Who’s that in the mirror?

Those were anxious days. We could not tell the difference between truth and falsehood, fabrication and fact. Hard news was not available but doctored news was. Levels of trust were low because we felt the news had been massaged by the arms of the state. We did not want to be manipulated. And so when Emergency was lifted we heaved a sigh of relief. L.I.Berty was free to soar once more. It was possible to believe the news again.

Today those seem like innocent days for one cannot speak as confidently about the role of the press as a sentinel of freedom, of news not massaged, of media as the mirror of reality. The new technologies and new pressures of competition have caused the press as well as media to reinvent itself. We are told its role is no longer to just inform but also to entertain. Infotainment is the new mantra. We find that the editor has to now share authority, perhaps concede authority, to the commercial manager. News is driven by viewership which in turn is driven by the pressure to be sensational. It has become the prevailing wisdom that nothing succeeds like making the news ‘sexy’. Every advertisement guru will tell you that. Subliminal messages, voyeuristic viewers, coded catch phrases, special sound bites, reader as consumer, are phrases that have now entered the vocabulary of the free press.

Is this then the same free media for which we fought the Emergency? Thinking about this question I have the sinking feeling that the ground has shifted, that the moral reasons on which we fought for a free press are no longer so clear and firm. The story of the frog and the hot water keeps coming to mind. Throw a frog into a pot of boiling water and it will jump out. Immerse it in a pot of lukewarm water, and put the pot to boil, and the frog will remain there quite unaware that it is being boiled. Which frog is the media today? Which frog is the reader-viewer today?

I am not asking for us to revisit the old debate on whether the media should be regulated by the state through some board of censors. That battle has been fought and won. But I am not so sure about regulation itself, perhaps as self-regulation. Maybe we need to think hard about whether the institution of the ‘wise and powerful’ editor should not be re-invented. A powerful editor but also one who is wise. This is a weighty word in the context of editors, but a crucial word that I fear has not been fully reflected upon. It has been relegated to some historical memory when the Sham Lals and the B.G. Vergheses reigned.

Of course, times are different now and ratings are important for survival and one has to adapt. But I do not believe that this means abandoning the quality ‘wise’ as an essential requirement for an editor. Because it is the ‘wise’ editor who is the final line of defence against the tyrannical state. It is the ‘wise’ editor who carries the responsibility of conveying the truth to the citizen in a democratic state. This is a heavy load to carry, for it is the ‘wise’ editor who has to decide what is in the public interest, what must be foregrounded or backgrounded, investigated or ignored. It is the ‘wise’ editor who daily helps us, ordinary citizens, to navigate the world.

Perhaps it is time for us to return to the debate on the ‘role and responsibility’ of the media in today’s world, to introduce into our deliberations that dreaded word ‘regulation’ as ‘self-regulation’. Self-regulation within the company, and self-regulation by the media as a whole. Two levels of regulatory institutions, both run by the media. Perhaps we should ask whether ‘self-regulation’ is as forceful today as is required by a world in which there are many aspiring Caligulas? The media has to ask itself this question.

The recent coverage of the outsider-insider politics in Mumbai has brought this issue to the fore once again. A distinction has to be made here between the electronic and print media. The former seems to have less internal systems of self-regulation. It is galling to see cub reporters begin their report with a judgement even before they have presented the story. Reports beginning with ‘don’t you think…’ seem too much like the massaging of news that we have been fighting against.

I remember thinking about the issue of self-regulation while reviewing the coverage of the tsunami by the press in India, both electronic and print. I am still haunted by the pictures of a grieving mother with the body of her dead child on the cover of a prominent magazine. It was a step too far. A violation of an individual’s most intimate, most private moments. Privacy, I believe, is an even more fundamental value in a free society than a free press.

The writer is director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Views are personal