Opinion Media introspection needed

The damning of Ms Radia brought out the worst aspects of the Indian media last week when Headlines Today allowed itself to be used as a platform for the alleged kidnapper of Ms Radia’s son. The channel passed off as investigative journalism the details the alleged kidnapper supplied of a Swiss bank account that supposedly belongs to Ms Radia. The ‘investigative reporters’ did the story without noticing that since Ms Radia is not an Indian citizen,she can have as many Swiss bank accounts as she likes. It would have been far more useful if the source of this information had been asked why he spent two years in Tihar jail and if this was because he allegedly kidnapped Ms Radia’s son. Needless to say,this question was never asked. This kind of question never is because what passes for ‘reporting’ on our private channels these days is actually not reporting at all.

So breathlessly competitive are our news channels that they almost never have time to do a real story. This would mean sending a reporter to go out into the field and do his own investigation. This involves time,money and research. These are the real constituents of investigative reporting but somehow none of our news channels have noticed. Instead,nearly all our so-called TV reporters spend their time rushing about getting details from ‘sources’ that are never named. In the old days,when the media in India was no more than a handful of badly printed newspapers,we used to call this kind of reporting press release journalism. Second rate journalists,too lazy to do their own research,would toddle off every evening to the Press Information Bureau and report what the government wanted them to.

When this happens on television,it acquires a dangerous edge because the media ends up losing its adversarial role and becoming a tool of government and its investigative agencies. In recent months,TV cameras have been allowed into homes and offices that are being raided by the Income Tax or they have been leaked information by mysterious ‘sources’. This spares the investigative agencies from gathering evidence because usually their victim is tried and condemned by the media. Our news channels faithfully report at the end of every raid that ‘incriminating documents’ have been found and computer hard drives seized. They never stop to ask why these would be lying around carelessly waiting for the CBI to find often months after some scam has been

revealed.

As someone who has always praised our private television channels for acting as an engine of change in India,it saddens me to say that they are now playing a dangerous and irresponsible role. Things have got so bad that almost on a daily basis these days you see our news channels crossing the line between journalism and lobbying. When a news channel reports a story that has been deliberately leaked by government,does it not become as much of a lobbyist as the reviled

Ms Radia? At least in her case she was being paid a hefty fee to do her lobbying. When our news channels compete to report stories supplied by ‘sources’ in government,they become lobbyists for free.

It is not for nothing that the press is called the fourth estate in the democracies of the world. In India,we can be proud of the role the press has played in remaining fiercely independent and adversarial. When private TV channels appeared twenty years ago,they strengthened this role but of late things have gone badly wrong. We need to understand why before things get worse.