It8217;s the values, stupid

I was witness, as a journalism student on a rainy Independence Day in 1976, the peak of the Emergency, to Bansi Lal berating people for t...

I was witness, as a journalism student on a rainy Independence Day in 1976, the peak of the Emergency, to Bansi Lal berating people for taking the newspapers so seriously. What are they worth, he asked, if not two rupees a kilo after eight a.m.? The only problem, he said, was they were so full of poison, you risked your life even if you wrapped pakoras in the raddi.

Then, the media responded in kind. We also believe we won. But now, Bansi Lal should be smiling. It is a great paradox, but the weakening of the state, the era of shifting coalitions and increased literacy and audiences have, instead of strengthening the media, co-opted and devoured it. We have weakened to such an extent that when the editor of a major national newsmagazine calls the police commissioner of Delhi to complain about the disappearance of his cartoonist, his call is not returned for a whole day. quot;I may not be a big editor,quot; a pained Vinod Mehta told a packed hall at the capital8217;s Press Club at the condolence meeting forcartoonist Irfan, quot;but at least he should have returned my call.quot; Vinod, incidentally, was also the president of the Editors Guild of India. But his helplessness was evident. So was the fear and frustration on the faces of the journalists assembled there.

Fear, frustration and helplessness on the faces of the cream of the capital8217;s fourth estate, did you say? Just five of them killed in a year and they look like their world has come to an end? This is serious. But what worries us media people more is the relative indifference with which public opinion has responded to these killings. Until a few years ago, even the cruelest of criminals thought twice before physically harming a scribe for the stink it would raise. Now, it seems as if there is open season on the media. The police commissioner doesn8217;t return the calls of one of our most respected 8212; and prominent 8212; editors who is not even calling to get his driving licence renewed.

The Commissioner of Police, Delhi, only personifies the mood of the times.Journalists 8212; print as well as electronic 8212; have fallen from grace. As always, it would be tempting to blame others for it: politicians, free market forces and brand managers, weak-kneed owners and other usual suspects. The bitter truth is, the blame lies entirely with us. For the past few years, even as our wages and visibility have improved and we have risen up the social ladder, we have allowed the line between the establishment and us to blur dangerously. When editors flit freely between jobs in the newspapers and the government and Parliament, when the national security council advisory board seems like a listing of the most prolific editorial page bylines on international affairs and security, when senior journalists take pride in being known as confidants and advisors of one politician or the other, you can8217;t blame the powers that be for treating us as hangers on.

Is there any surprise then that the politicians and bureaucrats have learnt to treat the Press with contempt. In so many parliamentarydebates, the first thing an MP or a minister in trouble says is: quot;We should not go by Press reports.quot; Take the Bhagwat case, for example. The entire debate began in the media and the government still dismisses demands for a discussion in Parliament. It treats the Press as irrelevant. Frighteningly, so does the Opposition.

Prime Minister-in-waiting Sonia Gandhi gets away with saying she does not give, well, a damn for the media. No interviews, nothing. Some leading lights of the media, however, are welcome to come have a conversation or rather, proffer advise. It is entirely possible, in fact, likely now, that she will become the Prime Minister of the world8217;s largest democracy despite having never spoken to the media. Mrs Gandhi mark-II knows how to handle this pestilence. In comparison, Mrs Gandhi mark-I was a bullheaded bumbler. Imagine for a moment, just for one moment, George Bush Jr, Republican hopeful for 2000, saying he doesn8217;t want to speak to the Press.

We have progressively lost our power,respect and position in society even as the number of cars with quot;Pr-essquot; stickers has gone up in the capital. Many of us have become celebrities of sorts, figuring in gossip columns and society pages of the colour supplements. But we have forgotten what brought us our power to begin with. There has to be a reason why despite better resources, reach and brighter people joining the media, there has been no great investigative journalism now in almost a decade. After Bofors and HDW no story of corruption or wrongdoing by the state has been constantly followed up. Investigative journalism of the last five years has almost been a rewrite of PIL public interest litigation petitions. So pub lic-spirited lawyers and citizens like M.C. Mehta and H.D. Shourie have taken over the task we were supposed to perform. Our mindset is now frighteningly different from the past. We are now saying, we don8217;t need to be adversaries. We are a part of the establishment. The BJP government is, perhaps, smarter than its predecessors.It has perfected the art of appeasement and rewarding of friendly journalists into a science.

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The audiences have meanwhile become smarter. They watch closely the increasing high-society journalism, the incestuous nexus between the media and the society/ fashion/art/literary/TV mafia, all promoting and feeding off each other. Today even the powerful media groups suffer from cross-media vulnerability. If the government feels threatened by your publication, it will retaliate by taking your programme off Doordarshan. So you better fall in line.

This is not self-flagellation triggered by angst from attending funeral and condolence meetings of three fellow-journalists strangulated and stabbed in the past two months. There is a need for us to introspect. Don8217;t blame the owners or market forces. Many of the owner-driven or edited publications are still among the most free in the country. Surely this newspaper owes its exceptional independence to its owners. The market forces have given us better pay cheques,better lifestyles. But how have we responded? We accuse our marketing boys of reducing our newspapers into brands and products. Have we, on our part, succeeded in promoting free and independent journalism as a brand value?

We are now quite happy with the government as patron of the Press. The railway minister announces sops for us in his budget speech. Ministers regularly plug the cause of our wage boards in Parliament. Junkets, free medical care in some states, gift cheques at new share issue Press conferences, the pampering goes on. And the venerable Press Council spends time debating terms of employment for journalists and ownership pattern for newspapers!

Even during the Emergency at least some of us fought back, even went to jail. We were up against a cynical leader with brute majority. Imagine how we might respond to a similar challenge now. L.K. Advani had said of the media during the Emergency, quot;Asked to bend, they crawled.quot; This time, nobody may even bother to ask. The Delhi police commissionersurely won8217;t return our calls if we start looking for lost 8212; and murdered 8212; reporters and cartoonists.