By Patricia Mukhim
The caption of this article is borrowed from the Press Council of India’s theme for this year’s National Press Day observation. Annual observances tend to degenerate into rigmarole. I wonder if there is any change of heart in anyone. The panellists who speak at such functions perform a task. The captive audience of practising journalists and those from the local colleges and universities who aspire to take a call and join this very challenging profession, unfortunately never get to raise questions for the panellists. It therefore becomes a talk show and everyone is happy to have said their piece. But this is not how media introspection happens. Those who expect the media to take the moral high ground and to be specialists in their profession should understand where we come from. Media persons are not super heroes from another planet. They are also not a class of conspirators whose daily mission is to destroy reputations; to mar and tarnish the names of the rich and famous and those powerful players in the Government. They are doing their job of addressing public complaints and trying to unearth a scam wherever one is brewing. It is only natural that we would have very few friends. And who wants friends who look at us to cover their dirt tracks. Friendship demands no favours and expects none!
This year National Press Day had three important speakers, the Chief Minister, the Minister for Information and Public Relations and the Home Minister. Each one had a message for the media and if distilled the message can be read as (1) Don’t destroy reputations and don’t witch-hunt (2) Balance the news by capturing the voices of those who are written about to give the story a wide angle (3) Don’t sensationalise news (4) Don’t be the prosecutor, judge and jury and make the public form opinions with incomplete investigative stories. These points are well taken. The media works on a set of parameters and the lines that we can and cannot cross are well laid out in Article 19 (2) of the Constitution. Those who have gone through journalism schools know what media ethics is all about. The manner in which we source our news and the slant we give to every news report and the people we pick and choose for churning out our reports speak a lot about our own moral and ethical stances or the lack of it. One can see at a glance whether a particular news item merited a front page space or any space at all in the day’s newspaper. A discerning reader would know at once what the paper or its editor’s agenda is. And this is how a newspaper sets its benchmarks and is either respected or discredited.
As a media person one gets to hear salacious gossips about the high and mighty because they are newsmakers. But do the personal fads and foibles of a highly placed person become news? Not if it does not impinge on public interest. Go to any public gathering and some people will veer towards you because they have a story to tell. That is how we get our news. But most often undiscerning media persons are unable to distinguish between assumptions, gossip, and a real story. There are grouchy government servants who feel they have been wronged. There are others who feel they are short-changed; that they have done something which goes unacknowledged. There are others with a scoop and if we have the patience to cultivate the third category we could unearth major scams. I recall pursuing the State Lottery scam which had many supporters within the Government. Later it was reinvented as the Online Lottery in which the Congress strongman Mani Kumar Subba was involved. In both cases the State Government was defrauded of its revenue but it never had the energy to pursue the matter to its logical end. Then came the Meghalaya House, Kolkata scam and the documents, including the deal signed by Asian Housing Construction Limited and the State Govt with loopholes galore was leaked to the media by someone in Government. That someone wanted to protect the interests of the people of Meghalaya. If the story had not broken out then, the Kolkata Meghalaya House at Russell Street would have belonged to AHCL since the agreement allowed for automatic and successive renewal of the agreement with the lessee for 99 years with a minimum accrual to the Government of Meghalaya. I salute those who at the time had the foresight to share the details of the shady deal with some of us. The moral here is that there are individuals in the Government who walk the straight and narrow and wish to see that Government does not fall from grace. They are our eyes and ears and they do great service to the State and its people.
It is difficult for newspersons to get whiff of a scam because many transactions are without paper trails. Chief Minister Mukul Sangma while addressing the media on November 15 had said that most MLAs are in the habit of giving written ‘slips’ to officers or ministerial colleagues for special favours for their constituents. He said he had cautioned especially the young legislators not to leave such paper trails because the likelihood of their getting caught is far higher than if it was a verbal request. In a sense the Chief Minister is also saying that the system can be circumvented by other methods and not necessarily by writing notes to different persons in positions of authority. This usually happens with jobs and contracts.
Another very crucial point made by Dr Mukul Sangma is about “Letters to the Editor,” which is a space dedicated to members of the public for them to air their grievances. The CM said he urged his cabinet colleagues and bureaucrats to go through these letters and to redress those public grievances that could be done so without much ado. The CM rued that many of his colleagues don’t pay attention to such letters. He however, also said something that gives me the opportunity to clarify. He said that many people have complained to him that they have written letters to the editor that are never published. This makes it appear as if the editors pick and choose letters according to their fancy. Such is never the case. At least this paper has a very clear policy that a letter which fulfils the conditions stipulated by the paper, i.e. that the letter should have the full name and contact address of the writer and the person’s phone number will be published. All too often we have angry tirades that come via email with no address or phone number. When we write back to the writers seeking their contact details we invariably find that they have sent their emails from a concocted ID created only for the purpose of sending the mail. This is an unfair practice! Editors must take due caution that the paper is not used by vested interests. Today despite the precautions we take there are still a number of cases of civil and criminal defamation against us. I would like to mention here that the Supreme Court had, in the case of Jayalalitha versus Subramanyam Swamy taken a view that a criminal defamation against a news report violates against freedom of the press as guaranteed by Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution.
I would like to end by saying that we in the media need to constantly pursue the truth but that cannot be just our truth. There are limits to our enthusiasm to punish people. It is not our business to convict people. That is for the law to decide. Our job is to bring out the Government and other public transactions that violate the rules and procedures of government business. Politicians and bureaucrats are not the only newsmakers. There militant organisations, NGOs with questionable antecedents, pressure/interest groups etc with vested interests that don’t deserve media space but get it because of their proximity to some journalists.
And no matter how senior we are in the profession there is still a lot more to learn. Journalists with their ear to the ground always get a good story. And yes we need to reach out to the rural hamlets where governance does not reach. Media needs to bridge the gap between the Government and the governed.