Opinion Selfie-Made Journalism

How seriously do we take ourselves as professional journalists? How deeply do we understand what journalism is about? There have been reams written about how the fourth estate must necessarily firewall itself from the other three estates of the executive, judiciary and legislature in order to hold them to account for the sake of a vibrant, functioning democracy, and yet, here the only thing we are holding up, it seems, is a smartphone. Which anticipates the most important question of all: Can we who fail to achieve such a firewall demonstrate a capacity for independent reportage based on the courage to question the most powerful, who are sometimes the most silent?

Ultimately, is it the case that we who decide what is newsworthy for the world are in search of our own newsworthiness; we who invest through the magic wand of public recognition an incandescent power upon those we make visible through our work are secretly hankering for some of this power to rub off on ourselves?

Captured in the selfie is not just the smiling visage of oneself and that of the Eminent Leader but a frontal view of servility to authority. The government, which came to power cheered on by a great deal of fawning media coverage, now shows an inordinate appetite for controlling that very media — not just at home but abroad as well, going by the recent revelations of a staff writer for the Washington Post. It banishes us from the corridors of power, denies us access to any real information and disallows its senior ministers and bureaucrats from briefing us.

It has not granted us one decent, unrehearsed, unchoreographed interview with the PM. Even the few press conferences of an earlier dispensation are no longer on the menu, instead we are treated to the pakora-kulfis of Diwali milans.

Such hospitality should, of course, be acknowledged, not disdained. It must be said that the present government is not mean. It doesn’t grudge us our 15 seconds of fame but takes the time and effort from its busy schedule to allow us to undertake the mission of creating our own personal histories through our miracle mobile apps. We can then rush to upload the resultant pictures on Facebook and tweet or Instagram them furiously, spreading images of government benignity across the world, even as we eagerly bide our time for the harvest of “likes” and “retweets” to come our way.

To be sure, there were many within the fraternity who had red-flagged these selfie pursuits. An anchor even tweeted from the venue, “Appalled with journos making a spectacle of themselves scrambling for selfies with PM. Your job is to ask tough question not click pictures”. The poor man was promptly inundated by a barrage of comments about how many hard questions he had actually asked, but that’s another story.

Speaking at the 75th anniversary celebrations of the Assam Tribune at Guwahati last year, Modi is reported to have said: “Journalism should be like honeybee and not housefly, as housefly sits on filth and spreads it around but bee sits on flowers and produces honey.” Wonder if the PM was really talking from his heart on that occasion. Does he really want us to be honeybees? Surely, houseflies are so much more comforting. They don’t sting and are housetrained to boot. All they need is an occasional swat (or even a selfie) and they leave you alone.