TERROR ATTACKS AND THE MEDIA

By Dinesh Kumar

It is fashionable to write about the Mumbai terror attacks these days. The attacks have spawned a cottage industry of editors and columnists writing about their favourite five-star hotels in almost all papers. They are falling over each other to tell the world how they have liked to wine and dine at these expensive hotels. Suddenly the socialist pretensions are off and editors are telling the world that they do enjoy the good life. It is like putting little stickers saying “press” on their cars so that policemen will not challan them if they break the traffic rules.

Shekhar Gupta devoted a whole column in Indian Express saying that the Taj was “just like home” and how he waited impatiently for it to reopen. Writing in the same paper, columnist Tavleen Singh mentions that she is “in and out” of the Oberoi. That’s something. At least one journalist – an editor with The Times of India – Sabina or something like that -- lost her life in the recent attacks and the paper has been running tributes to her. This is not to forget Vir Sanghvi of Hindustan Times who can claim to be legitimately involved in luxurious hotels because he writes a column on food. The list of journalists who have given their “personal” experiences on their life at five star hotels is now legion.

It seems that Indian editors and columnists truly love the good life. But I wonder who pays for it? I mean, most newspapers are not in the pink of health, if one takes a look at the IRS data. Editors are also not high profile corporate managers. So where do they get the money? If one estimates that a modest room in a five star hotel in Mumbai would be close to Rs 25,000 for a single day, a person who treats these hotels as “home” would be spending maybe Rs 5 lakhs per month on them. Do editors and columnists earn that kind of money? All I get for writing an article in a newspaper is Rs 500 or Rs 1000, which is not even enough for a meal there!

Even assuming that these editors get paid highly for their job, their package must be around Rs 20 lakhs per month, at least, to afford a Rs 5 lakh monthly hotel bill. Since newspaper organizations are not that generous in terms of compensation, it is obvious that someone else is paying for the bills. Then how do these editors maintain their independence and integrity while dishing out the daily paper? Maybe that is the reason why we see so much PR articles and trash that is published in newspapers these days? Does “journalism of courage” and other similar epithets end with a visit to the friendly neighbourhood five star hotel?

But that probably explains why media organizations are being run by pappus, or amateur journalists. The editors and senior columnists are away frolicking at the hotels, leaving pappus to run their newspapers and TV channels. It is hardly a wonder that media organizations have faced a lot of flak for their coverage of the recent terror attacks. Pappu journalists became partners in crime to terrorists by providing them live footage of police operations; they just could not figure out what constitutes news.

What we see in newspapers are reports written by people wearing rose-tinted glasses, sitting in five star hotels, the rest of the country be damned. I fail to find common cause with these fellows – “why us?”  bleated pappu journalist Farzana Contractor in Outlook. This sentiment has been echoed by other papers as well. By implication, these fellows say that attacks on the poor were OK, but not on them!

It is time that the editors do what they get paid to do. Since they are braying that the system must change, why not change yourself first?

As a start, senior editors need to guide their juniors as to what journalism is, and what ethics mean. They need to tell their staff what constitutes news and what doesn’t. They need take control of their newspaper or TV channel. Recent events show that editors are doing nothing of the sort and are instead eating/staying at five star hotels. No wonder the newspaper is becoming elitist.

It is sad when an editor of The Times of India dies in a terror attack on a luxury hotel. But is equally sad when the editor of Indian Express says that a five star hotel is like his home, not a second class railway compartment. Journalism of courage does not mean braving bullets in a five star hotel, but living the way that an ordinary man does. Is it then surprising that newspapers are losing readership because today's journalism is too elite?