HVK Archives: How much do the public need to know?
How much do the public need to know? - The Free Press Journal
M V Kamath
()
August 29, 1998
Title: How much do the public need to know?
Author: M V Kamath
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: August 29, 1998
On July 12, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee inaugurated a
conference of the National Union of Journalists which, strangely
enough, was very inadequately reported in the national newspapers
which, one might add, is par for the course. But Vajpayee's
address caught the attention of a distinguished political and
legal commentator, Mr A G Noorani who blasted the Prime Minister
in a couple of articles in The Statesman (2 and 3 August). In his
address Vajpayee made two important points and a few more
subsidiary ones.
First he said "people have a right to seek information barring
that which is security related or has a negative bearing on our
relationship with other countries."
Recalling his own days as a journalist working for the RSS organ
Panchajanya, Vajpayee made his second point stating that "in
those days journalists worked with a mission while today the
profession has become a business (and) has been totally
commercialised." In regard to the first point Mr Noorani
dismissed the Prime Minister as being "no better than others in
their paternalistic attitude towards the press."
Mr Noorani insisted that people have every right to information
that is "security-related" and the government owed them a duty to
provide it - unless the disclosure is detrimental to national
security. Mr Noorani felt that the annual reports of the
Ministries of Defence and External Affairs had become glossier,
but no more informative.
"In any democracy, he maintained, hey would be regarded as
scandalous, given the sparseness of the information they
provide," Mr Noorani held that as for friendly relations" with
foreign powers, the press is not a partner or accomplice of the
government in its conduct of foreign policy" and that, when the
expression "friendly relation with foreign powers" was inset in
Article 19 (2) of the constitution, its author, Jawaharlal Nehru,
assured Parliament on 16 May 1951 that its main object is to
empower Parliament to punish personal attacks on heads of state
or government - and not to deter criticism of governments, our
own or of other countries.
Mr Noorani has certainly raised some important points. Citizens
certainly have the right to know as much of information as is
necessary for them to make an intelligent assessment of how the
government of the day is run but who is to decide how much is
enough? Who is to decide what information, the disclosure of
which will be detrimental to national security? The government,
which, in effect, means the bureaucracy, will insist that the
right belongs strictly to itself. Is that so?
When the Pentagon Papers were first published in the United
States, the matter went up to the US Supreme Court which upheld
the media's right to publish them. When the United States under
President John Kennedy was planning to invade Cuba - an event
that turned out to be abortive - the New York Times got wind of
it but decided not to publish the information considering it as
detrimental to the interest of the country. It was left to
President Kennedy to say after the failure of the coup that he
wished the newspaper had indeed published the information thus
effectively preventing the government from going ahead with its
misadventure. But that was an afterthought.
Theoretically Mr Noorani is absolutely right. The citizen has the
sacred right to know what is going on behind his/her back. After
all, in the end, it is he/she who is going to pay for the
consequences of government action. But peripheral questions
arise: for example, should the Vajpayee government have tom-
tommed the information, say a week in advance, that it had
sanctioned the testing of nuclear bombs at Pokhran? And would it
have been right on the part of a national newspaper to publish
the information had it, perhance, learnt of the information
before hand? In all such matters one cannot be too careful. The
government, after all, has the final responsibility for all
matters. The press, or the media, cannot behave as if it is a
parallel authority that determines policy. Were that to happen,
the end-result would be confusion.
Let it also be remembered that a government - unless it is
totally authoritarian - is accountable to parliament. To whom is
the media responsible? It may be argued that the media is
responsible only to the press and that if it exceeds bounds it
can be sued in the Courts.
That is like closing the doors of the stable after the horses
have fled. Furthermore, it must be realised that whereas the
government is one unit, the media is not; the media is a medley
of interests and there are probably as many irresponsible
elements as there are responsible ones. To expect everyone to
behave responsibly is to ask for impossible.
But Mr Noorani's point is well-taken. Governments can cheat on
the people and never let anyone know it. Therein lies a danger.
The fact of Chinese occupation of many square miles of Indian
territory in Kashmir was kept secret by the Nehru government. Had
the public been informed about it at an early stage, perhaps the
end result may have been substantially different. Jawaharlal
Nehru and V K Krishna Menon between them decided that they were
experts in the foreign policy field and did not need to consult
the public.
What followed was national humiliation. The second point made by
Vajpayee was about journalism as a mission. It is quite true that
in the twenties and thirties and perhaps right up to the fifties
many journalists - especially the nationalists did consider their
profession almost as a mission. Most of these who worked for the
nationalist press worked for a pittance. Salaries were low.
Working conditions were hard. Perquisites were unheard of. Job
security did not exist. But it was considered an honour to work
for the nationalist press and when Vajpayee spoke about
journalism as a mission, he was speaking for journalists of his
time. Conditions have changed. In the first place the sense of
mission of journalist of the pre-independence era rose from a
deep desire to work for independence.
That was a desire that subsumed everything else. Once
independence was achieved, the mission was completed. It was then
time for journalists to look to their own interests. When Mr
Noorani asks rhetorically whether Vajpayee ould like
journalists to act like missionaries promoting the causes they
believe in" he is missing the point. In the first place there
aren't any "causes to attract the young to make sacrifices.
Socialism is no more a cause in a highly consumerist society.
The atmosphere is just not right for any "cause to flourish.
According to Mr Noorani, there are two distinct traditions in the
press: the pamphleteering one and the cool detached one of a
professional. There is a commitment to values and to a basic
credo, but no attachment to any ideology or political party or
cause. To be quite honest, the pamphleteering tradition is a lost
one and if it exists today its adherents are either fanatic or
rich who can afford to indulge in a pastime. The cool detached
one may have his fads and his principles but what he looks for is
the bottom line and the monthly pay check. Many are willing to
forsake their political ideals as long as they know that their
salaries are assured and proprietors stick to the commands of the
Journalists Wage Board.
Whether there is a commitment to values is a matter that is best
left unsaid. In the first place editors are getting out of
fashion. Any editorials are dictated by the proprietors who have
their own axes to grind. As the saying goes, he who pays the
piper calls the tune.
This was once resisted but has now come to be tacitly accepted
since the alternative is unemployment. Vajpayee was speaking
about another era long dead. Today's journalist does not have any
mission. Like Pothan Joseph of old, he views his profession with
a certain amount of detachment, like a doctor or a lawyer who
will cure any patient, argue any case, without looking into the
customer's antecedents.
That is how it is today and that is how it is going to be in the
foreseeable future as well.
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