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Are the government and the media friends? No. Can they be friends? They can, but shouldn't be. Are they adversaries?
I am inclined to say yes. Is the role of the media the same as that of an opposition party? No, the media would then be overstepping its boundaries.
American journalist and former press secretary to the US president, Bill D. Moyers, wrote: "The press and the government are not allies. They are adversaries. Each has a special place in our scheme of things. The president was created by the Constitution and the press is protected by the Constitution - the one with the mandate to conduct the affairs of the State, the other with the privilege of trying to find out all it can about what is going on. How each performs is crucial to the working of a system that is both free and open but fallible and fragile. For, it is the nature of a democracy to thrive upon conflict between press and government without being consumed by it."
Moyers's observations are relevant to our country too. In a democracy, the media must accept that the government in power has the mandate of the people to rule. At the same time, the government must realise that the media has a duty to inform the people of how the government conducts its affairs. These two mutually accepted limitations are essential for the smooth running of any democratic polity. But there is a tendency on both sides to cross the limits.
The Indira Gandhi-imposed Emergency lacked the consent of the people. Despite all sorts of obfuscations about the need to protect democracy, Mrs Gandhi's regime was a dictatorship. Had it been a democracy, at least the media would have been kept free. Further, though each government speaks of transparency in its functions, it rarely carries this out in action. But sometimes, the media, in its anxiety to reveal discrepancies, are prone to overstep their limits, both in their methods and motives. Tehelka is an example of the first. Should the press use bribes and prostitutes in its zeal to reveal corruption? Whatever be Tehelka's motives, its methodology was wrong and unethical.
Further, the propaganda with regard to the alleged attacks on Christian institutions that the 'secular' press indulged in created an impression that the media was more interested in pulling down the NDA government than in highlighting the details of the tragic incidents. No secular paper criticised the Church for asking Chandrababu Naidu to withdraw from the NDA. The press, again, was less than fair when it failed to apologise to the RSS for raking up its name in the rape of nuns in Jhabua. The very credibility of this section of the press became suspect. The way it highlighted the Gujarat election propaganda confirmed this suspicion.
The government has to face a close and impartial scrutiny. Naturally, only those with impeccable records are qualified to do this job. This is not easy. Moyers writes: "I learned at the White House that of all the great myths of American journalism, objectivity is the greatest. Each of us sees what his own experience leads him to see. What is happening often depends upon who is looking."
But does this mean that all reporting is coloured by our subjectivity? No. If newspapers and journalists are committed to a set of journalistic and social values, their inevitable subjectivity will not allow them to jettison objectivity. Then they will be able to transcend private interests and prejudices.
In a democracy, the media are regarded as the Fourth Estate, the other three being the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. The people - journalists included - want the executive, judiciary and legislature to be free of corruption. By the same logic, should not the Fourth Estate also be clean? If the media is corrupt, do they have a moral right to criticise a corrupt executive or judiciary?
Business Standard (Jan. 29), revealed a most damaging information about The Times of India. It wrote: "Public relations professionals do not smile at editors and wait for their publicity material to get printed. They negotiate with the group's online company, Medianet, and buy column centimetres of editorial space for photographs, interviews and stories in the different editions of the paper." This means that the editorial space of The Times of India is up for sale. I now wonder how a 24-page newspaper can be sold for just Rs 1.50. I remember that the press commissioner had recommended that advertisement matter must appear different from editorial matter and that every advertisement must notify at what rate the ad was procured.
It may sound ironical to suggest that the government carries out an inquiry into the fundings of such big newspapers. But in order to keep the Fourth Estate clean, such an exercise is advisable. It is not enough that the government is free from corruption. The press, too - that every now and then passes value judgments on governmental and other social activities - must stay clean. The TOI may not be the solitary culprit. Selling editorial space or receiving money for publishing material amounts to prostituting the profession. When big newspapers are not ashamed to sell their souls, can individual reporters and editorial writers be immune from the virus.
(The writer is an RSS spokesperson.)
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