The Editor's Delivery Vehicle

What’s a cigarette? Ever heard anyone giving the most accurate definition of a Cigarette? You might hear “it’s something people smoke” or “it’s a tobacco product” and so on. In the movie “The Insider” (a true story) Jeffrey Wigand is a Tobacco industry insider who turns whistle-blower on CBS News’ highly popular programme “60 Minutes”. His decision to speak the truth about the corrupt tobacco industry wrecks his life. CBS gets scared and doesn’t telecast the actual interview but a truncated one in the end. But in a moment during the interview where Wigand describes how the tobacco industry creates addicts, he provides the best definition of a cigarette I have ever heard. He calls it “a delivery vehicle for nicotine”. A delivery vehicle for the addictive and harmful nicotine! In the end the Tobacco companies had to collectively pay damages over 2Bn dollars for their ‘excessive nicotine delivery’ misdeeds.

If you observe newspapers or news websites, lately almost every one of them carries a small disclaimer at the end in case of articles written by columnists. This disclaimer usually says “the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not the newspaper”. There may be a lot of such articles that are essential to be put out for the public but the disclaimer was created because our media has now developed a practice of putting out a lot of opinions that suit its own political or ideological preferences. Excessive nicotine for your brains! Political pursuit constantly demands excessive opinions to be peddled. Most of these opinions through columns are not backed by 100% facts, can spin truths and can consistently aim to cause damage to a particular individual or group. The news site (I will use the term news site for both digital and print for convenience) is therefore “a delivery vehicle for slanted and planted opinions”. Er… much like the cigarette is a delivery vehicle for the harmful nicotine.

Certain news sites are delivery vehicles for character assassination. With the disclaimer, the Editor could then claim he is not responsible for the crap he peddles in his news site. But a recent Supreme Court ruling could change all that. We could probably now call the nonsense of the “disclaimer” of opinions being personal and hold the Editor responsible. Of course, I am stating this as a matter of “interpretation” but not as an actual event that happened. Legal experts will tell us better. Here’s what the SC, while dismissing the plea of the Editor, ruled in an old case from 1999 concerning Sandesh newspaper of Gujarat (Full report at Lensonnews):

"A news item has the potentiality of bringing dooms day for an individual. The Editor controls the selection of the matter that is published. Therefore, he has to keep a careful eye on the selection. Blue-penciling of news articles by any one other than the Editor is not welcome in a democratic polity. Editors have to take responsibility of everything they publish and to maintain the integrity of published records," the bench said… "It is apt to remind ourselves the answer of the Editor of the Scotsman, a Scottish newspaper. When asked what it was like to run a national newspaper, the Editor answered, 'run a newspaper! I run a country'. It may be an exaggeration but it does reflect the well known fact that it can cause far- reaching consequences in an individual and country's life,"… The court passed the order on a appeal filed by the then Executive Magistrate in Vadodara who approached the apex court against the Gujarat High Court's verdict for quashing proceedings against the Editor.

Please note that Editors are liable for even advertisements published in newspapers and not just other content. There are some basic precautions that Editors need to take even for advertisements. Most newspapers now carry “disclaimers” and “buyers beware” warnings on ad pages as well. The Editor has a tough job and cannot be hanged for content he hadn’t considered malicious to the best of knowledge. But in current times Editors have shifted to being Editorialists whose job is to primarily swing opinions. Shekhar Gupta recently mentioned on CNN-IBN that lately Editors have become Business Managers cum Editors and play dual roles. This is hardly a good sign for the media and consumers. The case of SpeakAsia which collected a lot of funds from the public later became controversial and has since disappeared from sight.

A certain newspaper has recently hired a columnist to write an exclusive weekly series on Narendra Modi. This ‘opinionist’ is a known Modi-baiter. There’s ample chance that this writer, in his pursuit to malign Modi, will use a lot of spurious figures and incidents to garnish his articles. The newspaper’s Editor shouldn’t be allowed to escape with the disclaimer that it’s the writer’s personal opinion. He should be made liable for every untruth and half-truth that his newspaper carries. The writer was in any case a “specialist” in targeting Modi in all his previous writings for quite some time. Or for that matter Justice Katju writes about a lot of things as “personal opinions” which newspapers carry with a disclaimer. In case there are damages to any individual or entity the newspaper’s Editor too should be made liable. The Editor specially chooses certain writers to drive his newspaper’s ideology and writers aren’t always picked on merits or analytical skills. But that is much about newspapers where are crimes are far less these days.

Since 1999, when the Sandesh case was first tried, the media has come a long way. As of now TV wields tremendous clout. The TV Editors call panellists and guests who throw wild allegations at people and even use defamatory terms to describe certain individuals. TimesNow was penalised 100 crores for carrying a wrong picture of a former judge in a corruption case. It’s not clear what happened to that case or if there has been some arbitrated settlement. Arnab Goswami carried out a 21-episode campaign against Nitin Gadkari. On CNN-IBN Rajdeep Sardesai repeatedly allowed Sanjiv Bhatt to call Modi a “common criminal”. In the first instance Rajdeep can be forgiven if he was caught unawares by Bhatt’s defamatory term. But when he didn’t stop Bhatt further or didn’t expel him from the panel or interview then Rajdeep as Editor is deliberately allowing defamation of a person and should be held liable. This is what TV Editors have allowed to continuously happen on their channels. The latest SC judgement should now be taken further to apply to certain TV channels who are behaving like dogs without a leash.

In another incident a few years ago an innocent school teacher was declared as a sex operator by TV channel in a fake sting operation. She was beaten up by the public. This had permanently caused damage to her. The then Editor in charge of the channel, Sudhir Chaudhary, who is now with another channel should have been permanently barred from any media operation. Like Wigand’s tobacco industry, much of the TV news and some print media have become mere delivery vehicles. And much of the media has become a delivery vehicle for propaganda, some poisonous stuff and a huge fix of malicious and willful character-assassination.

Disclaimer: This article represents entirely my own assessment and no Editor in India will ever be liable to agree with it.

The PM’s Con-furtherance

The meet apparently started with Eid greetings. I could only laugh. This may be a different Eid, but it may be fair to call the PM an ‘Eid Ka Chand’ where his press meets or addresses to the nation are concerned. Harish Khare, the PM’s media advisor, welcomed the TV editors as “masters of the universe” and allotted ‘one question to everyone’! Take that for rationing. So effectively, once in a few years a media editor will get to ask the PM one question. Yes, we are a 'functioning democracy'!

After some mild praise for the media for taking the scam reports to people the PM mentioned that it’s a disservice to project the country as ‘scam-driven’. The PM can rest safely assured that the media hasn’t taken all the scams to the people. They themselves may be involved in many. Now why in the world would anyone get the impression that India is ‘scam-driven’? Are the ordinary people to blame? Is the media to blame? Singularly, the UPA has bestowed this inglorious reputation to India and it will be difficult to remove that tag very soon.

This video on Youtube and doing the rounds in emails is a 'scammy-image' of India that the UPA can claim much of the credit for. 

Manmohan Singh did not nothing more than refer to the enormous scams as ‘irregularities’ and offer the same worn out defences that his party and UPA have been offering all these months. Far from addressing issues of corruption his own Congress morons were busy raking up all issues of Hindu terror in their own plenary session and at every public meeting.

It is a sad comment on the state of the nation that corruption has taken such a front seat in the discussion ring. If we were free of the major scams we would have been talking about the non-performance of people like Sharad Pawar, Kamal Nath, the loot of the Aviation industry and so much more. And what do you know? If you were a TV editor given one important question to ask you would ask the PM about cricket! That’s right. Ask him about his favourite cricketer and India’s prospects at the ICC world cup.

Sometime back the Congress clown prince, Rahul Gandhi, blamed coalition politics for corruption and inflation. Now you’ve heard it from the PM himself. That coalition dharma requires comprises. Why didn’t we know that? That compromises really mean corruption and loot of the nation?  And if you were looking to really hear anything from the PM – all you got was ‘Raja said..and Isro said..’.  He said, she said and they said...and I still say nothing new.

The journalists had questions on Egypt, Telengana but nothing about defence or security issues and hardly much on black money. Only recently we had Pakistan asking for information on Samjhauta blasts etc. when that country is yet to act on anything. Our media had no questions on that at all. And, of course, you can expect Prannoy Roy to soften the blows for the PM. He asks the PM about next elections and anti-incumbency and whether he will still be a PM candidate in 2014. I guess it will take NDTV a long time to come back to the realities of today. After all didn’t they just conclude another sham award ceremony for entertainers and one politician?

The most significant thing that the PM said, according to me, was that “this time the corrupt won’t get away” ! Well, at least that is a clear admission that so far the corrupt have gotten away. Other than that, Manmohan Singh increasingly comes across as nothing more than a blundering, muttering babu. He should honourably quit and spare this nation any more embarrassment.

And if all that is not enough, you then have  Manish Tiwari telling the world that instead of appreciating the PM inviting the media and talking to them, the media and opposition are criticising him. Yeah and “India is a functioning democracy” according to the PM. Maybe in your next life. With journalists not allowed to press the PM further and limiting the questions this wasn’t a press conference. More like a Con-furtherance on behalf of the Con-gress party.