Silver Jubilee

Twenty five years ago, on this day, I walked into the Old Lady of Boribunder – Times House, opposite what was then still known as VT (Victoria Terminus) in what was still Bombay – to become a journalist.

I was an idealistic twenty-something then, with just two career choices in mind. One was the civil services and the other was journalism. Both, I felt, could help me do something for the country. Journalism was my first choice. I had appeared for my civil services prelims in Delhi and had opted for Bombay for the mains, which were due to start on 2 November. In the event, I never appeared for the mains, even though I had carted all my preparatory notes and books to Bombay. A second chance came some years later. Again I gave the prelims and again bunked the mains. The call of journalism proved stronger.

Do I regret the choice? No, but I would be lying if I said I never ever questioned it. There were times I felt fleetingly that perhaps I should have given the IAS a shot. As a journalist I can only write and rail about something, but as a government official I could do something about it, if I was so inclined. But deep regret? Never. And though there were many disappointments and falling off of rosy spectacles, somewhere I still believed that journalism was about enquiry, raising questions and highlighting neglected issues, about providing a forum for answers to those questions and solutions to those issues, about telling people about things as they are so that they become better informed. And above all facts were supreme.

Today, I am deeply disillusioned with journalism in a way I never have been before. I pick up the papers in the morning and on every page of every paper, I see a complete lack of rigour. Three different papers will have three different versions of the same event. It isn’t about each having an exclusive angle – it’s just that the basic facts will be different. How on earth can that be possible?

Basic facts are wrong. Clearly there’s no fact checking happening at all. Laziness has become the hallmark of today’s journalist, the best example of this being the hoax carried out by Penpricks, the blog being run by a bunch of Goa journalists (see my earlier post on this). All major newspapers fell for it and when they realised they had been had, none of them bothered to apologise to their readers. One newspaper quietly pulled it off its website. No heads have rolled in any newspaper.

One source stories – even concocted stories -- have become the norm now. Reporters will be lazy, will try to cut corners. But shouldn’t someone be ensuring that they don’t? Unfortunately, editors are not just turning a blind eye to this phenomenon, they appear to be encouraging it. Some years back one friend heard about some development on her beat. Being from the old school, she checked it out, found it was wrong and didn’t file the story. The next day other papers splashed it. The bureau chief asked her. She told him the story was wrong. Only to be told “you should still have filed it.” The next day all the other papers carried a denial from the ministry! But that didn’t get my friend back into the good books of the bureau chief or the editor.

Where also is the concern for issues? I don’t mean to imply that journalism should be all about breast beating and bleeding hearts. Developmental journalism, if not done the right way, can be quite boring and let’s face it people don’t have the time to digest long pieces on sombre topics like wasteland development or rural drinking water supply. But to ignore all serious issues altogether? Is that right?

Some months back I had gone to meet Montek Singh Ahluwalia for a story on the economy. He got quite worked up over the fact that just the previous day, he had inaugurated a conference on health and though he had made many important points on health in his speech, all the press wanted from him was a quote on inflation. The next day’s papers had nothing on the conference and he was quoted everywhere on inflation. “I didn’t even say anything significant on inflation,” he lamented as he showed me the bunch of press clippings. The following day he was going to be the chief guest at an event organised by a publishing house. I told him the proprietor-cum-editor of that paper didn’t want serious issues like health and education in the paper.

A friend’s niece quit journalism in four years, saying she didn’t want to write about bubblegum and candyfloss. But that is what journalism is becoming today. A feature on women activists in a respected and leading paper needs to have a repressed sexual urges angle – need one say any more?

And then there are the mistakes – spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, missing articles and wrong punctuation marks. My memory goes back to 1983 and The Times of India desk in Bombay, where the chief sub will throw the copy back at us if we made any mistakes. And a year later, to The Times of India desk in Delhi, where we would be asked for written explanations for wrong headings, poor subbing. Those systems have disappeared.

Was everything about those days good? Certainly not. There were a lot of things wrong even then. But the spirit of journalism remained alive. That’s not the case now.

What saddens me most is that the decline in journalism is being presided over by people from my generation.

In 2002, I stepped out of journalism, to write a book and do other things – mainly a lot of editing work and consultancies for UNDP. It was a very enlightening and educative three years. I didn’t miss not being a journalist (I was writing occasionally just to keep my PIB accreditation and when I wanted to sound off on something) and didn’t even bother looking for a job, though a lot of people who thought I was making a mistake would keep telling me to approach this editor, go to that paper. Just as I was wondering how to convert what I was doing into a viable revenue stream, I got an opportunity to work with an editor I had a lot of respect for and whom I had never worked with before. But today, as I look back on these 25 years, I am beginning to feel the first stirrings of regret – that I didn’t work out an alternative career for myself. Let me clarify: not because the editor didn’t turn out to be what I expected of him, but only because of what journalism has become today.

Shameful Silence

The Supreme Court has issued notices to the media on a public interest litigation over the role of the media in the Arushi-Hemraj double case, especially the slanderous reports on the Talwars. It has also suggested that guidelines be drawn up for media coverage of ongoing cases. The Times of India has carried a long article saying this is a case of misplaced priorities and that the police were more guilty in defaming the Talwars than the media. In a related development the press has gone to town over the reinstating of Gurdarshan Singh as IG Meerut Range after he was removed following his allegation at a press conference that Rajesh Talwar had killed his daughter.

In all this, something has been totally ignored – the fate of Krishna and the two other servants arrested for the murder. Has a chargesheet been filed? Has the CBI got conclusive evidence against them? Last I read, and this was some weeks back, the CBI said it knew where the weapon was. So why don’t they produce it and why don’t proceedings against the trio start? Of if there is no evidence against them, why aren’t they being released on bail?

The media is completely devoid of stories on this. In contrast, look at what happened during the 50 days Rajesh Talwar was in jail. There was almost a daily bulletin on him and when he was released there was an outpouring of grief on his wrongful incarceration. But nobody is agonising over the fate of the three servants, let alone shedding tears. Nobody is asking the same questions that were asked when Talwar was languishing in jail. Forget opinion pieces, nobody is even doing a news story on whether their remand period has ended, what is happening to their case, have they got bail. I had dealt with this issue in an earlier post Media Under Trial for Media Trial and the current silence in the media only seems to confirm what I had said toward the end of the piece – that there is a class issue here. Maybe the trio were the real murderers and maybe Talwar had been framed. But if Talwar had to be released for lack of evidence then the same yardstick should apply to these three as well. If the media overkill when Talwar was in jail was shameful, then its silence over the fate of the three servants is equally shameful.

The Stung Editor

Today’s Economic Times has a snippet in its gossip column, Through the Third Eye, which says that the editor of a well-known English daily was privy to the cash-for-votes sting and had promised to publish details of the scandal in the paper. But he developed cold feet. ET puts this down to the grapevine and refrains from mentioning the editor. But here’s my guess – Shekhar Gupta of Indian Express. I arrived at the name through a process of elimination.

I first thought of Chandan Mitra, editor of The Pioneer, who is in the Rajya Sabha on a BJP ticket. But then I figured that he’s would not have backed out, precisely for that reason. Somehow I felt the BJP would have preferred to involve a more widely-read paper than Pioneer. Now, it could not have been the extremely pro-Congress Hindustan Times. Nor could it have been The Times of India. The snippet says the editor backed out. Times of India’s editors don’t have the power to take such decisions. So it could only be the Indian Express.

Of course, I have limited myself to the Delhi papers, so I could well be wrong. But of the well-known non-Delhi papers, BJP couldn’t have gone to the pro-left Hindu. The Telegraph is confined to Calcutta. DNA, maybe? Unlikely. I don’t see my ex-boss Jaggi being privy to these kind of things. So the needle points firmly to Shekhar Gupta. Now if only someone will confirm it for me.

The Stung Sting

The case of the so-called cash-for-votes sting operation is getting curiouser by the day, and it’s difficult to decide who is right and who is wrong.

To recap, on the day of the trust vote in Parliament, three BJP MPs waved wads of currency in the well of the House, alleging that Amar Singh of the Samajwadi Party and Ahmed Patel of the Congress had tried to bribe them to abstain from the vote. Later BJP leader L K Advani said that the BJP had taken the help of a news channel to conduct this sting and that he would reveal the name soon. CNN-IBN then came out and said it was the channel and that it had handed over the tapes to the Speaker.

With speculation that the channel had been armtwisted into not airing the tapes, CNN-IBN later clarified that it had intended to air the tapes but its investigations were not complete and that the BJP MPs had jumped the gun. Among the rumours was one that Anil Ambani who held some stake in CNN-IBN had pressurised it not to air a tape that incriminated his dear friend Amar Singh. The BJP is now saying that CNN-IBN had promised to air the tapes hours before the trust vote but it had reneged on that commitment. It has now decided to boycott CNN-IBN until it airs the tapes. However, it was not banning CNN-IBN from its press conferences.

The Editors Guild has condemned this as pressure tactics and says it infringes on the freedom of the press. Indian Express in an editorial has said this “also raises ethical questions that hark back to the issue of a political party’s democratic responsibility. The BJP might just end up as a double loser”.

First I am surprised the Editors Guild has been so quick to condemn the BJP for boycotting the channel. Because I didn’t see any Editors Guild statement when commerce and industries minister Kamal Nath banned CNBC-TV18, CNBC-Awaaz and Crisilmarketwire (then part of TV18) from his press conferences. All because one CNBC-TV18 anchor was needlessly aggressive while interviewing Nath during a brouhaha over cement prices. Nath’s aides would selectively go up to journalists from these three organisations and request them to leave. I myself was witness to one incident during a conference on WTO at the Maurya Sheraton. The press information officer was on phone and was saying CNBC is not allowed. The matter was later sorted out (how, I am still wanting to know) but this was a patently undemocratic act by the minister. The anchor was insufferable that day and Nath was right in getting angry. But banning the channel was not the answer. There are other ways of handling this. He could have complained to the editor, gone to the Press Council or simply boycotted the channel the way the BJP has decided to do. But how can he ban a news organisation from his press conferences? Press conferences by ministers are not private parties at their residence where they are free to pick and choose the invitees.

Kamal Nath did what he did. What was the rest of the press community doing? Even as his aides went around tapping CNBC reporters and cameramen on the shoulder and escorting them out, other print and television journalists sat quietly and attended the press conference. One walkout by all of them would have brought Nath to his senses. But to come back to my question – why was the Editors Guild silent then?

Separately, this particular sting – like all other stings – raises several questions which journalists must grapple with. Should journalists doing stings get into deals with their sources about when to publish/air the sting? But it’s all a question of give and take; the source has a reason for helping the journalist so some assurance will have to be given/some deal struck. Without the source’s help, the sting cannot be done. There will be no easy answers to these.

That said, the whole controversy over whether the channel was pressurised into not airing the tapes, whether the tapes had conclusive evidence (as the BJP claims) or not sufficient evidence (as CNN-IBN claims) will get sorted out only if the tapes are aired at the earliest. If they have conclusive evidence, it will become obvious that CNN-IBN was pressurised. The channel will only earn sympathy. If the tapes are inconclusive, then the channel will come out as a strong adherent to journalistic ethics and gain everybody’s respect. The BJP will end up looking silly. So it’ll be a win-win for the channel.

Anyway, here’s a link to an interesting point made by Jaya Jaitly in Indian Express, about the double standards in dealing with the Tehelka tapes on arms deals (where she figured) and the CNN-IBN tapes. http://www.indianexpress.com/story/343534.html

Media under trial for media trial

On Saturday morning, as I watched the just-released Rajesh Talwar and his brother Dinesh Talwar plead with the media with folded hands to let them walk to their car and later to leave them alone for some time, I was filled with a sense of dread. Something I've felt whenever I've seen television cameras hounding private citizens, intruding on their grief or troubles. What if, I thought, tomorrow something similar was to happen to me or to my family? Will I have TV cameras hounding me like this, stationed outside my house, catching every private moment? I recall reading about Praful Durani saying his father, a heart patient, is not able to go out for his daily walk because of the cameras parked outside their house.

Maybe there will be some leniency towards me because I'm from the profession and some friend or ex-colleague or ex-boss will talk to someone. But I cannot be absolutely certain of this and feel secure.

The first time I was really shocked and enraged by this was several years back when a Noida girl got her groom arrested for demanding dowry. Aaj Tak cameras barged into the groom's house along with the police, into his bedroom and showed us visuals of the man being woken up by the police, putting on his T-shirt in a sleepy daze and being arrested. I thought some sense would prevail. It hasn't.

Shouldn't there be some law/regulations/norms to protect the privacy of ordinary people? Or at least not have the scenes we witnessed with the Talwars?

That said, I am, however, quite irritated with the question that is being posed - should the media apologise to the Talwars. And my immediate reaction is, why? And why just the Talwars? There are so many cases where the media conducts its own trial and declares people guilty. Why hasn't this question been asked before?

Sure, there have been a lot of unsubstantiated stories about the Talwars. One of the first ones in print I saw was – not in a tabloid – but in the very respected The Telegraph, which carried a story on the second or third day about the parents’ partying lifestyles. How is that relevant, I wondered then. I was also angered by some of the bizarre stories the television channels aired, including one by Aaj Tak which reconstructed the night of the crime on the basis of CBI sources, giving Krishna the clean chit and raising questions about the parent's claims that they slept through it.

But I cannot believe that the media sat and concocted these stories on its own. The stories always come from somewhere. In this case, it was the Noida police and the CBI. The question then arises, shouldn't the press verify? I have never covered crime, so don't know how such information can be verified. Is there a way of cross checking? If there is I would like to know.

The first day when Rajesh's release was announced, this question – should the media apologies – was asked of former Delhi Police Commissioner Ved Marwah on either CNN-IBN or Times Now. And he said, hold on, this is not a clean chit, the CBI is only saying they have no evidence `as of now' and he is only out on bail and `walks free’ is the wrong term to use. But that point was overlooked completely.

The media is supposed to apologise for believing the Noida police's bizarre theory and every sickening insinuation it put out about the Talwars as well as those selective leaks from the CBI about their conduct. That's a valid point. But then why are we now expected to believe everything the CBI is saying about the three servants? Okay, Rajesh Talwar was framed by the Noida police under pressure to solve the case, but why couldn’t the same have happened in the case of the servants? The CBI could well be framing them because it is also under the same pressure to crack the case? If the trio have confessed, then why aren't they telling the CBI about where the murder weapon is or where Hemraj's cellphone is? Once Vikas Yadav was arrested for Nitish Katara's murder and confessed, he took the police to the spot where the murder weapon was hidden. So why are we - who are so quick to believe Rajesh Talwar's innocence - so reluctant to believe that the servants could also have been framed? That the real murderer may still be out there? If tomorrow, the servants are let off for lack of evidence, will there be similar demands that the media apologise to them? Will they get the same outpouring of media sympathy that the Talwars got, especially on NDTV?

I think there is a class issue here. Rajesh Talwar is one of us; the servants aren't. People like us can't do something like that (I'm not even remotely implying that Talwar was involved) or shouldn't face what he did. But servants? Oh, they're quite capable of doing that and a spell in jail is no big deal (the sight of Krishna being pushed on the floor to sleep while in CBI custody made me uncomfortable). That is probably why the Talwar's relatives and lawyers were invited to television studios during the days he was in jail. But not Krishna's articulate niece who is proclaiming her uncle's innocence or his lawyer.

What does amuse me is the holier-than-thou taken by the English channels, blaming the Hindi channels and English tabloids for the sensationalising. I remember this gem from a Headlines Today anchor before Rajesh Talwar's arrest. He was wondering why the parents are refusing to speak to the media. The channel kept airing a clip where the couple are going up the stairs to their flat, and just as Rajesh is about to speak to a microphone thrust into his face Nupur tugs at his kurta to stop him. The anchor mentions Nupur's action and says in an incredulous tone, `and why would she do that?' The implication was clear: they must be having something to hide or else why won't they come and bare their souls to a voyeuristic media.

I rest my case.

The fall of standards

I got this comment to my post on The Hoax Follow up. Sunil Varma was one reader who got taken in by the news reports on the arrest of the former Nazi. “I do wonder what mechanism "responsible" publications follow to check the veracity of stories they carry.” Another commenter, Som, wants media to have a self-regulating mechanism. We used to have these mechanisms at one time. Our bosses would ask us difficult questions. What happened? Where have they gone? It’s a question many of my generation are asking. Even as others of my generation have presided over the decline in standards.

The hoax follow up

Please do read the follow up penpricks did on the hoax it carried out. on www.penpricks.blogspot.com.
It is a really sad comment on Indian journalism today.