Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. How perfectly Thomas Jefferson is relevant to Indian democracy. We could not agree more. Forum for Media Professionals organised a vibrant debate to celebrate, honour and establish the credentials of the people who were behind and in front of the journalistic discovery of 2G scam. J Gopikrishnan of Pioneer, Bharat Bhushan, Editor of Mail Today, Sunil Jain, Shalini Singh, Josy Joseph of The Times of India, Prabal Pratap Singh of IBN Live, Jagdeep Chhokar from IIMA and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a senior media analyst debated and presented the inside story of what really is going on in contemporary time during which all estates are crumbling but due to courageous work of few who risked life and their career have been able to bring back that confidence to alarm everyone about the lowest pit of standards of public life.
There exists and it has continued to exist the kind of love and hate relationship between media and powerful establishment whether it is the government or corporate interests. In media, largely there is a trend to support a dominant all pervading consensus rather than conveying the minority dissent or some kind of possibility of alternative point of view which can lead towards discovery of massive proportion of the wrongdoings. The degree of freedom to individual journalists is very limited. Either it is issue of economic liberalisation, Special economic zone, Kashmir or national security, insurgency the apparently all pervading enforced consensus is injected into the information flow. Journalists gain this unique privilege due to their natural benefits of socialisation.
Ownership pattern and limit to the FDI in Indian media is one of the major reasons that government is using for twisting and enforcing the loyalty spirit in the current media conglomerates. Star journalists who are famous for shifting from cocktail parties to TV studios help the people in influential positions to establish their agenda. Three phrases or terms moreover describe and sum up the current situation around these foggy clouds of media sacrificing their autonomy. “Quid-pro-qo”, “Effort of stringing along” and “There are no free lunches” aptly describe the inherent contradictions percolating the media empires.
News killers always existed there. But their ability to block the enthusiasm and devotion of the young, dedicated and rational journalists have earned them the accolades among the class who are happy to notice this compromised integrity of media houses. Absence of news loving visionary editors is crippling the dynamism of the investigative journalism in these times. We have arrived in the times when we are helpless and thus seeking the obvious but consistently lacking professional standards and benchmarks to be revived again. Some journalists argue that Journalism has arrived in BPO culture where none is talking to their colleagues and they do not share the kind of stories they are working on let alone the details of the investigation. For example, Gopikrishnan who first broke the entire 2G scam believes that now silence has to be broken anyhow. Shalini Singh believes that everyone is not at the same place to face the challenges of the task and thus to emerge as an capable person to dig the information. Diving into unimaginable legal, economic and technological complexities to understand the extent of the scam was itself a challenge very few could take on. It requires immense patience to unravel the complexities.
There are obstacles to attain the intellectual capacity to analyse all these interconnected issues, great amount of scarcity about the information resources and intellectual trap journalists feel to make difference through their reporting and editorial writing. These breed of journalists further humbly underline the fact that they do not hate anyone but only the guilty work and processes they go through. No one editor, reporter, newspaper or channel could do this job. This requires solidarity and collective will power, action and roadmap of awareness building. Beat system is actually exploiting the reporters and also it gives reporters a chance to encash out of overexploited beat and forced slavery by sources. Ultimately it is the quality of the individual reporter which makes the difference. So more and more efforts should be taken to free journalists out of their conservative schedule to research and investigate on their stories. This will give them ample time and edge over others in getting access of information by RTI, through whistleblowers and by the rigorous methodologies.
So, there is space for everyone in newspaper, newschanel. One has to pick their own battlefields. One has to identify their own work areas and then keep going. There will be many avalanches of the events like this and there will be very few black swan opportunities to unearth these type of massive scams. But what ultimately decides the nature of success is the source lying in the character of the journalist and professional skills they use persistently.
