Credibility is like virginity. Once it is violated, it is gone forever. This is the most important lesson that the media must learn because it is the custodian of values and concerns of the nation. In a democracy, where faith stirs response, journalists cannot afford to have even an iota of doubt raised about what they say or do.
Unfortunately, some top talented journalists have not come up to the standard they are expected to maintain. In the few cases which are in the public domain, they have been found lobbying for the scam-ridden A Raja, till recently the Telecommunications Minister. Transcripts of tapped telephone talks by the income-tax department have revealed the manner in which these journalists were throwing their weight around in trying to get the “right” minister in the “right” party. They behaved like power brokers and crossed the Lakshman rekha between legitimate news gathering and lobbying. It is like the fence eating the crop.
How will they extricate themselves from the mire in which they are stuck is difficult to say? Maybe, they should stop flaunting their importance. Yet the sad part is that they have brought a bad name to the profession. Politicians are jubilant because they can now say: Physician heal thyself.
In a free society, the media has a duty to inform the public without fear or favour. At times it is an unpleasant job, but it has to be performed because a free society is founded on free information. With what face can the profession point fingers now at those who are found wanting in integrity.
For a long time, the mystique of journalism has been lessening by the day and now the media has been reduced to tittle-tattle. Celebrities from the cine world or cricket are the personalities that count where the media is concerned. Newspapers copy the TV channels in sensation and the latter in turn copy the newspapers in pontificating.
True, politicians tend to use us. They have their own interests to serve. But then we play into their hands for the vicarious satisfaction of being closed to ministers or the party leaders. When we slant the news and accept money or favours for putting across a particular point of view, as happened the recent Lok Sabha elections, we are not truthful and fall from the professional standards expected in a democratic structure. Why the press is called the Fourth Estate? It is because it is one of the pillars on which the democratic edifice rests.
After reading newspapers or watching the TV channels I feel as if a new version of the Emergency is starting to unfold where truth has become a relative term and where nothing is left like credible reporting. India is not a banana republic run by and for opportunists who will stop at nothing to line their own pockets or wield influence.
Where has the idealism gone? Once the profession attracted the best and the brightest who saw that they would be in the midst of challenges facing the society. They wanted to combat parochialism, archaic ideas, bullying by power brokers and anything that could be construed as threatening the common man.
Take newspapers and TV channels today. They avoid debates on issues. They present a point of view of their own or of the vested interests. They deny a voice to those who do not tally with their bias or prejudice. In fact they are the most undemocratic species talking in the name of democracy. What kind of country do they want? At what are their sights set?
I feel more disappointed over the attitude of those journalists who know that there is a problem of lessening integrity, yet they prefer to sweep it under the carpet. In the telecommunication case, they have been willing partners or fixers.
I know of a senior journalist who has become a member of a government-appointed Commission. He is happy to occupy both positions. Technically he may be right but the question is not legal, but moral. His name will also come out one of those days as has of some others figuring on transcripts of tapped talks.
The writer is a senior Indian journalist.
