I
myself quit journalism in 1988, but I have been following the profession
closely – not least because my father was in it for several decades, and ran a
daily virtually singlehanded with a team of young greenhorns for the last
almost fifteen years of his life. I have profound respect for the greats in the
profession, so it pains much more than pleases me to write this invective. The
essay is, therefore, written with apologies to the ‘choice and master spirits’,
of whom I have known a few in the flesh: alas, almost all would be older than
65 now, if they were all alive still. My only angst and complaint, in fact, is
that so many hide behind the aura of the few greats to live despicable lives,
and that things have been steadily growing worse over my working lifetime.
1. Journalists
keep talking about others, and it’s often just to cover up the fact that their
own lives are boring, aimless and empty.
2. They flit from sensation to sensation, because
they cannot focus on anything that is really serious over the long term. The
honourable exceptions are there only to underline the fact that they are
painfully, almost invisibly few.
3. They find fault with and sermonize to the whole
world, but are more sensitive than all others to any suggestions that their own morals be monitored – how much what
they say contradicts what they do.
4. When coups and earthquakes aren’t happening, as
on most days of the year, they ‘cook’ news. But catch them admitting it before
they are stone drunk!
5. They are far more interested in sales/TRPs than
in either truth or human feelings.
6. They are pathetically easy to bribe. I have seen
it done with whiskey bottles and suit lengths or saris.
7. ‘Power without responsibility, the prerogative
of the harlot throughout the ages’… it attracts the basest sort of people on
the average, those who themselves know they are not good enough for any real
profession, be it politics or medicine, teaching or writing, being a judge or a
bureaucrat or even a good plumber.
8. Over the last twenty five years, it has drawn unfocussed
and untalented young people in droves in India, exactly like engineering,
though perhaps more of females, who have brought down standards drastically.
Today, even writing about what restaurants are serving or how rich men’s wives
are partying dares to be called journalism.
9. Many make much money through simple blackmail:
‘I have found out this stinker about you; how much will you pay me not to
publish it?’
10. Once
journalists saw themselves as freedom fighters. These days often their highest
ambition is to become page-three celebrities. And while as a rule they claim to
be all in favour of democracy, they fawn shamefully (and shamelessly) on the
rich, powerful and famous – even if they are famous only for walking the ramp
three quarters naked.
11. They
mutilate and coarsen language as if their lives depend on it. Most would write
‘The PM on Sunday said’… I leave it to anyone who claims to know English to
remember what the right syntax is.
12. They
are as a rule schizophrenic personalities: too many preach extreme forms of
liberalism for others while maintaining rigid old-fashioned regimes for their
spouses and children at home. Go ahead and quiz twenty journalists privately about
how many of them will be delighted to hear that their children are gay.
13. They
are eager to tell you bad things about people (a teacher has caned a student
unconscious) but they will virtually never
take the trouble to write good things (a teacher has devoted forty years of his
life, 340 days a year, to working quietly and diligently for the common good) –
and they are not ashamed to justify this ugliness with ‘But that’s what the
public wants!’ To a very large extent the whole profession is about washing
people’s dirty linen in public for the consumption of the voyeur that is there
in most of us, claiming endless gratification.
14. They
get very angry when they are told that they are merely serving this or that
businessman’s interest.
15. I
was taught as a cub reporter that after a cursory glance, official handouts and
press releases should go straight into the waste bin, and if a mandarin,
minister or big-ticket CEO makes tall claims, your job is to immediately smell
a rat and probe where s/he is lying, covering up or window dressing. Alas, far
too many ‘journalists’ pass off such handouts as news, often unedited! After
all, a CEO has deigned to acknowledge their existence – shouldn’t they suck up
to him to show how grateful they are?
16. In
India, the average journalist’s loftiest ambition (unless it is as mentioned in
point 10 above) is to be handed out a government sinecure – ambassadorship to
some obscure country or a membership to the Rajya Sabha. Imagine what you have
to do for thirty years or more to ‘earn’ that!
A
female who was once my pupil – for my sins – and grew up to be a most
despicable (unless it were pathetic) character has also become a so-called
journalist. Another reason for my much-diminished regard for the tribe. You can make a quick survey of this blog to find out what sort of women I hold in high regard, and what sort attracts only my contempt and ridicule.
I
end with yet another apology, especially to the likes of Kipling and Hemingway
and Graham Greene, who graduated from journalism to something immeasurably
higher, and the likes of Mayuri Mukherjee, another old girl, who have in recent times
been trying hard to become journalists who can be taken seriously.
