The Hindu : Observer or activist?

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Saturday, Sep 07, 2002

Opinion

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Observer or activist?

By Hasan Suroor

To oppose media activism on the ground that journalists should confine themselves to doing what they are trained to do is to ignore their social responsibility as any other citizen.

JACKY ROWLAND, a BBC correspondent, was among the many Western journalists, who reported the Kosovo conflict and the atrocities allegedly committed by Serb forces against the ethnic Albanians. Three years on, she is at the centre of a heated controversy over her decision to testify before the United Nations tribunal at The Hague which is trying the former Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, for alleged crimes against humanity.

Ms. Rowland's decision has infuriated large sections of the British media and triggered a debate on whether journalists should go beyond their basic remit, which is to record and report events, and get involved in wider issues in the name of social responsibility and commitment to truth. She is the only Western journalist who agreed to appear before the tribunal though like her other colleagues she could have refused to do so arguing that her reports spoke for themselves, and that as a journalist it was not her job to defend them in a war crimes tribunal.

Ms. Rowland's appearance before the tribunal last week, during which she was cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic, was greeted with sneering comments from fellow journalists, including some at the BBC, who accused her of using the occasion for self-publicity. The Daily Telegraph called it an "embarrassing example of journalistic self-promotion" even as others questioned it on the ground that it could have serious implications for journalists in future.

"Rowland's testimony, the first by a journalist in this landmark case, highlighted the wider issue of whether journalists should be required to give evidence in a war crimes trial," The Guardian said.

On the other hand, there was widespread support for Jonathan Randal of The Washington Post who refused to testify saying it could compromise his sources and endanger journalists in similar situations in the future. The dominant view is that a journalist should stick to his traditional role of a chronicler of events rather than take on the role of a jury or a judge. Reporters, it is argued, are there to report what they see and hear truthfully and their independence could be compromised if this role gets radically altered to allow them to become witnesses against a particular regime or system.

The point is also made that in the Rowland case her testimony added nothing to what she had already reported in her despatches and when she made her dramatic appearance she simply defended them as a piece of "balanced, impartial and fair" reporting. The most crucial part of her BBC reports, which made them so controversial, was her allegation that a number of ethnic Albanian prisoners whom the Milosevic regime claimed in 1999 died in NATO bombing had actually been killed by the Serb forces. And, yet when Mr. Milosevic asked her at the trial how she came to that conclusion all she could tell him was: "I have strong doubts that all those prisoners were killed as a direct result of the NATO bombing... If you were hit by a bomb — heaven forbid — I think I'd be able to tell by looking at your body whether that was the manner of death." A statement which even her supporters found a little too pat.

So, was it worth it? Should she have set a precedent which could turn journalists into participants in the events they are expected to report as neutral observers?

The counter-argument is that the issue is not Ms. Rowland's testimony or an individual journalist's action. The larger question we need to address is the role of the media in an increasingly complex and socially inter-connected world where the old notions of "divisions of labour" have become blurred. The traditional image of the ubiquitous reporter with notebook in hand diligently taking down dictation and faithfully reproducing it in the next day's newspaper has become an anachronism.

The phenomenal expansion of the media both in terms of its physical reach and the sheer scale of coverage, thanks to the arrival of 24-hour rolling TV news channels, has changed the very nature of journalism which has become more demanding with reporters in the field expected not simply to break the news but to go behind it, provide the "extra" angle, point fingers, even jump to conclusions if that is what is required to sustain people's interest.

A TV reporter standing beside the rubble of bulldozed Palestinian homes shows you not just the rubble but how it happened, who did it and why. He still gives you both viewpoints but his choice of eyewitnesses and the tone of his reportage leaves you in no doubt who in his judgment is the victim and who the oppressor. In front of millions of his viewers he is taking a moral position — a far cry from the days of anodyne news reports which assiduously avoided taking positions.

This is true as much of Kosovo and Jenin as of Gujarat where Indian journalists tore through the official "purdah" to discover facts independently — thus, willy-nilly, themselves becoming participants in the story. If there were to be a criminal inquiry into the Gujarat incidents there is no reason why these journalists should fight shy of cooperating with it if they feel their testimony might help bring the guilty to book There has always been a certain unease about "independent" journalists — supposedly accountable to no one but their organisation and readers — cooperating with authorities. Somehow, it is seen to smack of "collaboration", a word made dirty by its association with ideological witch-hunts.

But cooperating with an inquiry into a massacre of innocent people, or helping a Government agency solve a crime out of a sheer sense of responsibility and without compromising one's confidantes is not the same thing as betraying one's friends and neighbours for official patronage. Just last week, the BBC handed over to the police untransmitted footage relating to the horrifying case of two murdered schoolgirls in order to help in the investigations. This is the first time a media organisation has surrendered to the police material not first shared with its own viewers, but the BBC says it believes it was in "clear public interest" to do so.

Critics maintain that it went too far pointing out that normally media organisations resist parting with such material for fear of being seen, as one commentator argued, "to betray their sources or putting their camera crews and reporters on the ground in jeopardy". But given the nationwide interest in the case, triggering one of Britain's biggest criminal investigations in recent times, the BBC did what any responsible organisation should have done, and it has been rightly unapologetic about its decision. It has made it clear that "occasionally we will allow footage to be to taken away (by the police) without any legal order and we will occasionally give out untransmitted material to the police when there's a clear public interest which poses no danger to the BBC, its staff or its future ability to operate freely".

If a journalist, in the course of his professional duty, stumbles upon information which, he believes, ought to be shared with a Government agency in public interest — information which might help in tracking down a drugs racket or smash a ring of paedophiles, for example — it would be hugely gross to criticise him for it. The plea that it would compromise his independence or he would lose the trust of his sources is self-serving. Of course, any such decision must be voluntary and not pose a risk to his own or anyone else's life, or affect his "future ability to operate freely", as the BBC says. To oppose media activism on the ground that journalists should confine themselves to doing what they are trained to do is to ignore their social responsibility as any other citizen — which is what they were before they became journalists.

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