Fabulous contacts

Fabulous Contacts

The crème la crème of Bhopal media was in the party last night. It was a Congress leader’s daughter’s wedding reception. Lesser mortals like me too were there. The party was magnificent, food sumptuous, varieties mind-boggling and the ambience suffused with opulence.
The Congress leader resides in a locality, which in local media circle is also called “ Dalal Street”. Of course, not all the residents on the street belong to the ilk. But, as very few in Dixitpura Mohalla in Jabalpur are Dixit, the Dalal street too has few who qualify the street. The street- qualifiers are, obviously, resourceful persons. They enjoy ‘fabulous contacts”, as a journalist reminded me in the party.
The word ‘fabulous contacts” flummoxes me. I have discovered that ‘fabulous contacts” is inversely proportional to true reporting. The richer a journalist in contacts, the less he tends to write. And whatever or whenever he/she writes is, deservedly, seen with suspicion.
I must confess I too write sparingly but can’t be accused of “ fabulous contacts’. Forget the chief minister, even a beat policeman of my locality doesn’t know me. It is, in fact, my preoccupation with the job in hand that keeps me away from regular reporting. Laziness is another, perhaps bigger, reason.
In media jargon, words ‘contacts’ and ‘sources’ frequently crop up. Both hugely differ from each other. Contacts connote knowing and be known to bigwigs including top politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen or similar influential people in the society. They seldom supply a tip for reporting unless it concerns furthering their own nest. Sources are different. They belong to lower categories and wish to remain mostly anonymous.
I recall my friend Late Jagat Pathak who had very few contacts but innumerable sources. His sources mostly comprised cobblers, washer-men, hammals, masons, police constable and such people. Jagat Bhai leveraged these sources to dig out stories. And his reporting was unsurpassable. He was hugely popular city reporter.
Whenever I pillion rode on his much-talked-out dilapidated schooter in late eighties and early nineties, I noticed with amazement that Jagat Bhai’s one hand is almost permanently waving to the greetings of passers-by. Naturally, I had high regard for him.
Another name that crosses my mind is of Bharat Desai. He worked in local and national papers and magazines but didn’t claim to know high and mighty. His marriage reception in 1993 was markedly shorn of “ fabulous contacts.” Only friends and close acquaintances attended the intimate and warm party. Therefore, I was not surprised to learn that Bharat Desai, now RE of Times of India, Ahmedabad, has hardly, if ever, met Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
I have also known and worked with journalists with “ fabulous contacts”. They are innately timid. The fear of “ what so-and-so might say” always haunts them when they wield the pen. The higher they ascend in the career ladder, the deeper the fear.
I always wonder why this fear haunts them as the stage of their life when they have achieved every thing in terms of money and fame. I believe the “ fabulous contacts” imprison these journalists in their own cocoon of thinking. Their ‘contacts’ overawe them.
At times their conscious pricks but gets overwhelmed by the overriding idea of high social status. This social status, they convince themselves, is a direct derivative of their “ fabulous contacts.” So, why lose them ?
As far fairness and social commitment in journalism, who cares for these ‘ avoidable’ attributes any more? This is how they allow their sense of fairness to degenerate.
The degeneration is unstoppable. Once a journalist has gone astray, mainly on the strength of “ fabulous contacts, he seeks to assert his position through means vastly different from journalistic. He uses the “ fabulous contacts” as a capital to endear himself to his paper owner.
The paper owner, in turn, puts the journalist on liaison for his myriad business interests. And thus a nexus of IAS-politician-newspaper-owner-journalist is formed. The nexus discreetly invades the paper’s editorial propriety and independence.
The newspaper baron wants more business, the politician favourable coverage and the IAS/IPS cover-up for their misdeeds and expose for their detractors’. And where is the journalist? He becomes a wiling tool, now that he has already sold his conscience.
So beware of “ fabulous contacts.” Rely on “ sources”.