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.
