THE other day Outlook (November 29) carried an exclusive story that was highly damaging to the reputation of some journalists. It published “tapped conversations between a lobbyist, Niira Radia and some corporate houses, bureaucrats and journalists that does not reflect too well on the media people. Among Ms Radia’s customers reportedly are Tatas and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. Judging by the conversations, Outlook said “India, the Republic, is now on sale”. Strong words, these. What actually happened? Just before the 2G Spectrum allocation scam became ‘breaking news’, the Income Tax Department, no doubt after getting legal permission, began tapping the phones of Ms Radia. Wrote Outlook: “(Radia’s) conversations show how even cabinet berths can be decided by this selected oligarchy. Her interface with discredited (now former) Telecom Minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and Ranjan Bhattachraya, the foster son-in-law of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, shows how she successfully lobbied for several Cabinet berths”.
Outlook further said: ” The transcripts suggest that journalists Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt also lobbied for Raja with the Congress Party. However, both journalists, in separate statements, decried the use of the label ‘lobbyist’ and termed their conversation with Radia as part of their normal journalistic duties”. According to Outlook, other journalists such as Prabhu Chawla, G Ganapathy Subramaniam and MK Venu also had elaborate conversations with Radia on issues ranging from telecom to the Ambani brothers’ dispute on gas pricing. Reportedly, at times, they proffered advice to Radia and exchanged information with her. What comes as a shock is that more than 104 conversations were tapped. One wonders where the Income Tax Department comes in the picture. Importantly, can the tapes of the conversations be given to the media for use? Then again, another significant question arises: What are the specific duties and responsibilities of a journalist? Has he no right to speak to a lobbyist? Has he no right, as a citizen, to support one or other politician, to whichever party he or she belongs? What kind of journalist one will be if one does not meet people from all walks of life, inter-act with them to understand better what is going on, and at first hand? Can-should? -a journalist isolate himself and live in a cocoon, distancing oneself from all human contacts?
To be more specific, what wrong did Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt do to bring -as it is now made out-“shame on the profession”? It would seem, according to the The Indian Express ( (November 27) that at seminar on “Editors As Power-Brokers”, held in Delhi, top journalists called for introspection and admitted that the Radia Tapes in which journalist were heard helping Radia’s lobbying effort, had seriously damaged journalism. Again, according to the paper, “eminent journalists like BG Verghese and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Open editor Manu Joseph, Krishna Prasad of Outlook and Tehelka’s Shoma Chaudhary said that “the media would have to look at evolving processes and systems to improve overall standards of ethics practiced by scribes”. Noted Express: “It was largely felt that the tapes were objectionable and that the conversations could certainly not be justified as legitimate journalism”.
But what is ‘legitimate journalism’? At one point, Vir Sanghvi was telling Radia that he was “supposed to meet Sonia today” but he’s stuck somewhere and “now it’s becoming tomorrow”. Sanghvi also said: “I’ve been meeting Rahul….” Sanghvi promised “to try and get through” to a top Congress leader reportedly on behalf of Maran. The understanding here is that if Sanghvi is ‘used’ to put in a word in behalf of Maran with the Congress leadership, then, obviously, he can’t thereafter judge Maran objectively. I can’t imagine such a situation during the editorial generation prior to mine. They were men of a different caliber, men like S Sadanand, Stalin Srinivasan, Kasturi Srinivasan, Tushar Kanti Ghosh, M Chalapthi Rao, Durga Das and the rest.
I can’t even imagine editors of my generation chatting with lobbyists. But then those were different times. The Congress was the majority party and did not have to cosy up to Karunanidhi and be accommodative towards a Maran. And editors had their own code of conduct and even if someone like Chalapathi Rao who was close to Jawaharlal was approached by a lobbyist, the latter would in all probability have been shown the door. Not even editors of my generation would have been accessible to lobbyists. One has to read the conversation between MK Venu, a senior business journalist and Ms Radia to realise to what depths of degradation the present media-or parts of it-have descended. But how did Outlook get the taped conversations from the Income Tax Department? That calls for some explanation. According to Parul Mehta, a lecturer in communication, writing in Vidura (October-December 2010) “gone are the days when journalism was mission. Now, according to him “it has become just another form of entertainment-oriented business”. Worse, he says, “it has lost its identity as a public service broadcaster to the nation, rather it has become a mouthpiece of selected political parties or elite people”. Business houses, according to him “run most of the big media houses and they easily manipulate the media to further their own interests.” Parul Mehta speaks for the people who are bewildered by contemporary journalism.
Vidura incidentally, is the journal of the Press Institute of India and has undergone a remarkable change-for the better. It carries a tremendous amount of information on the media, otherwise unavailable elsewhere. As it sees the media at present, it “seems to have changed into a collaborator, giving up its hoary tradition of resisting and exposing the negative and anti-people trends.” Then there is the article by PL Vishweshwer Rao, a Osmania University Dean who thinks that “most newspaper managements have come to regard journalists as hirable commodities”-a painful assessments, but alas, too true. An editor of the standing to Stalin Srinivasan who lived in dire circumstances, couldn’t even afford to take a bus and took a tram, would have been shocked the way today’s editors live. But he lived in another era when journalism was a mission, not a trade.
