We need to understand how a news organisation works before we rant

In an earlier blog, I wrote about the unfairness of being labelled a presstitute – a sweeping generalisation made by people who had no idea of how a media house or a newsroom works. Of course, one can’t blame them because they go by what they see and their idea of media is the idiot box or the newspaper they receive on their doorstep, and whatever is published in it, and of course now on the social media, which as I told columnist Shefali Vaidya, bears a striking resemblance to Dennis the Menace. I hope this clears it.

There’s another good example of how little people on social media understand about the media. A few weeks back a journalist tweeted about how she was woken up by the sounds of temple bells whenever she visited Udaipur and stayed at the Taj Mahal Hotel. As usual, Twitter erupted for a lot of reasons. Someone asked her how as a journalist she could afford to stay at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Udaipur. I just want to get into one of the reasons, and not the rest, because they have no bearing on what I am about to say. Let me make it very clear, I do not know this journalist either personally or professionally, so I hold no brief for what she says or does.

Right through my journalism career, it is an issue that has always raised its head when it comes to journalists availing the hospitality of a client. How far can a journalist go? I am sure there are many journalists who seek favours from corporate houses. The Essar email leaks proved that there is no dearth of unscrupulous journalists in the country. But to label everyone as corrupt is pretty unfair.

What people don’t understand is that many journalists, at least the ones who live in flats and don’t own farmhouses, stay at five-star hotels not out of choice or because they can afford it but out of compulsion because the client books them in there if it invites them to cover an event. How else can a client impress journalists about the product he is launching? Trust me, most journalists, at least the honest ones, can’t afford 3-star accommodation leave alone a luxury hotel at their own expense. Can we tell a client we won’t attend if the press conference is at a five-star hotel? Frankly, as journalists, it is none of our business. Our job is to report the press conference in a completely unbiased manner. Yes, we can refuse to touch a morsel or have a drink and a lot of us have refused a drink. That would mean, finding a place to eat or catch a beer after the press conference late at night. It just isn’t worth the trouble.

Again, there are two sides to this story as well. If you have an evening presser, a lot of journalists expect booze to be served. I know of journalists who will only attend if there is liquor, and I also personally know journalists who refuse to touch a drop because they consider it unethical. I spent five years handling public relations for two software companies (when I was on a sabbatical from journalism) and during the launch of one, liquor was being served. A lot of my friends who I had called refused a drink and some others even refused the food. I was on the other side of the table now and it was an interesting view. They gave the launch more than ample coverage but still didn’t touch a drink.

As a managing editor of a couple of automotive magazines some years back, I was invited to the launch of a luxury sedan to Udaipur. A friend who then worked for a national newspaper and I were the only two from Pune covering the event, so we were driven to Mumbai airport, from where we were flown by a chartered aircraft to Udaipur along with other journalists. At Udaipur, the “lucky” ones got to the drive the car to the hotel, while the others were bundled into an AC coach and driven to the Leela Kempinski, which reeked luxury from every corner. The room I stayed in was the epitome of luxury. It even had bathroom slippers that made my feet sink in and carpets that made me wonder why I needed a bed. If I could have taken the bathroom home I would have! I asked the attractive marketing head how much the room cost for a night and she casually mentioned the amount.

I sat for a moment stunned at hearing the price – could I ever afford to stay at such a place on my crappy salary? And could I have refused to stay there? Could I have asked my company to put me up at more modest accommodations? Why would they, when they weren’t organising the event? The next time I travelled to Udaipur on one of the drives with the family, I stayed at the MTDC hotel where the room cost Rs 3,000/- with Rs 1000 for an extra bed. Just saying.

In my first job as a journalist, I was the Assistant Editor when I covered the Cricket World Cup in 1996. My newspaper told me they could not afford the plane fare so I would have to travel non-AC II sleeper and stay in single star hotels. Crazy as I was about cricket I agreed without a thought for the logistical problems I was about to encounter. Other journalists who were covering the tournament flew in and out, stayed in three- to five-star hotels because their media houses could afford it. At Gwalior, the first stop, I had a booking at a government guest house which was stolen from under my nose by a journalist from another media house. I was left standing outside without a room to spend the night. I was given accommodation by a lodge that resembled a hovel, in a space where they stored water, and there were rats and cockroaches scurrying around. I spent the night wide awake. It was a situation no human should ever find himself in even in the worst circumstances. But it was either that or the footpath. I remember rushing to Bangalore by sleeper bus the afternoon before the quarter-final against Pakistan, and asking my cousin if I could crash with him for the night because it was too late to look for hotel accommodation. I also remember picking up my press pass from a well-known journalist who was staying at a five-star hotel. He was later to be embroiled in the unsavoury match-fixing controversy.

And here is the other side. When the dates and schedules of that World Cup were announced, a soft drink major had a press conference in Mumbai where everyone from the sports media contingent was present. We were in a queue waiting to be handed out our complimentary press kits, which included a duffel bag, with a towel, shaving kit, pen, pad etc. A very well-known sports journalist was a few places in front of me, and he signed for his kit, picked it up and left. A few minutes later, I saw him again in the back of the queue. I assumed he was picking up the kit for someone else. As he reached the head of the counter, I heard the girl from the agency say, “But sir, you have already taken your kit.” He insisted he hadn’t and she persisted that he had, till she turned in exasperation to her manager and shrugged it off with a disgusted look on his face, and motioned to her to give him the bag. I was aghast by what I saw and heard.

So, you see, like every good journalist knows, there are two sides to every story. There are crooks and there are dishonest people in every profession. Journalism is no different.

All those ranting about Arnab Goswami today should watch the video where he spoke of his early life as a cub reporter with NDTV. He narrated an incident where he had to apologise to a union minister for asking what the minister believed was an incorrect question. He said he apologised not because he was wrong (he wasn’t), but he needed the money and the job. If he had not apologised he might have had neither. That’s life. So all those who think journalists should not accept hospitality from clients, please get a life. It is not always about being greedy, very often it is about being pragmatic. It is a job like any other for a lot of us.

Oh, I went to Goa recently for a four-day break where I stayed at Vivanta by Taj in Panjim. Are you wondering how as a retired journalist I could afford such expensive accommodation? Let me tell you how. My wife generously paid for it because she thought I deserved a break after slogging for the family all these years! It would have cost me a month’s salary.

Gauri Lankesh murder, Gorakhpur deaths, Narendra Modi and story of 6 missing honest men of Indian journalism

Published in Firstpost Date: Sep 09, 2017 01:40 pm | Updated Date: Sep 09, 2017 02:06 pm

I keep six honest serving men. (They taught me all I know)
Their names are What and Why and When and Where and Who and How
– Rudyard Kipling

Ever since May 2014, stories have been manufactured, recreated, and redeveloped all to suit a narrative, in total disregard of any journalistic ethic. Be it church vandalism, lynchings, cow vigilantism, baby deaths, train mishaps and now the killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh. Everything plays out not as a news story that should be reported with the facts but as an orchestrated attempt to somehow link the ruling party at the Centre and specifically the prime minister and those close to him, to the story.

Twenty years ago, with editors controlling the print and TV media, this might have succeeded. Today, with social media being a potent and completely uncontrolled force, these attempts are exposed and draw instant ridicule.

Take the latest example. Gauri Lankesh, editor of Lankesh Patrike, a Kannada weekly was shot dead late in the evening on Tuesday, 5 September, outside her home in Bengaluru by unidentified assailants. We still don’t have a clue on the identity or the motive of the assailants. At least, most journalists who believe in the phrase “objective journalism” don’t, although conspiracy theories abound.

However, the alacrity (give or take 30 minutes) with which certain sections of the mainstream media reacted to Lankesh’s murder makes me want to ask them what happened to the 5Ws and H, which they learnt in their journalism course. Every young media student is taught about “WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY and HOW” when he or she enters a media school. Yet, none of these journalists gave any of the W’s a thought when they announced her death on social media.

The sensible ones stayed with the objective line that she had been murdered by unknown assailants, and mentioned her ideological differences with the BJP, stopping short of linking both to the murder. The others, however, smelt an “opportunity” and put the blame on “fascist forces” and the BJP. How did they come to such a conclusion? Did they have proof, evidence, eyewitness accounts? Or did they just follow the old dictum of “strike while the iron is hot” in the hope that some dirt would stick or some link would emerge? There could have been a host of suspects who might have wanted the firebrand journalist eliminated – jealous rivals, family, politicians, ideologues, – just anyone with an axe to grind. Didn’t that occur to these journalists? It almost seemed like they had decided the narrative this killing would follow the minute they heard about it. So fascist terror it would be and to hell with the facts – of which there were none.

And then, on Wednesday, they discovered that the brother of the slain journalist was a big supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Karnataka chief minister BS Yeddyurappa. Worse was to follow. Gauri’s sister blamed the right wing and the brother blamed the left wing. Suddenly, the plan to spin the narrative was falling apart. A curious fact was that not one journalist even made the symbolic gesture of demanding the resignation of either Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah or state home minister Ramalinga Reddy.

For a crime so heinous that they could organise nationwide candlelight protests and even blame the prime minister and the BJP for it, they didn’t think it important enough to ask for the resignations of the top two in the state? Objective journalism?

Then some 48 hours later, news anchors and editors woke up to the fact that objectivity did matter. They began asking politicians why they were accusing the BJP and other related organisations of the murder, conveniently forgetting that they were doing just that two days earlier. Someone told me on Twitter on Friday, that I was ignoring the “circumstantial evidence.” Where was it? Has the police found any even now?

We were always told by our seniors that there are two sides to a story, but it is unfortunate that in these past few years, there has been a deliberate attempt to build a one-sided narrative around every news story, almost like it is pre-planned. And even though an alert social media has uncovered these attempts, it hasn’t made the mainstream media any wiser. They continue to shoot themselves in the foot. I won’t even go too far back. Like the incidents of the stones being pelted at churches which turned out to be the handiwork of miscreants. If we were to believe the media, cow vigilantes on the prowl were lynching Muslims in trains and on roads, and anyone who ate or dealt with beef. There have been so many such stories which as journalists we can smell a mile away.

Now let’s come to the deaths of children in Gorakhpur. Did you know that in the past four decades,  25,000 children have lost their lives to encephalitis in Uttar Pradesh? This sordid fact was brought to light in great detail only after August, 2017 after the deaths at BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur. Some 274 children died in January and February 2017, before Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took over from Akhilesh Yadav, but did you hear about them?

Before August, even more babies had been dying at this hospital (see graphic) yet no journalist reported it. This is not a case of whataboutery. It concerns objective journalism.

For five years, everything wrong that could be covered up by the media was, because it didn’t suit the narrative. From March 19, 2017, like a rash, reports of dead babies kept popping up. Didn’t the journalists, who suddenly discovered this morbid detail, know this had been occurring with monotonous regularity earlier? You can spin these fairy tales to the gullible and unsuspecting readers but not to journalists who have been around long enough to know the difference between an ‘exclusive’ and a press release converted into a byline story.

If media houses were that interested in doing stories about infant deaths in hospitals, they should have asked their correspondents around the country to send them stories about such incidents from their centres and do a package. It would have made one helluva story. I don’t need to ask ‘did they?’ because I am pretty sure what the answer is. They can keep up the pretence for as long as they want but to anyone with two eyes, two ears and a nose, the motive of the media was suspect.

Incidents of such deaths were emerging in other states, including Karnataka but the media wasn’t interested. It became more obvious that this was a hit job on Yogi Adityanath and the man who put him there. What happened to objectivity, people? If you were to believe the mainstream media, it was only after 19 March this year that India’s largest and most populous state had become a living hell. This should be an eye-opener for those who thought Uttar Pradesh stood for Utopia Pradesh.

Now, to this obsession with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On 7 September, 2013, I wrote a blog where I had said that the manner in which everyone from media to politicians had been hounding Narendra Modi, they were making a huge mistake. It reminded me of 1977 when the Janata Party set up the various Commissions to inquire into the excesses committed by former prime minister Indira Gandhi, her son Sanjay and their cohorts during the Emergency.

The wily Indira Gandhi, ever the astute politician, played the victim so convincingly that midway through the proceedings the tables had turned. By the time the Shah Commission ended its hearings she had everyone, including the media (with a few exceptions), eating out of her hand.

In the run up to the May 2014 elections, the UPA and every other party raised the 2002 bogey. And every time they did that, Modi talked development, jobs and a better life for the poor. He played the victim card to perfection. He did not talk about the Ram Mandir, Hindutva or the riots, while the Opposition had just one theme – Modi is a murderer, fascist, Hitler etc. That backfired as the results proved. Some journalists don’t seem to have learnt from that experience. Or can’t, or don’t want to, so deep is their hatred for the man. There is a fear that he may return in 2019, and then there is no saying how long the BJP will rule this country. Who is to blame for this state of affairs?

The public still believes that the fourth estate is someone it can trust but there are those who are playing with that trust. Frankly, some of the journalists set a pathetic example for their juniors and those who look up to them – and there are many, like me, who still do. Every day, in my classes I teach students how to be good journalists, but now I am not so sure if I can. Can these journalists see that in their unhealthy obsession to end the political career of one man and those around him, they are destroying their own credibility and reputation? The way things are right now, that man is winning the argument.