S R Ramanujan
Professional alacrity is certainly an essential qualification for a successful journalist or for a newspaper. But this alacrity should not be selective. If it is it invites the charge of prejudiced reporting and the newspaper that carries such reports cannot call itself an independent newspaper. Unfortunately, The Hindu, no longer a conservative paper with quaint looks, is being drawn into this trap for reasons best known to its editor. The slip was evident when the paper reported the proceedings of the recently held National Executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Chennai.
Former Prime Minister A B Vajpayee was a powerful orator once upon a time. With age catching up with him, his characteristic pauses, which he once used for effect, have become quite long and one-liners or rather just monosyllables seem be his style these days. Since Advani holding two posts was a contentious issue just before the start of the National Executive, thanks to the RSS, and as the Advani-Vajpayee rift over Madan Lal Khurana was quite fresh, the Media reported that Vajpayee was for Advani holding both the posts of Party President and the Leader of the Opposition. (What happened on the final day is a different story.) How did the Media come to this conclusion? The Hindu had the answer as its box item on page one:
"The former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was apparently upset when correspondents from the electronic media shouted questions at him here on Friday. Will BJP president LK Advani resign? Will he continue to retain his positions as party chief and Leader of the Opposition? Clearly, Mr Vajpayee was in no mood to respond. "Kyon nahin (Why not?), he finally said. And immediately, the "news" was flashed that Mr Vajpayee had said that Mr Advani would continue to hold both positions. Those in Mr Vajpayee’s entourage later said: "That was not at all the case".
Monosyllabic replies of the leaders have often become the newspeg for many lead stories and the electronic media have frequently been accused of quoting out of context and putting out stories based on chance remarks. Obviously, it was not the intention of the Hindu correspondent to pick holes in the conduct of electronic media, but to highlight the fact that Vajpayee did not say in so many words that he wanted Advani to hold both the posts, but it was just a two-word remark, that too out of pique, which made the media give the impression that Vajpayee stood by Advani in this crucial meet. What is the genesis for a news story for the media does not by itself become a page one story, if we go by conventional news judgement. Normally, that is left to the magazine reporters to go for news behind the news.
This was not a solitary incident. There was a pattern. The next day there was another page one box item by the same correspondent under the heading "How much did Vajpayee know?" This story was to suggest that Vajpayee was sidelined at the meet and that he was not shown in advance the text of Advani’s speech which challenged the RSS to keep off the BJP. Quoting sources, the report said that Vajpayee did not approve the statement. These "sources" were invoked to rubbish the statement of some leaders that Vajapayee had seen Advani’s concluding statement and approved it in advance. How could the reporter be so confident that the former PM was not shown the draft a day in advance but only at the podium, as the report suggested? Was such a speculative report relevant for page one? The reporter was keen to point out that Vajpayee-Advani rift continues. By all means, the reporter can do it provided there is a quotable or attributable source. That is where the slip shows.
This was followed by an editorial with a headline, "Oh! What a lovely war", which showed the newspaper’s glee over the crisis in the BJP much than what it actually said in the edit. This is what a reader has to say on the editorial and in all fairness, the Hindu published it in order to balance the laudatory letters. "The use of words and phrases such as "confusing", "rumour-mongering", "cloak and dagger politicking", "farce", "Sangh-inspired machinations", "RSS ham-handed supreme", tragicomic twist to the drama", and "combative presidential address" reveal The Hindu’s prejudice against the BJP….."
The reader may have drawn such an inference not just from the paper’s frequent slants, but the conduct of the editor-in-chief in public fora. Recently, at a function in Chennai in which the Prime Minister participated, the editor-in-chief was the person who read out CPM veteran Harkishen Singh Surjeet’s message. This came after his television testimonial for Prakash Karat soon after he succeeded Surjeet. Every editor has the freedom to follow any political ideology of his choice and to canvas for it in his editorials with balanced arguments, but to make a public display of his personal commitment to a particular political party is not quite ethical. After all, the editor of an independent newspaper, especially of the Hindu’s stature and standing, is to be seen to be above partisan politics whatever be his intellectual commitment to his paper.
Contrast this proactive reporting on the BJP’s affairs with how the paper dealt with the reactions of the Congress and the Left to the book "The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World". More than the Congress and the CPI, Jyoti Basu’s reaction was quite interesting. He was ready to believe what Daniel Patrick Moynihan revealed in his book about the CIA funding Indira Gandhi and the Congress. Basu said that but for Moynihan’s book we would not have known the machinations of the CIA. But he is not ready to give the same credibility to Prof Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, co-authors of the book on KGB operations, when they say that KGB was funding both the Congress and the CPI. The alert reporters of the Hindu did not question him on his dual credibility index, but the paper remained content with a single column agency report.
Nor did the reporters ask the Congress spokesperson, when she was dismissive of the book because the contents were based on "stolen" documents, whether facts become fiction if they are "stolen"! Though the paper has no constraint on resources, there was no attempt to contact one of the authors, Prof. Andrew (Mitrokhin is no more). The Deccan Chronicle, and may be the Asian Age as well, did contact Prof Andrew in London for his comments on the reaction in India to the book.
Contact: s_ramanujan9@yahoo.co.in