As newspapers prosper, journalism declines

I received a letter from R. K. Mishra, Editor of Patriot, early in 1988 asking for an article for the special number the newspaper was planning to publish to mark the completion of 25 years. I decided to use the opportunity to discuss the state of the press. 

Patriot  was launched in March 1963 by a company of which Aruna Asaf Ali was the chairperson and Dr A.V. Baliga of Bombay the chief promoter. Edatata Narayanan was the Editor  I was a member of the founding editorial team but left the paper after two years. 

PATRIOT’s quarter century spans an eventful period in the history of Indian journalism as well as politics. These 25 years have seen a generational change in both these fields.

Before Patriot’s appearance the Indian press was characterized by much of a muchness, thanks at least in part to the ideological uniformity enforced by the common economic interests of newspaper owners. Lacking the courage to challenge Jawaharlal Nehru directly, the Big Business press picked on his associates with pronounced leftist leanings. It was in this context that Patriot came on the scene with a clarion call to the people to be “on guard against Reaction”.

Since then the battle lines have got blurred. Indeed, in the prevailing eclectic atmosphere, ideology itself seems to have lost its relevance.  Looking back, there can be differences of opinion on what Patriot was able to accomplish in the battlefield of ideologies. But on one point there can be no difference: among the English-language newspapers with their sickening sameness it has stood out as something which looks different and reads different.

The most striking aspect of the transformation that has taken place in the Indian press in the last 25 years is the infusion of new technology. It is worth noting that the leadership in this area came from the small and medium newspapers, and not from the Big Business press with vast resources and immense managerial expertise.

In fact, with the singular exception of The Hindu (which, incidentally, has been the technology leader during much of its existence of more than a century), the earliest to adopt the new technology based on photo-composing and offset printing were some Indian language publications and English newspapers which did not form part of the big league. While the Government was willing to relax its tight import policy to permit modernization of the newspaper industry, the large newspapers in the arrogance of their affluence ignored the possibilities opened up by the new technology. Evidently the managerial whiz kids did not serve their institutions well in a critical period. Because of their utter incompetence, the large newspapers are paying a heavy price today as the compulsions of competition have forced upon them the decision they sought to avoid earlier.

Less striking from the point of view of the ordinary reader, but more damaging to the cause of press freedom is the progressive devaluation of the editor during the last 25 years.

The age of heroism which saw the rise of great men in politics had also seen the emergence of great editors. They were men who earned the respect of the community they served by the devotion with which they espoused its causes. Even when their reach was limited to a few thousands they commanded influence of a kind which eludes today’s editors with access to millions of readers.

The decline of the editor started soon after Independence when the large newspapers became appendages of industrial houses. As the process continued, in several institutions the editor’s area of responsibility shrank. Today there are few editors who are masters of their house or even team leaders in a real sense.

Somewhere along the way to media moghuldom Ramnath Goenka made the discovery that he can bring out a newspaper without an editor. Someone else invented the device of an executive editor to reduce the editor to a figurehead.

As the power of the editor declined, managerial busybodies emerged as the effective power centres in newspaper establishments. Not content with the authority they wielded a few of them have sought self-glorification by getting their names inscribed in the imprint lines, sometimes above those of their editors, to proclaim to the world at large where each stands in the warrant of precedence. Had not the law enjoined upon the press to print the names of the editor, along with those of the printer and publisher, the devalued species may even have become extinct by now.

No tears need be shed for most of the editors, for few among them have commanded the respect of their juniors and fewer still have displayed the necessary modicum of self-respect when the occasion demanded it. But the virtual destruction of the organic relationship that once existed between the editor and the newspaper reading community is something to weep over.

Today we have newspaper chains extending from Chandigarh to Cochin and from Ahmedabad to Patna which flaunt in their editions names of editors based so far removed from the many locations where the processes of editing, printing and publishing are carried out that they cannot develop the same close ties with their readers as the editors of yore even if they were inclined to try.

The institution of resident editors which was designed to fill the gap of absentee editors has been a dismal failure.

Some years ago when there was a minor furore over the unceremonious ouster of B.G. Varghese from the editorship of The Hindustan Times, a young researcher conducted a survey among the newspaper’s readers in Delhi to find out what they thought about it. To his dismay he found that many HT readers did not know that Varghese had been its editor. Readers who are able to identify resident editors must indeed be negligible.

A direct consequence of the decline of the editor is the deterioration in the editorial quality of the newspapers. Fortunately for the newspapers, the average reader does not easily notice such deterioration. In recent times, improvements on the production side have in fact helped many of them to hide professional shortcomings on the editorial side. What is more, commercial prosperity has induced in them the delusion that all is hunky-dory.

The theory propagated by the large newspapers that they are the perpetual winners in a daily referendum is based on the fallacious belief that the readers make a free choice on a continuous basis. The fact is that competition in the newspaper industry is more imaginary than real.

A careful analysis of the growth of circulations will show that, barring rare exceptions, there is no evidence of readers switching from one newspaper to another. By and large the recorded improvements in circulation have been achieved not at the expense of other newspapers but by drawing from the ranks of new readers thrown up by burgeoning population and spreading education.

The newspapers that are growing faster than the rest are simply the ones that happen to have greater ability to pull in new readers than the others. A close scrutiny will reveal that this ability is determined by diverse factors. Neither editorial excellence nor managerial expertise has a decisive place among them.

A sad consequence of the decline of the editor is that the new entrants in the journalistic profession are deprived of the opportunity to get a good grounding under a competent leadership. This situation must necessarily lead to a further fall in standards over the coming decades unless conscious efforts are made early to stem the rot.

The press has always been a wide open field, and must remain so. From time to time charlatans have entered the field and held sway. But they have operated largely on the fringes. A disquieting development of recent times is the large-scale incursion of non-professional elements into mainline journalism.

Not only the editorial page but even the news columns have been invaded by aggressive campaigners assaulting the sensibility of readers looking for factual information and fair comment. Respectable newspapers have started leasing out space on the sports page to players to comment upon their own matches (and presumably get paid for it) and to commercial houses to “sponsor” the results of matches. There is a danger of this trend spreading to the general news pages like a bad habit in the same way as the permissive journalism practised by film magazines has corrupted the daily press.

When the Rajya Sabha witnessed turmoil over attempts by Congressmen, led by some Ministers, to browbeat the Chairman into withdrawing a ruling recently, one newspaper carried in its news columns a blow-by-blow account provided not by one of its correspondents who was in the press gallery but by a member of the House belonging to the Opposition. That the MP’s account was far more appealing than that of the journalists who covered the event is a sad commentary on the standards of reporting. It is not surprising that  journalists bred on handouts and briefings should be found wanting when they are required to describe events to which they are witnesses.

For the press to draw upon the services of active participants to report on events, be they sporting encounters or parliamentary interludes, is to abdicate its professional responsibility. When newspaper columns are turned over to politicians, lawyers, sportsmen and chartered accountants, what we have is anything but journalism. As a solution to professional problems it is a case of the remedy being worse than the disease.

Like any other profession – perhaps more than any other – journalism has among its practitioners persons with unrequited political ambitions. It will be unfair to expect them to give up their ambitions. But is it unreasonable  to ask that they desist from prostituting the profession in the pursuit of their personal goals? 

This question needs to be raised in the context of the conduct of Indian Express in the twilight days of Zail Singh’s presidency. While the whole truth behind the conspiratorial goings-on of the time is not available yet, and may never be known, the bits of information which have come to light clearly point to the newspaper’s involvement in illicit political activity even as it was  engaged in the legitimate professional task of running to earth evil-doers in high places.

The newspaper’s editorial exhortations to the President to act, which in the very nature of things was an incitement to destroy the Constitution which he was sworn to protect, defend and uphold, acquires an ominous ring in the light of subsequent revelations that the spiritual, temporal and journalistic advisers of its proprietor were all engaged, in their own ways, in furthering the cause. What happened was no aberration. It was an extreme manifestation of the poisonous consequences of the vulgarization of the press that has gone on unchecked over the years.

                                                          
                                                                         Patriot, Silver Jubilee Special Number, March 1988.