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Journalism of Courage
The Press has been defined in many ways. Some see it as a rather lofty institution, as a Fourth Estate complementing the other three Estates of Democracy. Others say it is the only upholder of individual and collective freedoms; the only defence for the otherwise defenceless citizen. But the most contemporary definition of this august institution that8217;s doing the rounds among the Capital8217;s mattering classes 8212; the classes that matter, aka the political classes, stupid! 8212; is certainly more direct and arguably more accurate. The Press is a medium in which one should flog a story or observation in order to court popularity, test the waters or embarrass a political foe and then, when things get too hot for comfort, pretend a You never said what you said b You never meant what you said c Your words were cruelly torn out of context and were completely misinterpreted.
So there is that old, electorally wounded tiger, Bal Thackeray, growling his familiar gibberish in an interview given to his party8217;s very own newspaper, the Saamna. The moment the possibility that he could be arrested for the statements is brought to his attention, the tiger turns pussy cat and clarifies that he didn8217;t quite say what he said and that a crucial 8220;if8221; was omitted from the printed text. Ah, the ifs and buts of political existence! K.S. Sudarshan, RSS chief, deposing before the Liberhan Commission, also discovers that he has been treated extremely shabbily by those funny people with their cameras and notepads. He thunders that the observations he made were not his observations but the observations of somebody else and that the media just ended up having a blast at his expense. As for Uma Bharti, she has been subjected to even worse treatment, it seems. Not only does she claim she has been misquoted on innumerable occasions, she even believes that the media actually concocted all thosewicked photographs of a certain sanyasin smiling a certain smile on a certain day in December 1992.
