WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JOURNALISTIC RIGOUR?

BY Manjula Lal| IN Media Practice | 12/04/2002
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JOURNALISTIC RIGOUR

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JOURNALISTIC RIGOUR?</headline>

Have journalistic norms become a casualty of the pace of change in mass media? Many media persons seem to have abdicated their responsibility, suggesting that you should mechanically do your job and not bother your head about journalistic ethics, commitment, quality or - perish the thought - concern for the reader, that faceless creature who continues to spend Rs 50-odd per month to keep the whole newspaper enterprise going, in spite of all the new media in town.


Such abdication of responsibility is seen in the all-too-common breach of the fundamental reporter`s rule about cross-checking of facts. Is this is pointed out, pat comes the retort: nobody does it anyway, the higher-ups want only one version of the truth, or that`s the way things are done in this particular organisation. How many seniors would tell her that the norms of the profession as a whole dictate otherwise, and that one`s loyalty is above all to one`s chosen vocation and not to a particular organisation?

On Across the hallway, a sub-editor will have several excuses for putting the copy on the page without correcting language, factual error or clear bias - in short, the standard work for which he has been hired. One of the most outrageous ones, which is actually quite common, is: well, the reporter is getting her byline on it, so let her expose herself before the world. Or: if the management doesn`t care (or, more likely, know any better) then why should we? Anyway, goes the argument, why are such hopeless reporters hired in the first place? Thus all responsibility can be shrugged off on one pretext or the other.

Taking up a simple case of reporting from the Hindustan Times, Delhi`s market leader: a report in the December 13, 2001 issue of the paper said on Page 1, "The first heavy fog of the season saw the much advertised Instrument (Aided) Landing System (ILS) failed to deliver: over 20 flights were either delayed or diverted." Yet a report in Indian Express on the same day said that though the new ILS system was ready for use, but was not yet in operation. HT had obviously rushed to print on hearsay, without checking the official facts.

But the story was not over. On December 26, the same paper (HT) carried a report on a local page headlined, "Fog will no longer disrupt flights". This time the source of the news was a function in which the Union Home Minister launched the new ILS system. The report went into details of the great new state-of-the-art system. Although one could say the reporter merely reported what was said at the function, an interesting point is: why did no other paper report the same function? Obviously, they were not going to swallow the Airport Authority`s line, and were waiting to see what would happen when the fog really set in. It says much about sourcing of news: HT continues to respond to all invitations sent by the government publicity machinery, as well as accept press releases as the gospel. Other papers have learnt to treat these with a healthy irreverence and give more credence to their own sources.

Two days later, fog hit the city. Now comes an HT report headlined, "Fog still disrupts flights" reporting on how flights were held up for seven hours as planes were not equipped to make use of the upgraded system. This kind of embarrassment is not new to the paper. Reporters in fact hardly ever bother to cross-check facts. Two months ago, a report (more like a publicity piece) written about the new visa system introduced by the new US ambassador Robert Blackwill had to be killed because it went into raptures about the `queueless` system introduced by him at the consulate. But how could one say whether it would be as great as it was touted to be without seeing how it worked on the ground? Moreover, the reporter had not even questioned how the new system, based on applications by post, would work in the middle of the anthrax mail scare.

So the saga continues. On December 28, HT carried a local story on how kids detained at Prayas Home run by the social welfare department were given poor quality food and generally kept in

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