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Practising Journalism: Values, Constraints, Implications/Editor, Nalini Rajan Practising Journalism Practising Journalism Values, Constraints, Implications Editor Nalini Rajan SAGE Publications New Delhi Thousand Oaks London Copyright Nalini Rajan, 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 2005 by Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd B-42, Panchsheel Enclave New Delhi 110 017 www.indiasage.com Sage Publications Inc Sage Publications Ltd 2455 Teller Road 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 London EC1Y 1SP Published by Tejeshwar Singh for Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd, phototypeset in 10/12 Century Schoolbook by Prism Graphix, and printed at Chaman Enterprises, New Delhi. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Practising journalism: values, constraints, implications/editor, Nalini Rajan. p. cm. Includes index. 1. Journalism—India. 2. Journalistic ethics—India. I. Rajan, Nalini, 1954- PN5374.P73 079′.54—dc22 2005 2005015653 ISBN: 0–7619–3378–6 (Hb) 81–7829–521–0 (India-Hb) 0–7619–3379–4 (Pb) 81–7829–522–9 (India-Pb) Sage Production Team: Sarita Vellani, Shinjini Chatterjee, Jeevan Nair and Santosh Rawat Contents List of Figures vii Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 Nalini Rajan Part I: The Core Values 1. Flourishing Papers, Floundering Craft: The Press and the Law 19 B.R.P. Bhaskar 2. Defining the Principles of Ethical Journalism 37 N. Ram 3. Prabhat Khabar: An Experiment in Journalism 46 Harivansh 4. Investigative Journalism: Those Who Expose Us 63 Dilip D’Souza 5. Publicising the Private: The Right to Privacy against Media Intrusion 72 Mukund Padmanabhan 6. The Untold Story of Television Coverage 81 Valerie Kaye Part II: Specialisation within the Craft 7. The Greening of India’s Scribes 89 Darryl D’Monte 8. Engendering the Public Sphere 103 Pamela Philipose 9. Gender, Identity and the Tamil Popular Press 115 V. Geetha 10. Sports Journalism: Going Against the Grain 125 Nirmal Shekar vi Practising Journalism 11. Agriculture: The Missing Dimension 134 Devinder Sharma 12. Urban Reporting: Citizens and ‘Others’ 148 Kalpana Sharma Part III: The Constraints of Practice 13. Porous Legalities and the Dilemmas of Contemporary Media 155 Lawrence Liang 14. Covering Caste: Visible Dalit, Invisible Brahmin 172 S. Anand 15. The Relevance of the Urdu-language Media 198 M.H. Lakdawala 16. Iron Veils: Reporting Sub-conventional Warfare in India 207 Praveen Swami 17. Embedded Journalists: Lessons from the Iraq War 220 Shyam Tekwani 18. Mainstream Indian Media: 1990s and After 231 Bindu Bhaskar 19. The Importance of Being Earnest As Well As Entertaining 242 Robert Brown Part IV: Implications for the Future 20. The Public Sphere of Print Journalism 257 Robin Jeffrey 21. Alternative Spaces in the Broadcast Media 267 S. Gautham 22. Censorship ké Peeché Kya Hai? 278 K.P. Jayasankar and Anjali Monteiro 23. News in the Age of Instant Communication 285 Mahalakshmi Jayaram 24. Teaching Computer-assisted Reporting in South India 303 Steven S. Ross 25. Community Radio: Luxury or Necessity? 318 Ashish Sen 26. ‘Youth’ and the Indian Media 329 Anjali Kamat About the Editor and Contributors 344 Index 349 List of Figures 3.1A Prabhat Khabar, Front Page, 24 November 2004 60 3.2A Prabhat Khabar, Front Page, 23 April 2005 61 3.3A Prabhat Khabar, Front Page, 4 May 2005 62 7.1 Taj Mahal: Threatened by the Mathura Oil Refinery 90 23.1 Impact of Interactivity on Newsroom Practice 294 24.1A Course Syllabus On-Screen as HTML File 313 24.2A Initial Data for Mercy Hospital Exercise 314 24.3A Analysis and Comparison of Data 315 24.4A Raw Data on Indian Labour Bureau Website 316 24.5A Data After On-Screen Analysis 317 Acknowledgements I owe a special debt of gratitude to Omita Goyal. The truth is that her constant encouragement and enthusiasm for this project gave me the energy to relentlessly pursue my contributors for their articles. My special thanks to N. Ram and Robin Jeffrey for readily giving me permission to use their published work for this volume. N. Ram’s article appeared as an editorial in The Hindu (27 August 2003), while Robin Jeffrey’s article appeared under a different title, ‘Breaking News’, in The Little Magazine (Volume IV, Issue 2, 2003). I would also like to thank the following persons: Shinjini Chatterjee at Sage for her patient, good-natured responses to my incessant nagging; the anonymous reader of this manuscript who highlighted the flaws in the first draft of my Introduction; my colleagues and friends, Mahalakshmi Jayaram, Sreekumar Menon and R. Vijayaraghavan for editorial assistance; Sashi Kumar, Chairman, Media Development Foundation, for institutional support; Sadanand Menon for generous assistance in providing me with contacts; Ayesha Begum for help in translating Harivansh’s Hindi draft; B. Bhanu for keying in the manuscripts; the students of the Asian College of Journalism for helping me sustain my faith in the values of the profession; and, last but not least, all the contributors to this volume who have greatly enhanced my understanding of journalism. Nalini Rajan June 2005 introduction nalini rajan he history of journalism is not linear but a series of criss- t crossing loops. The way in which these loops are constructed is witnessed in the struggles of a liberal vision of journalism as a crusading vocation against the different currents of scepticism and pragmatism in the media. Admittedly, the idea of ethics in journalism is being challenged today by market-driven objec- tives. Nevertheless, as most of the articles here inform us, it may be an ideal still worth pursuing. This edited volume, com- prising 26 contributions from working journalists, freelance writers, journalism teachers, media practitioners and others involved with the media in one way or another, attempts to examine some of these struggles, mainly in the Indian context. This volume is not envisaged strictly as a textbook for a jour- nalism school, but more as a general collection of essays reflect- ing the fascinating spectrum of practices, trends and visions within the journalistic profession. When I got all the papers, I was quite excited by the variety of ways in which the craft is practised and viewed. It is this excitement that I wish to impart to the reader, both inside and outside the profession. This in- deed is the modest aim of the book. Conventional books on journalism have been dominated by biographies of well-known practitioners of the craft or by insti- tutional histories. The first essay in this collection by B.R.P. Bhaskar is also a history of sorts of the press. If, in the 1950s, Hindi, English and Urdu papers dominated the Indian media scene in terms of numbers and circulation, Hindi and English newspapers continue to do so in the early twenty-first century, while the Urdu press has slipped way down the ladder in terms 2 Practising Journalism of circulation.1 This essay is really more than a history, since it is also concerned with issues like proprietorship and freedom of the press. Article 19 in the Indian Constitution guarantees free- dom of speech and expression with reasonable restrictions. It does not guarantee freedom of the press or other media. In a curious way, the interpretation of the two freedoms—freedom of expression and of the press—has given rise to paradoxical situations when they have been at cross-purposes with each other. For example, in 1960, the Indian government’s attempt to fix a price–page schedule in order to curb the monopolistic tenden- cies of big newspapers and promote the cause of a free press was effectively challenged in the apex court as being unconstitutional and violating the freedom of expression guaranteed in Article 19(1)(a). This ruling, in a sense, paved the way for the flourish- ing of monopolistic practices in the media. Periodically, in its history, journalism has undergone shifts in conception, and that has something to do with the way this craft is practised. The more news gathering and news presentation are linked to ethical concerns, the more the humanistic nature of the profession is stressed. Clearly, this shift in perception all over the democratic world has something to do with the liberal faith, following the European Enlightenment tradition, in the connec- tion between the word, its audience and human action. Harivansh’s moving account of the phenomenal rise of a paper like Prabhat Khabar as the number one Hindi paper in the Jharkhand area is the sort of ‘feel-good’ account that the media is aching for today. Against all the media-related shibboleths of the inevitability of tabloidisation, dumbing down and marketing pragmatism, the story of Prabhat Khabar is a tribute to the journalist’s faith in the values of the profession. The paper’s success teaches us an im- portant lesson—commitment to an ideal, rather than to profit making, is all-important. By linking information to credibility and political activism, Prabhat Khabar’s success shines like a beacon in the last decade, which has been characterised by media sensa- tionalism and economic liberalisation. We also have N. Ram recalling the journalistic values or func- tions articulated by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman.2 1 M.H. Lakdawala discusses this point in his article in this volume. 2 Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988). 3 Introduction These are the credible-information function, the critical- adversarial or watchdog function, the educational function and the agenda-building function. In addition, given the peculiari- ties of the Indian context, Ram mentions values like truth tell- ing, freedom and independence, justice, humaneness and con- tributing to the social good.
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