S R Ramanujan
New York Times reporter Judith Miller who was herself in the thick of news for her refusal to testify over her sources in the CIA "leak" case, the resultant incarceration and the subsequent reconsideration, has once again hit the headlines. This time for a different reason. Her executive editor Bill Keller believes she misled the paper and questions her "relationship" with her sources. There is a strong suspicion that Miller deliberately planted stories in her paper that were given to her by the war lobby in the White House that wanted to spread the view that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the US. Naturally, this has come as a dampener on the credibility of the NY Times immediately after the plagiarism scandal. Another fallout of the Miller episode is the debate it has thrown up among the American journalists on the use of unnamed sources for news stories. A NY Times columnist says in her recent column in the paper that if Miller were to return to the same beat, "the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands".
Well, it is not the credibility of just one newspaper that has taken a severe beating. The entire US media seems to be in trouble. Three well-researched articles published in the Wilson Quarterly, a publication of the Wilson Center, bear this out. The news is that more and more Americans have stopped relying on the traditional media for news. One of the authors, Terry Eastland, in his paper "Collapse of the Big Media" traces out the reason for the declining newspaper circulation and network ratings though it is not the end of the road for the media. He says: "It’s premature to write an obituary, but there is no question that America’s news media - the newspapers, magazines and television networks that people once turned to for all their news - are experiencing what psychologists might call a major life passage. They’ve seen their audiences shrink, they’ve had to worry about vigorous new competitors and they’ve suffered more than a few self-imposed wounds - scandals of their own making." Eastland continues with his own diagnosis of the collapsing US media: "Here it bears noting that though journalists aspired to the status of professionals, they never acquired the self-regulatory mechanisms found in law, medicine or even business".
David T Z Mindich, author of the second article on "The Young and the Restless", has done extensive research on the reading habits of the youth and his finding is that more and more youth are turning away from newspapers and network news. It is not that they are turning to the new media for news. He attributes the reasons for shrinking audience to the news media’s inability to carry out their watchdog role which enables the rulers to undermine journalism’s legitimate functions. He asks: "Where was the public outrage when it was revealed that the current Bush administration had secretly paid journalists to carry its water or when the White House denied a press pass to a real journalist Maureen Dowd of the New York Times and gave one to a political hawk who wrote for purely partisan outlets using a fake identity? The whole notion of the news media as the public’s watchdog, once an unquestioned article of the American civic faith, is now in jeopardy…" Mindich feels that the American newspapers and television news divisions are not going to save themselves by competing with reality shows and soap operas. Therefore, his advice is "The appetite for news and for engagement with civic life itself, must be nurtured and promoted, and it’s very much in the public interest to undertake the task…"
The third author, William Powers is even more critical of the image of the American journalists. According to him, self-image of the news trade is bad and its public image is much worse. Quoting a recently held Gallup survey on the ethics and perceived honesty of various professions, he says "journalists ranked below auto mechanics and nursing home operators…Various studies show that young people, the audience of the future are not patronizing traditional news outlets (i.e. newspapers and TV network) as previous generation did - in part because they don’t trust those outlets and view the news as another highly packaged products pushed by big corporations". There are also reports of a number of major US newspapers, notably the Chicago Sun Times and New York’s Newsday cooking their books, inflating circulation figures in order to mask declines and keep advertisement revenues from falling.
Even as the American media is undergoing such a traumatic patch, what should come as music to the ears of We the Media People of India are the findings of the National Readership Survey (2005) which reveal that the circulation of both regional and English newspapers in the country is shooting up. Dailies have grown especially in the rural India with their reach rising from 23% to 24% and the time spent reading has gone up quite significantly though - from 30 minutes daily on an average to 39 minutes per day, according to NRS. The increase has been sharp both in urban and rural India. Satellite television has also grown "explosively" in reach from 134 million individuals watching in an average week in 2002 to as many as 190 million in 2005.
Alright, there may not be shrinking audience for the Indian media. But the media image and social responsibility are something that we can’t claim to be different from the US standards. Self-regulation and media image are important for healthy survival of the media and that’s where we share our common concern. Because the US media failed in these two areas while chasing numbers, more and more people are turning away from the traditional media. If we also exhibit similar madness, there are enough signs for it already, it will be a question of time before we find ourselves in the same boat as that of the American media. There are quite a few examples to reveal this trend.
The following story appeared in the Deccan Chronicle in its city supplement (Oct 20). Anything seems to be fine if it can titillate the readers leading to the required numbers.
ONE NIGHT STANDS NO LONGER A BIG DEAL
"Rohit, 19 and Kiran 18, met at a party through a common friend and sparks began to fly. Six shots of vodka and they didn’t realize that they had been dancing in each other’s arms throughout the night. Suddenly, Rohit whispered in Kiran’s ear. "Your place or mine?" Kiran was stunned, but call it the heat of the moment or out of sheer lust, she said, "Yours"! When the night ended, so did their relationship.
"One Night Stand (ONS) is fast becoming the route to fulfil desires for youngsters, or more rightly put, dumbstruck teenagers. Most teens feel that ONS is the most PRACTICAL (Emphasis mine) relationship one can have as there are no strings attached. Some are of the view that being steady in a relationship means that one has to be committed and be loyal to one’s beau."
So goes the undatelined story with similar examples and quotes glorifying casual sex among the teens. Whether the story was cooked to titillate the teenage readers (page slug was TEENS) one does not know. But is this healthy journalism? How long can we sustain enhanced readership with such stuff? Even the Hindu is not far away from this madness. It followed up the DC story with one on "Speed Dating anyone?" four days later.
Take any television channel, an inescapable programme will be on crime. It is always a reconstruction of crime stories from the police record and there are credible findings that such crime shows have given the clue or modus operandi to prospective criminals. Look at these headlines in the print: "Telly story inspires youth to kill child", "TV show inspires girl to kill mother’s paramour". But the seamier side is they get good ratings and that is all the channels want. So what if they add to the crime rate in the society!
When the Hindustan Times launched its Mumbai edition it wanted to take off with a bang. It ran a story on the alleged conversation between Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai which ultimately proved to be a fake. Whether the Mumbai Police played mischief while giving the tape to the Forensic Lab in order to escape the wrath of the higher-ups for having kept quiet for so long on the tape, is difficult to say. But did the HT express any regret for having based its story on a fake tape?
Then you have the casting couch and politicians’ bedroom stories on India TV for ratings that took standards of journalism to an abysmal level. The latest from the same stable is the tape showing Govinda’s links with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim knowing full well that it was a non-story.
Miller alone is not the sinner when it comes to planting stories. We have so many Millers in our midst. If we have to go by Mitrokhin Archives II, it all started in Fifties itself and continues till today without any let up.
If a poll, similar to the Gallup, is conducted in the country the findings could be startling. We may rank far below auto mechanics and nursing home operators. We may be compared with those women in revealing clothes soliciting customers at street corners. Is there a big difference?
Contact: s_ramanujan9@yahoo.co.in