Empower the reporter to safeguard press freedom in India
Ravi M. Khanna Feedback: ravimohankhanna@gmail.com
“Quality journalism in India is in jeopardy, and it will further deteriorate if some corrective steps are not taken right away”. This was the conclusion of senior scholars, editors and media institute owners, who were taking part in discussions held by UNESCO last week in New Delhi to commemorate World Press Freedom Day. They said quality journalism is in jeopardy because of several reasons. The first and foremost reason given was that the managing editors are under tremendous pressure from the owners of newspapers and television channels to compromise. They said the brand and sales departments of media outfits are dictating to editors in their decisions about content. Declining revenue was blamed as the root cause of why editors had to succumb to the diktats of owners or sales or brand managers. So, almost all participants emphasized the fact that the editor needs more powers and should be able to take a stand, if needed, as they did in the days when the Indian media mostly comprised a dozen quality newspapers and magazines and the state-run All India Radio and Doordarshan.
The argument seemed very valid until a very senior magazine editor argued that the real problem was the insecurity of editors, because of the disproportionately huge salaries they get. He said they cannot take a tough stand because they know that if they are fired, they will not get that kind of money anywhere else. He said reporters who work for these editors are also overawed when they see them hobnobbing with the owners and other powerful officials of the company. That, he said, translates into self-censorship of the worst kind by reporters.
But to my astonishment, no one spoke about the plight of reporters who are hired when they are raw and untrained and are paid peanuts for their hard work and, of course, shown no respect. The irony is that editors in general do not want to improve their situation and often argue against someone like Justice Markandey Katju when he says that there should be a mandatory minimum training for any Indian who wants to become a journalist.
Having spent the last three decades practising and teaching journalism in the USA, I can safely say that there are a few media outfits in that country that give jobs to anyone without a decent degree in journalism from a respectable institution. For example, the basic training for a TV journalist includes special lessons in how to speak on TV and how to write for TV.
I wish some of the Indian TV reporters, who we see shouting on our TV screens every day, were told by their teachers, if any, that their voice is the key in the field and they should concentrate on projection, enunciation and inflection to deliver their script in a convincing manner. They should have been told to sound authoritative, if they can, to earn credibility with their audience. I also wish they were told about “writing to video”, i.e., how to write to the images they are going to show to us as they report. Also, I wish, they were told to keep their emotions in check.
Having an insider’s knowledge and an outsider’s perspective about the Indian media, it seems to me that there is a subtle connivance between editors and anchors to keep the reporter untrained, unskilled, deprived and down below. The benefits are manifold. First of all, the reporter will never be able to take a stand in front of the mighty editor, will never say no to an editor and will not even dream of replacing the editor in his or her lifetime. Those TV anchors also feel secure in their jobs, not because of their degrees or experience but because of their connections and an early start. Anchors would love to have weak reporters so that in comparison, they look and talk better and become and remain the stars of their channel.
But the problem is that we cannot safeguard our exemplary Press freedom if we keep on depriving and undermining the reporter, who is the foundation of the fourth pillar, which we call the Fourth Estate of our democracy. It is the reporter we have to empower if we want to bring back the quality journalism India once had, perhaps before the market was flooded by 24/7 TV news channels.
Surveys have revealed that a large number of our reporters didn’t even pass high school. They are given a mere Rs 7,000-10,000 a month and told to stand outside a government minister’s house and interview anyone who goes in or comes out. One senior editor told the UNESCO gathering that some reporters also have to sell the ad spaces of their newspapers and carry a big bundle to distribute them. And the saddest thing that I heard at the event was that reporters sometimes have to bribe their editors to get better assignments.
Yes, quality journalism is in jeopardy in India, unless something is done very fast. We must not forget that when a “reporter” asks a question at the Prime Minister’s news conference, he or she is asking that question on behalf of more than one billion Indians. And we have to empower that “reporter” with proper education, appropriate training and a lot of self-respect.
(Author/columnist Ravi M. Khanna has covered South Asia from Washington and New Delhi for Voice of America for the past 24 years)
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