There is a particular blinkering effect to anger that denies space for reason, dialogue, and coexistence. It has a steamrolling capacity to undermine institutions built over time, to describe opinions of people from whom we differ as “naïve stupidity”, and effortlessly create a bipolar world view at a time when we need to retain a sense of multitude with innumerable shades of grey. A good newspaper is a modern-day VIBGYOR disc that rotates in the reverse direction and at a meditative speed to reveal all the colours beneath a seemingly monochromatic white.
Pankaj Mishra in his extended essay, “Welcome to the age of anger” ( The Guardian , December 8), points out the contradicting outcomes of a new breed of anger. He writes: “Many people find it easy to aim their rage against an allegedly cosmopolitan and rootless cultural elite. Objects of hatred are needed more than ever during times of crisis, and rich ‘citizens of nowhere’ — as Theresa May dubbed them — conveniently embody the vices of a desperately sought-after but infuriatingly unattainable modernity. And so globalisation, which promotes integration among shrewd elites, helps incite resentment everywhere else, especially among people forced against their will into universal competition.”
I am a daily recipient of anger — some justified and most unjustified — from a section of readers. They see this newspaper’s cosmopolitanism as opposing their sensibilities. The change that has been happening around us at all levels — locally, nationally and internationally — has a strong bearing on our language of public discourse, where anger and animosity are fast replacing inquiry, curiosity and empathy. This is neither a nostalgic recollection of some golden past nor a requiem for the present. It is an assessment.
Diversity a pleasure, not anxiety
I do recognise the power of emotions and that people’s choices and decisions are a product of both emotions and rational thinking. A newspaper is an interactive public space where both emotion and reason play a role to make it magical as suggested by Martha C. Nussbaum. She has wonderfully argued for the love of diversity in one’s fellow citizens. For her, the sense of diversity is a source of pleasure, not of anxiety. Mr. Mishra asks for greater precision in matters of the soul to get our basic bearings: “The stunning events of our age of anger, and our perplexity before them, make it imperative that we anchor thought in the sphere of emotions; these upheavals demand nothing less than a radically enlarged understanding of what it means for human beings to pursue the contradictory ideals of freedom, equality and prosperity.”
As a Readers’ Editor, I do empathise with the justifiable segment that points out errors and factual inaccuracies. We take care to rectify them as early as possible and it is not done in “some obscure pages” as a few insinuate, but in a visible manner in the opinion pages of the newspaper. What is not justifiable is the malicious use of the Corrections and Clarifications column to build a case against the newspaper. This column reflects the newspaper’s ethos, its ethical fibre and its commitment to remain a newspaper of record. The correction is not only published in the print and the Web editions; the actual text is also rectified to give a more accurate picture. If a rare story is wrong, the newspaper has the courage to not only apologise but also take it down from its Web edition and the Internet archives.
This leads to a set of basic questions for which I am searching for answers. Why is the only publication that has a visible mending process targeted? Why should a corrective mechanism be used to attack reporters and the newspaper? Does not the space for post-publication rectification make this newspaper more accountable to its readers than any other media platform in the country? Is it fair to interpret unintended errors as malicious design?
The problem gets complicated with stories that are developing and dynamic in nature. For instance, the newspaper published a story “3 CMs opt out of digitisation panel” (December 2, 2016). It spoke of V. Narayanasamy (Puducherry), Nitish Kumar (Bihar) and Manik Sarkar (Tripura) who turned down the Centre’s invitation to be on the sub-committee of Chief Ministers. Subsequently, the Centre has asked other Chief Ministers to join the panel. Those on the panel now are Chandrababu Naidu (Andhra Pradesh), Naveen Patnaik (Odisha), Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Pawan Kumar Chamling (Sikkim), and Devendra Fadnavis (Maharashtra). Mr. Narayanasamy’s name continues to be on the official list though he has rejected the offer. The point of the story was that opposition Chief Ministers did not wish to be on the panel. Now the panel has Chief Ministers belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party and those who are either neutral or supporters of the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre. The other members are officials and experts. In this entire development, the headline “3 CMs opt out of digitisation panel” was a sober statement of fact. And it is far from the angry reader’s claim that it was “a screaming headline that tries to undermine the government at the Centre because two of three Chief Ministers mentioned in the report do not figure in the list released by NITI Aayog”.
I believe that the process of sharing the vulnerabilities in the newsgathering and news production process over the last decade in the Corrections and Clarifications column on the opinion pages has not rendered this newspaper weak but has made it a trustworthy public site for information and ideas. When the present wave of irrational anger subsides, I am sure these angry readers, too, will accept the effectiveness of this self-regulating mechanism.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
