Some myths about journalism

 This blog is born out of a lengthy conversation on phone I had with an old friend a few hours ago.

Apart from numerous other things he wanted to know if I have ‘conquered’ Indore, now that I am heading an English newspaper.

He assumed that by now all ministers, the collector, the commissioner, the IGP and other officers in Indore must have become my friends. I disappointed him.

Irritated, he was also curious to know whether I am as Chutiya as ever because I have not been able to buy a house. I told him he is right.

He did not sound impressed by my new hobbies for music and attempt at book writing. “ How you guys squeeze out time for stuff like that ? he wondered. The friend is senior journalist himself and quite resourceful one.  

The conservation made me ponder about myths in journalism that even senior journalists believe to be true.  I thought I should write and analyse some of them. Thirty two years.. seven cities including two metros … 13 newspapers ….two languages.

I am tempted to believe this much experience reasonably qualifies me to form an opinion about what are myths in journalism.

I am picking up some myths -- or what I think are  myths—in journalism 

Fabulous contacts—This is the most specious myth which every mind , whether of a journalist like my friend or a layman, must be disabused of.

Contacts in journalism are inversely proportional to serious reporting. The more the contacts, the less the reporting.

Contacts are a tool , not an asset to flaunt, in journalism. When PR instinct gets the better of the journalist in him, a journalist is inexorably on the downhill journey to short cut success. 

Dinners with bureaucrats, junkets with ministers, socializing with other influential people in the society are a sure recipe for his moral corruption and intellectual bankruptcy unless  the journalist keeps reminding himself  of his fundamental job.

But this becomes increasingly tougher as the aspiration for high life style overwhelms his sense of impartiality. He can’t write in glowing terms about all those he is obliged by all the time. He can’t write negative about them either, having allowed his conscience to be burdened with friendships.

Politicians and bureaucrats are more a false source of delusion of grandeur than real source of news. They manipulate the journalist for their own vested interests until he is reduced to their docile doormat.

A journalist who talks straight to the bureaucrats or politicians with a story in mind gets their quotes as well as respect.    

Target group

This is another myth often sought to be perpetuated by semiliterate and mediocre editors who rose up the ladder with shenanigans and sycophancy.

A good story is a good story is a good story. It makes no difference which class of people it is written about. It is a ludicrous fallacy that story about a missing Labrador dog of a rich industrialist will be read more than suicides by farmers in an English newspaper.

A good story needs a combination of factors to be received well by the reader.

Contextually  in the given time, well prepared draft, proper quotations, human faces in the story, statistics well explained, attractive headline, tight editing etc are the basic ingredients that go into making a story worth reading.

These basic inputs can enliven any subject, irrespective of class they are written about. Nothing is down market or up market  in journalism. It is all about marketability of the reports in positive sense.  

Nipta Diya ( Made him bite the dust) —

Many journalists are constantly on the high , believing what they write hugely resonates in the corridors of power. Some pieces may annoy one set of people and please another set of people, but it is preposterous for a journalist to assume that his targets lose sleep because of his reporting.

I have had too many such beguilingly naïve journalist  friends who would ask me to wait for the next day for the government of the day to collapse. Why ? Because, their story in the print is about to detonate the next morning as a Hydrogen bomb on the target.            

..BUT we are not Shakespeare

Most journalists proffer this kind of disingenuous, if  facetious, argument to defend their aversion to books. No body expects a journalist to be a bookworm. But no body expects a journalist to be bookless – in mind and at home--either.

One of the most self-defeating myths in journalism is that  a reporter need not be proficient in writing.

His job, the argument goes, is to collate facts in a simple language comprehensible to the dumbest of the readers. It is enough that he has elementary knowledge of the language he is writing in.

Since a majority of editors themselves are intellectually-challenged they can not be expected to hold torch to their colleagues.

When juniors see that a man can get to the highest possible position in a newspaper bandying about the obnoxious idea of ‘’…but we don’t need to be Shakespeare’, they see enough ground to rationalize their own apathy to reading.

As a result, we  have a growing crop of  young journalists who don’t read their own edited copies, forget the newspaper they work in.

       

Maudlin over city

This is one myth even good and rational journalists  are seen swayed by. ‘Oh my god, what has my city come to ?’ This love-your-city  syndrome in reporting is discernible ad nauseam  when some real or perceived moral, social or administrative danger looms large on the city the journalist is working in. 

Copious tears are shed in reporting with nostalgic quotes from old denizens.

Objectivity becomes a major casualty in sentimental reporting about city issues.

Swayed by the missionary zeal they think they must acquire to take up the city’s  causes, reporters make themselves a laughing stock.

Readers are not impressed by the reporters’ Messianic stance or pandering to baser reactionary ,parochial instincts in them.

Such stories might titillate some people for some time but, in the final analysis, objective and dispassionate views prevail.

       

English versus Hindi

Having worked in English and Hindi newspapers—five and eight respectively—I can say with fair degree of confidence that no such divide exists. Fools are fools in both the languages as much as wise are wise.

I would bemusedly soak up funny remarks from journalists in English papers about how their readership stratum is superior to that of their Hindi counterparts and, therefore, by extension, they are superior to their Hindi counterparts.

And , more often than not, such comments would come from the journalists who had studied in Hindi schools. Most of them strayed in English papers by default rather than by design.

   

Deriding well known journalists

It is not uncommon to hear in journalist fraternity that top notch journalists in metros owe their high position to a combination of factors, most important being their birth. The fallacy is that all these Pranay Roys, Vir Sanghvis, Vinod Mehtas, Barkha Dutts, Rajdeep Sardesais, Arnab Goswamis, Shekhar Guptas  are average people but fortunate to have been sired by influential parents.

Nothing can be far from the truth. The truth is these journalists have made their mark due to high professionalism, hard work, astounding ability to chew and throw information from all walks of life on an hourly basis. I have a lot of respect for them.

But the myth in small towns endures that big journalists are the ones who are saleable, without much intellectual prowess and without insight of real issues of “ real India”.