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In any lively democracy the press and the politician have a healthy mutual distaste cemented by mutual need. When politicians, political parties and governments want to be heard they go in search of the press, among other vital ingredients.
With India’s highly politicized reading public and a cynical middle class, unless there is a political twist given to a speech, an iftar party or a meeting on the front page the newspaper would fold up — or at least so the media believes. If a political party is particularly idle it will use a front-page twist to raise a storm in Parliament sometimes without bothering to ascertain the facts.
All this is accepted as fair game as long as not much harm is done. However, the very sine qua non of any story claiming to be news rather than views has to be the unadulterated truth. Anything short of verified truth can only be presented as opinion, speculation or allegation. Without this, the edifice of credibility that a free press is accorded in a democracy would crumble.
In dictatorships or controlled democracies the press must write the truth as the ruling establishment wishes it to be written. The Big Lie comes from on high. The press can then rightly claim that their freedom is curtailed and disclaim responsibility for presenting the truth. However in a democracy in which the press has complete freedom to write about anything it pleases, the responsibility for presenting the truth and nothing but the truth devolves on the media.
A journalist being human and fallible
is subject to the same laws and rights as any other citizen. There is no
right given to him that overrides the rights of other individuals and no
law he need not bow before no matter what the motivation for his story.
It is only at the time of according punishment to a lawbreaker that a judge can consider the circumstances under which the crime was committed, but a journalist cannot quote public interest to justify breaking a law. Even a person from a law enforcement agency has the right to drive through a red light only if he is on an authorized mission to chase a suspected criminal.
It is also important to remember that freedom of expression is a right given by the Consititution as much to the individual as it is to the press. The right of the press to write about persons is no less than the right of those persons to give their version to the same public through whatever means are at their disposal, including through the press.
It is for the press to respect that right as a natural corollary of its own right. Just as a reporter is unhappy if the proprietor is unhappy, if the ruling establishment curtails the freedom of the press, the ordinary citizen, be he the reader or the subject matter of a story in the media, has the right to uncurtailed and undiluted expression of his version and view of events.
If this two-way process did not exist and the press claimed the unilateral right to freedom of expression in the garb of press freedom it would amount to the dictatorship of the press.
In the age of media trials and sensationalism it is even more important that those in the media who genuinely believe that democratic and civil rights take priority over profits remember their responsibility to adhere to the truth, the law and specified journalistic ethics.
It is against this context that the so-called defence expose created by the Tehelka portal journalists needs to be examined by the media itself. Since their views are a part of their public depositions at the Justice Venkataswami Commission of Inquiry there is no secrecy or contempt involved.
The Press Council of India guidelines and norms laid down by institutions of the free press anywhere in the world do not allow for hearsay, allegations, gossip or rumours to be purveyed as truth before proper and rigorous substantiation.
Tehelka’s Tarun Tejpal and Aniruddha Bahal stated that they were unaware of any guidelines and believed in “pushing the frontiers of journalism further”. According to Bahal, the various bits of “explosive” information they got from characters with whom they spoke were diligently purveyed to the public but not verified in any manner because, a) they feared for their lives and therefore could not risk cross- checking anything, b) it depended on the ‘standing’ of the person speaking so they saw no reason for verification and, c) each reporter believed the story of the other even if there was no recorded evidence to substantiate it.
Hearsay was therefore acceptable as a norm. Thus, the denigratory commentary scripted by Bahal in their Operation Westend was based on some scenes on tape and a lot of bragging and gossip passed on as hearsay without verifying the simplest and most common facts such as names, designations, dates, and names of products or companies.
The recounting by Mathew Samuel of what was supposedly said and done during conversations on the telephone and at meetings that he, as the main actor and cameraman, did not record on tape, (which also amount to hearsay), was converted into ‘fact’ and damaging inferences. It would be interesting for serious journalists to consider whether this kind of material can be accepted as a true expose which must be based on verified evidence and first-hand knowledge.
When journalist Vineet Narain did the Hawala expose he went to protagonists Sharad Yadav, Choudhury Devi Lal and L.K. Advani and videotaped interviews with them on the subject. He worked with the evidence — the hawala diary — that the CBI had found and even went to court on the whole issue, all without selling television rights, getting awards or fearing for his life. No journalist in India has been killed by the state or locked up for exposing a story and there have been scores of exposes before Tehelka made headlines.
What is Tehelka’s answer to this? That they have not heard about the Press Council guidelines and that the Inquiry Commission is in any case now investigating all the hearsay to find the truth. Thus, according to them, any journalist can put together unverified segments of conversations, create a story and destroy people’s reputations, lives, careers, health and families, and wait for an inquiry commission to be set up to find the extent to which the story was true.
What would happen to the rights of people who may have been wrongly accused? Would a written apology or exoneration by an inquiry commission wipe away the months of agony and expense? Will a number of defamation suits in courts be affordable for everyone concerned?
According to these journalists, by using prostitutes and paying what they define as bribes, they have not broken any law and even if they had, it was in public interest, which they alone have the freedom to define. Using non-journalists such as disgruntled cricket players, call girls and people with “skimpy journalistic credentials” to record sensitive material is for them an added advantage. They have also submitted on record that they will continue to pursue this mode of spy- camera journalism.
While the Justice Venkataswami Commission
goes into defence-related details, will the media itself ponder over these
“new frontiers of journalism” and decide whether a demand for greater responsibility
would be termed as harassment?
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