The introspection journey that looks at the limitations of a mainstream, broadsheet newspaper like The Hindu in the age of digital disruption has generated an interesting mix of responses. While those who repose faith in the legacy media endorse the ideas shared in the last three columns, those who differ even question the earnestness of this exercise. Their alternatives, unfortunately, seem to prefer ‘what-the-public-is-interested-in’ to the idea of what is in public interest, which remains the core of journalism.

A reader from Chennai, M.D. Ravikanth, wrote: “Your introspection (“Journalism’s return to oppositional roots,” Nov. 14) was not as frank and outspoken as it was expected to be.” He then, rather ironically, cited an article by pulp fiction writer Chetan Bhagat, making five sweeping observations as a starting point for multifaceted sustained dialogue on media.

At a deeper level, this column tries to repudiate Mr. Bhagat’s reductionist interpretation and attempts to bring nuances to the relationship between the news gathering experience and the readers’ perception of truth. I have no problem in accepting the first postulate of Mr. Bhagat, who calls Indian and the U.S. media ‘elitist’: “You are not as smart as you think.” I never looked for any exceptionalism for media professionals. But, his other four postulates betray the lack of understanding of the process of journalism.

His second postulate is: “Find out what people want. Discover the truth. Then articulate. Don’t think you know better and you will ‘tell’ them. Listen to them first. They would have told you about Trump.” Journalism’s attempt at discovering truth is not a populist exercise but a rigorous analysis of facts and figures, and it cannot be reduced to an opinion poll. Then, he comes up with this unsubstantiated statement: “If the media were more balanced about Trump, and then brought out his follies, they would have had more impact and credibility. Instead, their hate only created sympathy for Trump.” Where is the question of hate when one reports about factual inaccuracies, blatant misogynism and phobia against migrants? Isn’t there a difference between the real balance where differing opinions are weighed and placed on record and the false balance, where principles, law and civility are pitted against bigotry, lawlessness and majoritarian demagoguery?

Mr. Bhagat’s fourth and fifth points, respectively, are: “Discuss and engage. Don’t patronise.” and “Get out of the bubble.” To discuss, we need to know the issues well as knowledge is central to engagement. Countering rhetoric with facts, figures and a keen understanding of institutions is not a patronising act. It is the first rule of good reporting. However, the idea of bubble is a reality that needs to be addressed first by identifying who are within the bubble and who are outside, and the role of social media in reinforcing stereotypes and making these bubbles a safe haven for misinformation.

The problem with the mainstream media, including The Hindu, is its intrinsic limitation in dealing with the post-fact, post-truth narratives that are bred, nurtured and valorised by the technology companies. The bubble in the social media now encompasses more people. Whether it is Narendra Modi in India or Donald Trump in the United States, the bubble is providing them with a new Teflon coat in which none of the mud that comes from traditional investigative reporting sticks. On the other hand, facts that emerged from systematic investigations are cast as dubious evidence for some well-entrenched hatred of the media.

The recent empirical analysis by Craig Silverman of Buzzfeed News, who has been cited earlier in this column for his brilliant blog “Regret the error”, found that hyper-partisan political Facebook pages and websites are consistently feeding their millions of followers false or misleading information. The fake news has reached such a proportion in the social media that you will believe that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton had commissioned murders, and the Black Lives Matter movement is responsible for brutal burning of a White man.

We need to seriously analyse President Barack Obama’s recent observation: “And people, if they just repeat attacks enough, and outright lies over and over again, as long as it’s on Facebook and people can see it, as long as it’s on social media, people start believing it… And it creates this dust cloud of nonsense.” It important to remember that the Facebook news feed algorithm has no faculty to distinguish the fake news and the real news.

However, the good news is that some of best minds in journalism are looking at the havoc created by the technology companies. The systematic analysis by not just Mr. Silverman alone but also by writers like John Lloyd (The Financial Times), Jim Rutenberg (The New York Times), David Fahrenthold (The Washington Post) and Emily Bell (Columbia Journalism Review) is forcing them, for the first time, to acknowledge the problems with their platforms though not accepting responsibility. For instance, on November 19, 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced new steps to eradicate fake news in his platform. “Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful, and we know people want accurate information. We’ve been working on this problem for a long time and we take this responsibility seriously,” he wrote in a post.

Even as the technology giants like Facebook and Google are grappling to address this huge ethical issue, it is vital to understand that the social media-inspired, echo chamber-type news ecology creates a new class of people who are dangerously ill-informed and self-assured and have no common public sphere to provide contrarian views.

readerseditor@thehindu.co.in

A group of journalists, writers and academics gathered last Wednesday in Kathmandu to bid farewell to the only Southasian magazine, Himal South Asian, even as the news of Donald Trump’s victory was trickling in. Aunohita Mojumdar, editor of Himal, wrote a thoughtful piece, “Chronicle of a death not foretold”, about the sophistication in censorship processes and the refined methods that are being used now to undermine freedom of expression. “The means used to silence Himal are not straightforward but nor are they unique. Throughout the region one sees increasing use of regulatory means to clamp down on freedom of expression, whether it relates to civil-society activists, media houses, journalists or human-rights campaigners. Direct attacks or outright censorship are becoming rarer as governments have begun to fear the backlash of public protests. Strangulation, through the use of bureaucracy, is gaining ground and has several obvious advantages,” she observed.

The external pressures on the media are now well documented, and Ms. Mojumdar’s article is a testimony to the difficult environment in which journalists and media organisations operate. This is one part of the story. The other part is the internal crisis in the way the media reports, investigates and provides context. For nearly two centuries, this profession was guided by cardinal principles that stood in good stead. However, the digital disruption has brought in its wake a new sense of uncertainty. The last two of my columns looked at some of the shortcomings in business reporting. But the limitations are not restricted to business reporting alone.

An unfortunate trend

In the last three-four years, the media seems to be missing ground realities more often than it did in the past. Internationally, it was not just Mr. Trump’s victory that missed the media radar. Brexit, the re-election of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, and the failure to predict a conclusive victory for Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party in Canada are some major examples. In India, in 2014, every reporter suggested that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance would form the government, but no one anticipated the majority by which the BJP would win. The failure to read the ground situation continued with the Aam Aadmi Party’s victory in Delhi and the Janata Dal (United)-Rashtriya Janata Dal combine’s brilliant show in Bihar. For a section of journalists, this internal scrutiny is seen as self-flagellation at a time when the media is haemorrhaging due to digital disruption.

I am convinced that an open discussion, which includes readers and journalists in equal measure, may throw up some possibilities to address the present crisis. My wish is for a robust media. The present set of mediations are aimed at finding means and methods to make media vital in disseminating credible information. One can take some comfort from the fact that Mr. Trump’s victory or the Brexit referendum were based on factors that were beyond facts. We may even legitimately ask, what can journalism do when facts are no longer sacrosanct? I broadly agree with The Guardian’s Katharine Murphy’s article, “Don’t blame the media: Trumpland is a place where truth doesn’t matter”. She wrote: “There have been mass mea culpas from various columnists apologising for various deficiencies, including a failure to understand the undercurrents of Trump’s success. There are two problems with this rush to hate and self-hate… The failure we have to confront, the reality we can’t avoid, is that we are doing the work, journalism is pulling out all the stops, we are doing everything in our power to rise to the occasion in times when our collective commercial reality makes it hard to rise to the occasion — but our work isn’t cutting through.”

Two separate universes

But the problem with this argument is that it fails to recognise the two distinct universes that are at play. If we accept that mainstream media is the public sphere which reflects the multiple realities of our world, then we do not have a credible answer to this nagging question: how can we explain the existence of parallel universes which hardly intersect and interact in our day-to-day coverage?

Joshua Benton, director, Nieman Journalism Lab, argues that the forces that drove this election’s media failure are likely to get worse. He wrote: “One way to think of the job journalism does is telling a community about itself, and on those terms the American media failed spectacularly this election cycle. That Donald Trump’s victory came as such a surprise — a systemic shock, really — to both journalists and so many who read or watch them is a marker of just how bad a job we did. American political discourse in 2016 seemed to be running on two self-contained, never-overlapping sets of information.”

Kyle Pope, editor-in-chief and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, was more unsparing. He conceded the problems posed by social media and the echo chambers, the limitations that flow from brutal economics of the news business, and reporters’ decision to laugh off a candidate whose views and personality seemed so outside the norm of a serious contender for the White House. “While all those things are true, journalism’s fundamental failure in this election, its original sin, is much more basic to who we are and what we are supposed to be,” he wrote. He calls for journalism’s return to oppositional roots. His idea of saving the profession: “We need to embrace, even relish, our legacy as malcontents and troublemakers, people who are willing to say the thing that makes everyone else uncomfortable.” The issue in front of us is multifaceted and needs a sustained dialogue. I hope this column can be the site for the regeneration of ideas.

readers.editor@thehindu.co.in

For nearly a century, the space for free media has seen a cyclical oscillation of governments’ attitude towards media. Governments create a strong legal framework to protect freedom of expression and then invent methods to subvert them. The enabling environment for media is usually followed by a restrictive and stifling one. The push-back comes from media practitioners and the public to regain the space.

Institutions that have power to impose punitive measures on news media organisations and journalists should remember some of the cardinal principles that govern this profession: ask questions, provide the context, hold those in power accountable, provide information that is both comprehensible and comprehensive. Journalism should be read as a common good and not as a crime.

A disturbing ban

The day-long ban of NDTV India raises disturbing questions about the status of the freedom of expression, its legality and long-term implications. The statement of the Editors Guild of India explained how the decision to impose the ban violated the fundamental principles of freedom and justice. This newspaper’s editorial, “Ominous curb on media freedom”, rightly argues for an independent forum to decide violations and that “a committee of officials is not the ideal body to make an independent assessment of what constitutes information that poses an imminent danger to military personnel or civilians”. In the high decibel media bashing, it is important to bear in mind the observations made by Raj Kamal Jha, editor of The Indian Express, in the presence of the Prime Minister. “Good journalism is not dying; it is getting better and bigger. It’s just bad journalism makes lot more noise than it used to do five years ago,” he said.

Is there a way to distinguish good journalism from the bad one? What are the yardsticks? Is an adversarial relationship with the government alone a marker of good journalism? From my personal experience as a journalist for three decades, the best visible distinguishing element, among numerous components that make good journalism, is the ability to accept mistakes and offer timely corrections. News organisations may be staffed with some of the most outstanding talent in the world. However, they cannot wish away mistakes, errors in editorial judgment and human frailties in this deadline-driven process. Good and ethical ones rectify the mistakes and the bad ones often camouflage them, and on occasions justify them. The idea of self-reflection, the act of holding the mirror close, the space for course correction and the constant striving for improving the quality of journalism are important in the newsrooms of respectable news organisations.

My last column, “What ails business journalism”, was a product of the same concern. It flagged a major failure. The 800-odd-word column was a call to resharpen business reporting skills. However, a long-time reader of this newspaper and editor of the Chennai-based business magazine, Industrial Economist, S. Viswanathan, felt otherwise and has written a reply twice as big as the column. This office values feedback, criticisms and contrarian views. It often engages with readers who differ from the newspaper’s position on a host of issues and strives to encourage dialogue. Given the newspaper’s reach and our own country’s diversity, we recognise that it is impossible to produce a report or an editorial or an opinion piece that satisfies every reader. But, I believe the newspaper should be seen as a whole, which may contain sections with which one agrees and those with which one disagrees. And, that’s par for the course.

There are two parts to Mr. Viswanathan’s criticism of my column. First he has a very restrictive idea of the office of the Readers’ Editor. In his introductory note to his rejoinder, he wrote: “I understood the role of the ombudsman was to respond to readers’ suggestions and criticisms. But this senior journalist with wide experience revels in functioning as a regular columnist freely commenting on all and sundry issues.” But, the Terms of Reference (ToR) for the Readers’ Editor, which are binding, spell out the key objectives: “To institutionalise the practice of self-regulation, accountability, and transparency; to create a new visible framework to improve accuracy, verification, and standards in the newspaper; and to strengthen bonds between the newspaper and its millions of print platform and online readers.” The ToR makes it clear that responding to readers’ complaints is just one component of the RE’s work.

The changing ecosystem

Mr. Viswanathan’s response actually validates my column rather than repudiating it. First, he talked about the changed revenue model for publications — where substantial revenue five decades ago was from the cover price as opposed to the present situation where advertising accounts for bulk of the revenue. Second, he agreed with the column that direct interaction between the top honchos and the media is limited. “Corporates zealously guard their gates through PR agencies,” he wrote. He then listed the names of the select business leaders who broke the mould to talk to the press and then veered off into the legal cost of taking on the corporates. Then he shifted his focus to “200 year plus adoration of the superiority of phoren oracles”, citing a far more open door policy by corporates towards journalists from The Economist, Financial Times or The New York Times. His letter is a testimony to the challenges in front of business journalism in India.

readerseditor@thehindu.co.in