Manoj's World

Acid Test
Can The Media Police Itself?

By Ravindra Kumar

TRANSCRIPTS of telephone conversations that a lobbyist and public relations consultant had with members of the extended journalistic fraternity have raised serious questions about professional ethics. These questions will not go away merely because the media, with few exceptions and for reasons that aren’t as unfathomable as they seem, wishes them to go away. They will have to be addressed, because if breaches have indeed taken place, it would be unfair on those of us who don’t cozy up to lobbyists to be dismissed with contempt because a few of us do.

Conversations between the lobbyist ~ Niira Radia, who represents industrialists as powerful as Mukesh Ambani and Ratan Tata ~ and two mediapersons, Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt, are in focus. Prima facie, the first set of conversations suggests that Mr Sanghvi tailored the content of his column that appeared in the Hindustan Times at the behest of Ms Radia, in support of Mr Mukesh Ambani and against a judgment of the High Court that favoured his brother.

Did the conversation take place? No one denies it; Mr Sanghvi though says, “nobody can remember verbatim every conversation that took place 19 months ago”, but “these conversations do not appear to be entirely accurate.” Since he does not tell us what the inaccuracies are, presumably the transcripts are substantially, if not entirely accurate.

Did Ms Radia tell Mr Sanghvi what to write? The transcript certainly seems to suggest this was the case. Indeed, at one point she even tells him what not to write because that would hurt her client. Did Mr Sanghvi write what he was asked to? The web edition of Hindustan Times suggests he did, under the headline “Time for some transparency” and within hours of his conversation with Ms Radia.

On the evidence, it would seem therefore to most observers that a well-known, generally well-regarded journalist wrote a comment at the prompting of a lobbyist acting for a major corporate house. Is Mr Sanghvi guilty of a breach of professional ethics? The Press Council of India’s norms of professional conduct cover all of 111 pages but deal with such a situation only tangentially.

Under the sub-heading “Financial Journalism”, the norms say: “It should be mentioned prominently in the report about any company that the report is based on information given by the company or the financial sponsors of the company”. Mr Sanghvi’s report, published in June 2009, was about Mr Mukesh Ambani’s group but did not disclose ~ prominently or in fine print ~ that it was based on information supplied by the company or its authorised representative.

In his defence, Mr Sanghvi has cited an article he wrote in August 2009 wherein he said: “My friend, Tony Jesudasan, who represents Anil took me out to lunch and made out a case for Anil. I was totally convinced till my friend Niira Radia, who represents Mukesh, gave me the other side which frankly seemed just as convincing to my inexpert ears.”

There are two problems with this defence. First, it appeared two months after the contentious piece and therefore can’t possibly be covered by the disclosure norm prescribed by the Press Council. Second, the article Mr. Sanghvi wrote in June 2009 was remarkably lucid in echoing the Mukesh Ambani line, as enunciated by Ms Radia, and made more remarkable by the fact it was penned by a man with admittedly inexpert ears, one who suggested he was confused because contrasting claims of two business rivals seemed equally convincing.

Certainly, Mr Sanghvi has a case to answer.

The other transcripts that have raised ethical questions relate to Ms Dutt. These, it seems, record a series of conversations where Ms Dutt appears to act as a conduit and facilitator in exchanges between the Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on ministry formation following the 2009 general election.
The transcripts suggest that Ms. Dutt was, or pretended to be, intimately involved in arranging a dialogue between a senior functionary of the Congress and another of the DMK at the behest of a lobbyist and for the benefit of a faction within the DMK represented by Mr M Karunanidhi’s daughter.

From what we have been able to determine, Ms. Dutt’s defence has been confined to one-liners on a social networking site. The most relevant of these is a comment that reads, “Radia was a valid news source for DMK camp. She gave info on Karunanidhi, and sought my analysis on what Cong may do next. Valid journalism.”
This is fair enough, as far as it goes. Journalists do have political sources, and oftentimes string them along. But, old fashioned as we admittedly are, the transcripts reveal a degree of intimate involvement in the lobbyist’s political wheeling-dealing that suggest either Ms Dutt’s complicity or her skill as a consummate actress. Perhaps times have changed, perhaps journalists in the field are required to do these things.
However, there is a simple test to determine if Ms Dutt deserves to be accused of professional misconduct or not. And that is to find out if she did in fact put out stories in May 2009, when the conversations took place, to narrate either the factional squabbles within the DMK, or to reveal the engagement of a corporate lobbyist by a faction within the DMK to improve its chances, or to explain to her viewers the tortuous machinations that formed the process through which specific DMK nominees got the ministerial berths they did.

In short, if the interactions with Ms Radia were entirely professional, as Ms. Dutt and her channel maintain, they must have yielded stories that dwelt on at least some of the specific information that the journalist was privy to. Memory is not a good guide in these matters; it is for Ms Dutt and her channel to scour the archives and produce the defence.

There is another aspect to Ms Dutt’s defence, that quid pro quo must be established before any accusations are made on the basis of the Radia transcripts. This is disingenuous to say the least and if this logic is to apply universally, there really ought to have been no reason for A Raja to resign in the wake of the 2G spectrum scam until someone was able to prove that he had been paid, or otherwise compensated, for the bizarre decisions he took.

Indeed, there are questions that Mr Sanghvi and Ms Dutt must answer. Who, though, will seek those answers is unclear, especially because the transcripts are conveniently sub judice, forming part of proceedings before the Supreme Court. The Press Council does not deal with such matters.

A body of professional peers ought ideally to examine the matter. But the Editors’ Guild of India is a delightfully amorphous entity. We know it exists, but it doesn’t have a website. It has elections from time to time, and even a Code of Ethics, we are told. Some time ago, it set up an Ethics Committee to go into the question of “paid news” in journalism. But we don’t know if it is exercised by the Radia transcripts, or whether it proposes to act on their contents. We do know it sometimes ~ but not always ~ takes attacks on the Press seriously, we don’t know if it is equipped to, or indeed even willing to deal with what surely must be a crisis of monumental proportions for the profession.

The News Broadcasters Association ~ an organization of major television networks ~ had forestalled government efforts some time ago to have a Broadcast code by offering a scheme of self-regulation. The fundamental principles of this scheme are unambiguous, indeed even praiseworthy. However, the scheme concerns itself with what is broadcast, and not with the ethics of individual journalists, except in general terms.

There is a risk, and it must be appreciated. Unless the media shows itself capable of dealing with ethical issues that concern its members, it will render itself irrelevant. Good journalism is not about screaming out aloud who broke which story “first”, or who predicted an election with the greatest accuracy. We are judged not only on the basis of what we reveal, but what we choose to conceal.

The writer is Editor, The Statesman