[Reader-list] Deccan Herald Article By Kuldip Nayar

[Rakesh Iyer]

DEATH OF IDEALISM Shameful media
*When we slanted news and accepted money for putting across a point of view
during the elections, we fell from professional standards.*
 The other day there was a seminar in Delhi about the allegations that
during the Lok Sabha elections both the print and electronic media not only
took money from political parties and candidates, but also extorted as much
as they could. Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal, who
inaugurated the session, contended that ‘they’ knew how the stories were
planted and paid for.

Several journalists also admitted that a lot of money changed hands during
the election campaign. Nothing came out of the seminar, but a senior
political leader told me that if a commission were to be set up to inquire
into such dubious practices, he for one would be prepared to give evidence.

It came as a shock to me when I did not find even a word about the seminar
or Sibal’s allegation in newspapers or television. Obviously, we are all
naked together in this bath. Some of us have, however, approached the Press
Council to set up a committee to go into the slush money used during
campaign. The Election Commission has also been tapped unofficially to find
its response. One member said that if payments could be proved, the EC would
consider them as the expenses of candidates.
*
New development*

Such charges were also made during the last Lok Sabha election. But then the
quantum of payment was small and the number of newspapers and TV channels
involved was limited. This time it seems there has been a free for all.
Names of leading newspapers and TV channels are hawked about in the bazaars.

Even otherwise, the press in India has humiliated itself since the
Emergency. With the exception of very few newspapers and journalists, others
caved in by pressure or for a price. L K Advani made an apt remark after the
Emergency: “You were asked to bend, but you began to crawl.” Since then 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 only 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.

I must admit that I found journalists in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
had more gumption than people in our media. Pakistan had martial law and the
journalists defied it and got lashes. In India the Emergency at best could
detain people in jail. Still, we failed shamefully.

True, politicians tend to use us. They have their own interests to serve.
But then we play into their hands. When we slanted the news and accepted
money for putting across a particular point of view during the recent Lok
Sabha elections, we were not truthful and fell from professional standards
expected in a democratic structure.

After reading newspapers or watching TV channels I feel as if a new version
of the Emergency is starting to unfold where truth has become a relative
term and there is nothing left like values. India is not a banana republic
run by and for opportunists who will stop at nothing to line their own
pockets and wield power.

We have a great heritage. Mahatma Gandhi sent his message through a weekly,
‘Harijan’. Nehru said at the All India Newspaper Editors’ Conference in
1950: “I have no doubt that even if the government dislikes the liberties
taken by the press and considers them dangerous, it is wrong to interfere
with the freedom of the press. I would have a completely free press with all
the dangers involved in the wrong use of that freedom than a suppressed or
regulated press.”

He feared high handedness on the part of the establishment, but little did
he realise that one day the danger to the press will be from within, not
without. Journalists themselves will offer their heads on a plate in return
for position, pelf and privilege. Those who choose to bend their knees in
this ignoble way should consider whether they also want to be held
responsible for passing on them to the next generation.

Where is 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? Is it only
entertainment? If so, they should not associate their publications with the
press.

Not long ago two reporters from the ‘Washington Post’ challenged the
President of the United States (Richard Nixon), ultimately forcing him to
resign because he had lied to the nation. I am not suggesting that the press
in the West is ideal.  We saw how the whole Western media sold itself to
their respective governments during the Iraq war. The embedded journalists
who could only report what they were allowed were worse than our journalists
in the Emergency.

When a journalist ceases to be a journalist and compromises, he brings down
not only the ideals of the profession, but tells upon the democratic
temperament and the ethos of the nation. I feel sorry the points made at the
seminar in Delhi were not debated by the society. But I feel more
disappointed over the attitude of journalists and politicians who know that
there is a problem of lessening integrity, yet they prefer to sweep it under
the carpet.