Remains of the day

Ofcourse, journalists have always been unpopular specimens of the human race, condemned to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some of us condemn ourselves by our standard level of misreporting; there are others who revel in going against the grain, picking out uncomfortable shades of truth and offering them up for daily judgment.

In India, we learnt not a few of these lessons, from example and imitation at the hands of our Western colleagues. The quot;new information orderquot;, despite its sympathisers, never really took off here because freedom of speech had already been deified to the status of a religion abroad. And didn8217;t we want to be like them, really? How we applauded when John Rettie of the Guardian smuggled in the boot of his car a copy of Khrushchev8217;s speech at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 8212; the Congress which denounced Stalin. When the New York Times covered the Sabra-Shatila massacres in Lebanon8230;. When the quot;firangiquot; photographer got bashed up along with his Indian counterparts at thehands of VHP goons in Ayodhya8230;. Weren8217;t we all part of the same world?

Except that as we reach for the new millennium, turns out the god of free speech actually has feet of clay. Western journalists covering the war in the Balkans are almost exclusively reporting on the plight of the Kosovar refugees not that it isn8217;t an abominable, gruesome situation. But where8217;s the comment on the systematic bombing of civilian utilities, of bridges, of trains, of neighbourhoods? Don8217;t Serbian victims make news?

To be fair to the European bro-adcasting/journalists associations, they all passed condemnatory resolutions when the Serbian TV offices got hit. NATO8217;s leaders, at least those who had experimented with the forms of rebellion in their youth inhaling marijuana, protesting against Vietnam, participating in the women8217;s lib movement, seem to have already sacrificed their idealism at the altar of power. They were there, ready for the cameras, ready to go into Yugoslavia again.

Some would say, there8217;s no pointbemoaning the fact, whether in the world of books or in the capitals of power, that strength is the only thing that counts. The otherwise mild-mannered Seth, backed by international awards and rave reviews of course, the Penguin people would rather accept superlatives in the Times of London than in The Times of India, quietly caved in to the demands of New Delhi8217;s elite that photographers be thrown out at his public book-reading session. It8217;s another story that Seth, well aware that it8217;s these lowly photographers who are responsible for flashing his mugshot nationwide, allowed himself later to be interviewed by any journalist worth the salt.

What remains of the day is unalloyed pragmatism. And Third World journalists, instead of cribbing about good times gone by, better get used to it.