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Journalism of Courage
All it took, apparently, was a businessman with a grudge, an aspiring journalist willing to play-act and an unquestioning TV channel. A schoolteacher of a Delhi school was framed in a “prostitution racket” by a “sting operation” that led to a near riot. It also led to the school teacher being not just manhandled by the mob but also summarily sacked by the education department and arrested by thepolice. In the end, it seems the accused was the only victim in the sorry saga. In the dock, and rightly so, are the men and women who hatched the petty conspiracy and the TV channel that became its host and broadcaster. But there may be larger villains in the sting-that-wasn’t. We need to ask: when does a sting operation cross the line of legitimate and credible journalism and, more pertinently, are there any lines being drawn at all? Also, when does justice slip into mob justice and are we as a society on guard against that moment of debasement?
Sting journalism or entrapment journalism has been with us for some time now. But as mostly broadcast journalists have used hidden cameras to nail corrupt politicians and MPs, defence personnel on the take and match-fixing cricketers then, and lascivious filmstars and anyone with something/anything to hide now, there has been growing unease about its form and content. The invasion of privacy is justified in each case in the name of ‘public interest’. But what are the institutional checks and balances, and what are the structures and layers of accountability, to ensure that anyone with a bee in his bonnet and a minuscule camera in his pocket does not become the arbiter of the common good? There has never been a rigorous debate on this question in India. The dangers of leaving things that way are within sight now. The government has put a Broadcast Bill and a content code on the table that hands over the power to decide what broadcasters can and cannot show to the government of the day. While obvious dangers lie in its draconian provisions, the fact also is that critics will say self-regulation has not worked and has not been seen to work in at least this aspect of television journalism. Television needs to urgently infuse life into its efforts towards self-regulation, if it wants to prevent a meddlesome government from minding the former’s business.
And the rough justice of the mob — of the kind that visited the Delhi schoolteacher — requires another kind of inquiry. Are we as a society becoming too cavalierly impatient? Why are we so willing to cut short due process? And who’s encouraging this?
