Of PR, Press Pool and Cess Pool
Sid Harth
Pf PR, Press Pool and Cess Pool
Arvind Lavakare is a seasoned Journalist, so are bunch of others who
write interesting commentaries and opinion pieces, if not hard news for
major Indian media, including but not limited to newsprint media and
their specialized publications, TV media or electronic journalism and
now with a vengeance, for dot com hasty journalism.
Once my teacher and mentor, Shankar Palsikar, a famous Indian painter
of some repute, who later became dean of Sir J.J.School of Art, a
premier institution devoted to arts, Fine Arts like painting,
Sculpture, Industrial design, such as metal works, iron and gold,
Applied Art, Architecture and such that each medium has its own beauty
but at the same time its own limitations.
Famous Art critic, a curator and an accomplished artist himself,
Ananda Coomarswamy used pencil sketching as an art form and developed
it to perfection. Coomarswamy was a child born to a Ceylones father and
an American mother thus had proper western education but heavily
influence of his heritage. Coomarswamy is sometimes referred to
as "Indian," because of his last name but he had nothing to do with
India. Ceylon was a separate territory, part of British empire, when
given freedom, became known as Sri Lanka. Never part of India and now
that Hindu separatist and the majority Buddhists are fighting a duel to
death, most probably a definitely non, as in anti India.
The point is that medium decides the value. Arvind Lavakare writes
supporting saffron rascals as he is their appointed spin doctor. Being
a journalist has one advantage, not to my liking but I admit that it
exists. Journalists can and do soft peddle the issue which bothers
everyone else and hard sell an issue that bothers only their own
conscience.
At one time when press as we know did not exist in India. The London
Times became a model for English daily suitably named the Times of
India. It was managed and staffed by English journalists with added
support from talented Indian journalists trained by the British
education system, colleges and universities.
None matched the premier place this publication had as they had
money, money and more money to push British point of view. Later,
knowing the need of the public, the Times of India opened its doors to
talented and educated Indians including artists. Bal Thackeray like
cartoonists got their feet wet in the Times of India starting as
interns. J D Gondhalekar, dean of the J J School of Art became art
director of the Times of India group of publications with four figure
salary, in those days very few artists enjoyed such real fat salaries.
The Times of India dominated as well as shaped the Indian journalism
and nothing but the best could ever pass thru their publication. When
Jain boys bought the established enterprise, things started going
southwards more because newer local language dailies started biting the
Times of India's butt and competition required to reformat the looks as
well as the content to suit the needs of English speaking new elite.
Birth of commercially dependent journalism.
Even at this stage of fierce competition, the standards did not
diminish. Overbearing control over editorial contents by specialists
and dedicated journalists meant no sacrificing the conscience for cold
cash. In depth, hard hitting investigative journalism needs issues that
bother people. Political arena has issues of various kinds but only
those issues which are within the view or grasp of a common paid
subscriber are developed as it sells the newspaper.
The issues which are important but too technical are usually find
very few readers and such readers have more options to pursue their
queries. Such small group cannot support huge expensive press. Space
constraints also played havoc as newsprint was a controlled commodity.
Thus real journalistic integrity over serious non political issues
never mattered much. Cheap hustling became a new standard and was
gladly accepted by readers who cared less for deeper understanding of
the issues but needed glossy, gossipy, titillating pieces, both news
and commentaries kind. They got what they asked for.
TV journalism also was controlled as it was a private pasture of the
government of India. For years propaganda machines churned out material
and forced people to accept very biased and very pro and pretty version
of the government dictated and directed news. The real competition came
to TV journalism in only recentyears when private parties were allowed
the same privileges as monopoly government in TV broadcasting.
It bothers me a lot that as Arvid Lavakare like obviously tainted,
perhaps, painted (saffron) colored monkeys are calling names when they
are the culprits of this downward trend in journalistic ethical
conduct. If Arvind finds comparison as a weapon so do I. I compare good
with bad, mostly parochial, putrid, "pundit," punditry of chosen
hitters who play favors with saffron boys and demand that others see
thru their pigmented eyes.
Arvind is like a Devil quoting Bible. Shameless saffron media never
address the issues and take high moral road when independent
journalists and commentators like Saisuresh Sivaswamy rock the boat.
Forget about Sid Harth not only rocking the boat but throwing caution
to the winds and slashing tall sails out of the rickety, crotchety
spokesmen of saffron shade using vulgarity as a weapon but nailing the
damned, demented and dogmatic dagos like Arvid Lavkare, Varsha Bhosle,
Rajeev Srinivasan and their ilk.
Pound for pound, ounce for ounce, the real McCoy journalism is coming
from non saffron camp. Brahmin boys like Arvind Lavkare are scared shit
that their two timing acts sell only in Brahmin ghettoes not in the
mainstream media. Brahmin boy, Arvind Lavkare cannot play fast and
loose as he is dishonest ding bat. He picks and chooses what he likes
to comment upon, mostly caricaturing his journalistic buddies. I never
see him commenting on the malaise, malarkey and massacre that happens
under his hoity-toity Brahmin nose.
Good brother Saisuresh, Dilip D'Souza, Kuldip Nayar, Malini
Parthasarathy, M J Akbar and bunch of others destroy the Brahmin
dichotomy. Kancha Ilaiah is no journalist but Dr. V T Rajshekar is. How
much credibly these saffron simians have against these writers, not
journalists, per se? Dilip D'Souza gets death threats. Kancha Ilaiah is
asked pointedly by his Hindu bosses to cut down, water down his caustic
argument. Dr. V T Rajshekar's free speech matters none for the Brahmin
hoodlums. Kuldip Nayar is regularly maligned by saffron media and witch
hunters like Arvid Lavakare.
If the truth hurts these goddamned liars so much they better not
evoke fairness issue and journalistic integrity as it become a
caricature portraying their own filthy journalistic traditions.
Thanks to Rediff dated June 6, and June 13, 2000.
Arvind Lavakare
A sturdy pillar or a decrepit column?
The time seems to have come for Indian journalists to go back to
school... To learn moral science! It is time for them to intone that
subject's fundamental prayer seeking god's help in never offending his
holy law in thought, word or deed.
If there ever was doubt in anyone's mind about the immorality in Indian
journalism, it was demolished by the landmark article penned by one of
its own fraternity -- by Saisuresh Sivaswamy posted on rediff.com on
June 6, 2000.
That immorality is not of sudden, recent birth. As a PR man in the late
Sixties, this columnist recalls uninvited journalists gatecrashing at a
press conference, getting tipsy, asking inane questions and imploring
for a second or third extra gift.
In the early Seventies, there was that party of journalists taken, all
found, to see the burgeoning industrial scene in Maharashtra's Nashik
District, asking for taxi fare to home on return to Bombay airport.
Work-wise, giving readymade copy to a journalist was part of a PR man's
line of duty those days.
The internecine jealousy in the vocation was best reflected in a
reporter's comment about a rival who wrote for a prestigious paper as
its `Shipping Correspondent'. "Next time he meets you," I was
advised, "ask him to explain the plimsoll line." And as for the general
professionalism those days, that kind of advice didn't need to be
tested --- the outcome was known!
On the whole though, they were a jolly good lot, mild-mannered, fairly
easily obliging with favourable copy and quick in saying "Sorry" for
little devils therein -- theirs or the printer's. That overall meekness
came through crystal clear during the national Emergency imposed in
1975 by Mrs Indira Gandhi. Save a couple or so, all the newspapers
simply caved in. As a worthy summed it later, they were merely asked to
bend but they chose to crawl. It was the yellow phase of India's
journalism.
An almost dramatic change came in the early Eighties with the cement
scandal of Maharashtra Chief Minister A R Antulay, that first brought
investigative journalism to Indian homes. Arun Shourie, given a free
hand by Ramnath Goenka of The Express group, went hammer and tongs
after Antulay's shady Trust. Soon afterwards he thundered about
Ambani's shenanigans with pre-dated Letters of Credit and unlicensed
imports of whole manufacturing plants.
V P Singh's rise to power aided the intrepid trend in our press. The
Bofors guns boomed in newsprint. The helicopter and submarine deals
were unleashed. His Mandal mission singed our news pages. And soon
after Narasimha Rao began his liberalisation process, Sucheta Dalal's
expose of Harshad Mehta's manipulation of millions of rupees in the
stock market heralded a brilliant peak for our journalism, especially
financial journalism.
However, the advent of crass materialism in the wake of economic
liberalisation and the BJP's simultaneous strident march to centre
stage with its Hindutva agenda would appear to have had a peculiar
fallout on the mainstream media, especially its so-called secular
intellectuals.
Earlier, specific gift items to journalists had, at the latter's
initiative, been replaced by pre-paid gift vouchers of major department
stores. Now these vouchers began to be discounted for hard cash from
passersby at suburban railway stations; the vouchers themselves tended
to be replaced by assured quotas of shares from the spate of public
issues by the private sector. The freebies from the government
continued: Reserved housing, plots of prime land at concessional rates,
patronage of Press Clubs (alias watering holes), quick telephone and
LPG connections, free trips of Bharat or world darshan and fixation of
salaries not by negotiations with newspaper managements but by
sympathetic government-appointed wage boards.
Side by side, it became a fad first, a fashion next and then second
nature itself for our leading English language dailies -- along with
their minions in the vernacular sector -- to uphold "secularism," to
debunk and damn the BJP in or out of power. All of this was rooted in
the Ayodhya episode. All of it was done:
*Without going into the mystery of why the Babri Masjid Action
Committee did not attend what was to be the last decisive meeting with
the temple protagonists who were by then armed with solid proof
supporting their contention.
*Without reading the definitive work on Ayodhya by Koenraad Elst, a
young Belgian scholar who is credited with having a better grasp of
India than most Indians have.
Doing honest, hard work, leave alone being scholarly, is now the
exception rather than the rule among our journalists. Some two years or
so ago, the financial editor of The Times of India lamented how her
staff did not read even their own newspaper's commercial pages. The
other day, the cricket editor of the same group misread the visiting
card of a clinical psychologist and labelled her as a "clinical
pathologist" for a front-page Sunday story on match-fixing. Lethargy is
now the leitmotif.
Instead of application and attainment, aggressiveness and arrogance
have become the traits. Instances of this nonchalant profile are many,
but one should suffice because it represents the conclusive symptom of
the affliction.
That clincher came from the winsome lass with long flowing hair who
anchors prime time news on Star TV. Discussing an event one cannot
quite recall now, she agitatedly alluded to freedom of the press being
a Fundamental Right. The gumptious woman didn't know that freedom of
the press is not a Fundamental Right in the Indian
Constitution; "freedom of expression" is, but subject to limitations.
Another editorial staffer, Amrita Abraham of The Indian Express, began
her piece of June 7, 2000, with "There has never been a more immoral,
politically biased and economically unsound decision than the one
reducing subsidies on food intended for India's 300 million poor
people." The woman then went on to churn out another thousand more
words shredding the BJP-led government's recent budget enactment.
She had the gall to do that without even once referring to Prime
Minister A B Vajpayee's letter of May 16, 2000, of 1,200-odd words to
Sonia Gandhi, explaining the position to the leader of the Opposition.
One of the points the PM had made in his letter was that when the
Congress was in office, the issue price of rice given through the
Public Distribution System (PDS) was increased by 30.4 per cent in
1991, by a further 15.9 per cent in 1993, and by another 22.8 per cent
the very next year. In respect of wheat supplied under the PDS, the PM
had pointed out that the Congress government raised the price in 1994
by 43.6 per cent over its 1991 level.
Conclusion: Like many others of her genre, Abraham probably believes
that comparisons are so odious that they ought not to debar journalists
from pronouncing historic indictments about unprecedented immorality or
political bias et al.
Take the example of Seema Mustafa, the chief political columnist of The
Asian Age, who is forever itching to claw the very entrails of the
Hindutva BJP while being ignorant that saffron is the colour of her
pirs as well. Very recently, she pounced on Yashwant Sinha
for "allowing" chosen Foreign Institutional Investors to be exempted
from paying capital gains tax through what she labelled as "The
Mauritius Connection". The finance minister's daughter-in-law was
dragged into the muck Mustafa sought to create with three continuous
front-page "exposes". The connivance of the CPI-M and the Congress was
also roped in to weave the noose for Sinha, at least if not for
Vajpayee too.
Soon enough, the PM's Office issued a clarification on the
inviolability of the old treaty with Mauritius and the advantage it had
brought to our country; it also gave a clean chit to Sinha vis-à-vis
his bahu. Bingo... Mustafa dumped her defused detonator without
publishing the PMO's clarification, leave alone tendering an apology.
Two more horror stories and the case against journalists will rest.
Both happened when a group of them was invited by the Indian Army last
year to gauge the Kashmir scenario. That was a little before Kargil
occurred. The stories themselves are such that the press would probably
never again have been hosted by our Army but for the Kargil war itself.
A conspicuous feature of that pre-Kargil invitation to the press was
several editors responded by deputing their crime reporters for the
assignment. Yes, crime reporters for assessing the Kashmir situation!
Further, many journalists in the group kept on pressing the liasing
Major General to show them an encounter with the terrorists! It was
only the screening of one rare videotape of such an "encounter" (shot
by BBC by chance) that enabled the Army to silence by fright that
demand of those naïve journalists.
Another demand on that visit was that the journalists be taken to
Srinagar for sightseeing around the Dal Lake before returning home.
When the Major General repeatedly declined on the ground that civilian
security in Srinagar was the responsibility of the State Police and not
of the Indian Army, one of those journalists threatened the Major
General with a phone call to Defence Minister George Fernandes. That
call, so went the threat, would end up kicking the Major General back
to Bihar.
It is a well-kept secret that the Major General's response was to drag
the journalist concerned by his collar to a nearby telephone and dare
him to dial, not the Defence Minister, but the Supreme Commander of the
Armed Forces who sits in Rashtrapati Bhavan. He also told the pressman
that if orders were at all received to include Srinagar in the last
lap, he would do so only after getting an indemnity bond exonerating
the Army from any responsibility for any untoward harm befalling the
journalists. Ergo, no phone call was made to anyone. Significantly --
and tellingly -- only one newspaper is reported to have carried
coverage of that conducted press visit to Jammu and Kashmir.
Hence it is that one part of India's journalistic scenario is such as
was summed up by Seema Sirohi in an article of May 30, 2000, in The
Telegraph of Calcutta. Its crux is that (a) "A certain chalta hai
attitude and cynicism have begun to grip the media not only about the
subjects they cover but about their own conduct. There seem to be few
or no rules about what favours the press will or will not accept from
the government and how it will partake of the taxpayers' inadvertent
largesse." (b) "It is every journalist's secret dream to be on the
Prime Minister's plane with all the frills and special service... with
the reporters using the free international calling facilities to call a
whole battery of relatives and then some."
Sirohi's account is, of course, only one part of the story. The other
part is about the yuppies and the pseudo-intellectuals, the Abrahams,
the Mustafas and the Nayars. And also about a Delhi editor who wrote a
whole article the other day about how the government is partisan in
granting patronage to the press and how, probably because of
three "Diary" items of hers about Rashtrapati Bhavan, she was not
invited to accompany the President on his recent visit to China.
Hence the grave doubts. Is India's fourth estate merely the rogue
estate? Is the one sturdy pillar of democracy merely a decrepit column
in our land?
Tailpiece: Addressing thousands of journalists in the Vatican City on
June 4, 2000, Pope John Paul II observed that "ethics could not be
separated from journalism" and that journalism should be considered
a "sacred" task. If only our "secular" journos took those words to
heart, it would surely lead to one mass conversion even the rabid
Hindus would not oppose.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/jun/06sai.htm
Saisuresh Sivaswamy
In defence of tehelka.com
Journalists, as a tribe, can be extremely territorial, as well as
envious of others' achievements. Given this, they follow a very simple
rule of thumb to judge the importance of a news report: did it appear
under their own byline, ie, name? If it didn't, then the report needs
to be trashed.
And apropos tehelka.com's superlative effort in taking the match-
fixing/bribery/match-throwing scandal forward, the media has,
unfortunately, chosen to tie itself into knots over the ethicality or
otherwise of employing the hidden camera, rather than excoriate the
establishment for playing the ostrich or try to take forward the truth.
Look at the twists and turns in the match-fixing scandal since it first
exploded on our frontpages three years ago. Since then, despite the all-
around conviction that yes, the Indian cricketing establishment,
barring one or two, was on the take, all that we have seen were
official efforts to brush the truth under the carpet. Oh yes, everyone
was willing to implicate everyone else's father and sister in the scam -
- but purely off the record. On record, the BCCI was as virtuous as a
convent.
This, despite Hansie Cronje being nailed in India for deciding the
outcome of a match off the pitch. Simple logic indicates that Cronje
would not have done what he did had match-fixing not existed on Indian
soil, but logic was something that those who preside over the game's
destiny had kissed goodbye long ago.
So what did tehelka.com do? It went behind the scenes and ripped the
masks off the faces of the very same people who either told us that
match-fixing was a concept alien to India or that no Indian player was
involved in altering the outcome of a match through unfair means.
Obviously, to get the stiff upper lip to ease must have taken a bit of
inveigling, and an element of deception, but Manoj Prabhakar was up to
the task.
What he and tehelka.com produced may not win ratings for technical
brilliance, but as someone who has spent 15 years in the production and
presentation of news I have no hesitation in saying that this was
brilliant journalistic work.
For, as I see it, the media's job is not to merely present the
establishment's version of the truth, but to tell its audience --
whether readers of the print media, viewers and listeners of the
electronic media, or surfers of the Internet media -- what the truth is
all about. That is the prime responsibility, all other things are
secondary. There is no ethics involved in getting at the facts, for
truth is often its own defence.
The chorus against the means employed by tehelka.com could well have
another explanation. Which is that there is no true investigative
journalism practised in India, at least not in the mainstream media.
The greatest exposes that lay claim to tenancy in the profession's hall
of fame were all handed out on a platter, by interested parties who
chose to involve the media in their quarrel so that public opinion
could be moulded in their favour by outraged and underpaid scribes.
Journalists are so used to documents, facts, etc being delivered to
them, that the task of actually going out there and finding out the
truth has begun to pall them. What I would have liked to see our
venerable media institutions do following tehelka.com's expose was to
nail the cricketing barons who have lied through their teeth, and not
go after those who are ranged on their own side.
Indian legends are full of instances where the hero has often veered
off the straight and narrow to achieve his goal. Sugreeva could never
have vanquished his elder brother, the innocent and heroic Vaali, but
for Rama's timely, but concealed assistance. And yet, Ram is feted as
the maryada purshottam while Vaali has somehow become the villain in
our eyes. Instances abound of such dichotomy, when those who we worship
as paragons of virtue have been shown up to be mere men. May not be
full of warts as the rest of us, but surely not deserving of the
adulation we heap on them, if only we stopped to think.
What our legends tell us is that apart from the ends justifying the
means, very often the means also justify the end. tehelka.com decided
that its end was the exposure of the truth, and it chose the only means
available to it, the only means that could have delivered the truth,
packed and sealed. Does it matter that the evidence it turned up may
not stand legal scrutiny? Frankly, the case has been tried in the
people's court and the jury has returned its verdict: guilty as
charged.
So let not the rest of the media's insistence on ethics confuse you. If
you want a soupcon of the media's high ethical standards, allow Manoj
Prabhakar and his hidden camera to travel with the media on just one of
the prime minister's jaunts. What he will unearth there will stun
you...
Sid Harth..."The Pagans, maybe, 'pagals, idiots in Hindi such as Arvind
Lavkare like pugilism as much as I do but are afraid to get down and
dirty when push comes to shove and seek higher moral and ethical
grounds, throwing temper tantrums playing shadow boxing."
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.