NDTV came worse off by giving her a platform to brazen out an indefensible act.
http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/barkha-dutt-other-editors-on-radia-tapes-controversy/178964

Television Terror

On Friday, February 12, there was a panel discussion on "Who is to blame for media hysteria on terror? Journalists or viewers? --Lessons from Mumbai Siege" organised by a new forum – Federation of Media Professionals.

I couldn’t attend it, but from what people who did told me, the representatives of the television news channels were quite unapologetic and repeated the same old arguments – that there were no dos and don’ts, that they did what was best in the circumstances, that they did not endanger operations etc.

This line of defence has been taken ever since criticism of the media coverage started even as the drama was playing itself out on television screens. And how did the news channels respond?

CNN-IBN apparently did a panel discussion on the media coverage, where it patted all television channels on the back (with the occasional sniping at rival channels). According to thehoot.org, a mediawatch website, Mail Today (a part of the India Today group which also owns Headlines Today and Aaj Tak) does a story on media reactions to the information and broadcasting ministry’s advisory on television coverage. It was completely one-sided with public criticism of the media blanked out. Barkha Dutt responds to two Facebook groups that got set up calling them hate groups. Sure, they were named after her (Can u please take Barkha off air! and Barkha Dutt for worst senior journalist on the planet) but that was only because she came to epitomise all that was wrong with television news on those three days.

But none of our senior television journalists would admit to being wrong. So if Barkha flaunted so-called testimonials from N R Narayanamurthy (who, it later turned out, is on the NDTV board) and Shashi Tharoor (who seems to spend his time in television studios now) apart from Suketu Mehta Salman Rushdie, Sunil Khilnani, in her article on the NDTV website, India TV’s Rajat Sharma got a certificate from an unnamed former army chief whom he got to address his colleagues in an article in the Indian Express. Barkha said Naryanamurthy called it the "finest piece of TV journalism in a decade"; Sharma said the former army chief was emphatic that “News channels did nothing wrong. Your coverage didn’t do any harm whatsoever to the commandos!” This after the chief of the National Security Guards has said that the media did endanger operations.

Worse, the television journalists talk as if they are above criticism. Barkha calls the criticism of the television media “a different sort of civil war brewing; one that places us in the media on the other side of the enemy line.” Surely there should be some limit to hyperbole. Sharma says the war against terror is not over and that therefore the government should stop putting the blame on the media and the media should stop criticising the politicians, bureaucracy and intelligence agencies.

How very cosy! Don’t criticise me and I won’t criticise you. Even if both of us deserve criticism. This you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours attitude isn’t journalism, by any standard.

A Parliamentary committee has concluded that some kind of statutory regulations covering the media are needed in the interests of society. What a very fascist idea. But then why do I – who is all for a minimalist state and cringe at the term `in the interests of society’ – after initially recoiling at the idea start to ponder over whether the committee has a point after all?

Calls for self regulation and media responsibility are made every time the media transgresses its limits and the government threatens action. But at the next big event, all this gets forgotten. The television media, especially, is not going to regulate itself, it is not going to respect any ethic unless it is made to.

Worse, they themselves seem to be asking for it, with their `we weren’t given any dos and don’ts’. From dos and don’ts to diktats and censorship is just one small step.

Sometimes, stern action is the only way to tackle brats. But in this case, the action against brats is going to have larger implications for even the saner and well-behaved lot.

One can only hope that out of this madness, some sense will emerge.

Am I being too optimistic?

Why?

Why is it that it is only a Calcutta paper - The Telegraph - that is following up a story about 300 children missing from Ghaziabad's villages since January 2007? The Delhi media seems to be completely obsessed with the Aarushi case, involving `people like us' even though there was a small report around the time that case broke. Something similar happened in the case of Nithari. When AnantGupta (son of the former head of Adobe Systems) was kidnapped, one Delhi paper had a story about how children were going missing from Nithari. Nobody, not the papers, not the television channels, followed this up. Then the skeletons were found and all hell broke loose. Soon after that Barkha Dutt wrote in her HT column lamenting how the media had got a whiff of the Nithari problem but had ignored it. One would have expected that after that, the media would be more alert. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Only telegraph has done two stories on this.