“Journalist as an independent entity is a thing of past”

The very first paragraph in your account, relating to a 32-year-old incident, speaks of a foursome including you taking a professional vow of sorts. Was there something special about that year (1986) and the three others who, along with you, took the decision to never aspire for an executive job in journalism?

Nothing special about the year. We felt fed up with the way proprietors were forcing the editors to get duty cuts in machinery imports, plots of land for the company from a state government and relief from FERA cases, and so on. There were many such stories in circulation. Such liaison became part of the editors’ job. We simply wanted to preserve our limited journalistic freedom and avoid being the executioners on behalf of the proprietors.

It gives you more money and higher standing in the hierarchy. But once you become editor, you spend most of the time in dealing with the staff and liaisoning with the CEOs. As functioning journalists, we were so close to power but remained so far away from it. As for the new generation editors, they have even lost the fixer’s job because things are now being done directly through the PMO or an influential minister.

Cut to the new age, we see (and you also refer to) the young generation endowed with infrastructural facilities that makes a reporter’s job easier (especially in getting info very handy through, say, Google or social media) in certain ways compared to your younger days. That apart, do you see new-age journalists relatively shallow in their knowledge vis-a-vis yours?

There is a cruel paradox. We are in the midst of an information explosion with huge data at a click away. But for the most elementary facts, you have to search niche sites for details. In a three-hour parliamentary debate, all that the readers get is cliches such as ‘PM targets opposition’ or ‘Rahul denies charges’ without explaining real facts. The emphasis is on the ‘hungama’. In many cases, there is reluctance to give the full facts or the other side of the story.

I read four English dailies ( IE, TOI, The Hindu, and HT ). But a regional daily, Mathrubhumi , gave the ILO’s startling revelation that over 80 per cent of the organised labour in India is now on short-term contracts. Similar blackout happened with regard to the government move to introduce rules to circumvent the existing labour legislations despite the fact that the PTI did the story. Journalists can do little about it because that is the editorial policy.

You seem to be keen in following the country’s regional media closely even while being a thorough English-language journalist. Have you noticed cases where some of the “vernacular” reporters/editors are much more grounded than most of the well-known national-media names in the journalism of our times?

Certainly. Regional reporters in Delhi were the source of many story-breakers right from around 1986 when the post-emergency generation began political reporting. They had contacts with their CMs and senior ministers and secretaries hailing from their respective States. Often the agencies and mainstream journalists made a follow-up the next day. I had a few regional language correspondents who passed on their exclusives. Many star political editors did so. In fact, some of the successful English journalists had their grooming in regional dailies.

Did you spend time reading and mustering material particularly with the idea of writing this book in mind? How long did it take (from when) and where all did you have to go searching literature?

It took about six months. Some chapters were the rehash of the pieces that were written for other journals. Much of the facts contained in the book emerged from the informal exchange of views we had with some of the like-minded retired journalists. To that extent, The Post-Truth Media represented combined wisdom of a vanishing generation. Some of it were culled from my old papers like daily briefings which I had preserved from 1978.

Given the way the country’s media systems are evolving, many tilting towards the right, and with corporate interests taking command at several such organisations, do you see a brighter future for independent media in India?

This is an issue that worries the liberals the world over. Until the mid-1980s owners, editors and working journalists unitedly put up resistance against the government control. Corporates — ‘jute press’ — had always tried to dominate media. Now the biggest threat to free media comes from the spreading monopoly of certain business houses and the attempts by certain corporate groups to wrest controlling stakes in TV media.

A popular media group accounts for half of English media circulation and gets half of advertisements.They resort to all kinds of market manipulation like price cuts in south and Punjab and Haryana ‘markets’. In the Hindi belt, two Hindi media houses are trying to bring editions from every district. Dailies with local flavour are being eliminated. In many places, a dominant daily is in a position to suppress a story or play up another — of course for a price. A big corporate group has acquired domineering stake in some TV companies.

All this hampers free flow of news and diversity. The most effective antidote to the media monopoly and information imperialism is to strengthen the sections of the media that defy doctoring of news for profits and political favour.

Developmental journalism is clearly waning, sparing a few exceptions. Political journalism seems more about lobbying and power brokering now. How did this happen?

Let us admit it. Capitalist mores have triumphed over liberal values like free flow of information. The very concept of developmental journalism is dead and very few practice it. Political parties have changed and so political journalism. Earlier, we could tap multiple sources like a general secretary or treasurer of a political party for news. Most of them freely talked. Some issued statements. Now the only source is the heavily tutored spokespersons. End of internal democracy and demise of ideology in political parties has changed the very scope of political reporting.

At another level, the very metrics of political analysis has undergone change. While covering elections, we used to analysis socio-economic aspects of the constituency. Now all that you need is some caste statistics and relate it to the candidates and parties they represent. Considering such constraints, today’s political journalists are doing fairly well.

Can you share with us your advice to the new generation of journalists on a few points they must keep in mind while pursuing this profession?

I am sorry to say that journalist as an independent entity is a thing of past. In the bygone era we had some amount of freedom within the general policy framework of the newspaper. Now in most media establishments content is tightly controlled on an item-by-item basis. Journalists are being made to act as what veteran editor Jay Dubashi had called ‘clerical coolis’.

When the editors have to function as the fixers of the owners, one can imagine the plight of the middle level journalists. Earlier, media’s function was to ‘inform and educate’. Now it is ‘inform and entertain’. News is what sells and newspaper a consumer product. Often you as journalist is told to promote a product of the firm in which the media house has financial stakes. Some media houses are resisting the compulsions. But how long can they? So any advice to the new generation journalists on ethics makes no sense.

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