Two hundred weeks have gone by in a wink. It is time for an evaluation, and to explore new avenues to strengthen the institutional arrangement of the Office of the Readers’ Editor. I invite readers to partake in the process and make it a collaborative effort. Over the next couple of weeks, I will recollect the key issues that were flagged in the weekly columns, including some rather annoying repetitive mistakes. The idea is to create space to make the newspaper ombudsmanship an interactive and participative one, which will give readers an additional tool to hold this newspaper accountable.
My 198 columns can be divided into a dozen categories: reporting norms; confronting the bandwagon effect; the line between news and views; the problem of plagiarism; headline writing; repetition of news; the use of anonymous sources; gender; privacy; editorial judgment; comments and their moderation; media regulation, legal frameworks and the media ecology. The pieces dealing with the last category accounted for nearly one-fifth of the columns. These were meant to lay the groundwork for informed engagement with the newspaper, and as a supplement to the Code of Editorial Values. The tools to evaluate complaints from the readers flowed from these written texts and from four crucial assumptions: one, The Hindu is a common good; two, it exemplifies the interlocking public; three, as a newspaper of record, the role of the Readers’ Editor is to ensure visible mending of errors and lapses; and four, the act of pointing out errors is an act of course correction, the real product of a self-regulation mechanism.
News and views First let’s look at one of the issues that featured often not only in my columns and in various journalism manuals, but also in the Code of Editorial Values: the line that divides news and views. Two of my earliest columns — “ >The adjective filter ” (September 30, 2013) and “ >A framework for accountability ” (October 7, 2013) — examined the issue at length. My observation then was: “The principles are clear, yet practice becomes problematic because of myriad reasons. The primary reason is that reporters are wont to providing the colour, the emotions, and the possible trajectories an event may take. It is this desire to give the full picture that often forces reporters to resort to adjectives — a grammatical device that converts news into views. Many years ago, William Safire wrote that the adjective is the mortal enemy of the noun and it would be prudent to write lean and mean. There is a need to fully decipher, inculcate and practise this advice.” A later column, “ >Fact and opinion ” (February 10, 2014), and four other columns touched upon this issue. What are the effects of these columns? Do the readers notice any difference in the reporting style? Are the news pages distinct from the opinion pages?
Anonymous sources
M.D. Ravikanth, a Chennai-based reader, engaged with the issues relating to anonymity with concern and a sharp eye for detail. He questioned the logic of granting anonymity to a legal expert in the report, “ >Centre sacks 111 lawyers hired by UPA Government ” (July 25, 2016). “One can understand granting anonymity to a source in a political party/officialdom when confidential matters relating to the party/government department are disclosed by them and there is a chance of them being victimised on account of this and the matter merits substance to grant anonymity. On a legal matter, what is the necessity to get the opinion only from a legal expert who demands anonymity? Can’t The Hindu /the author of the story find any other legal expert who can give an opinion on the subject without demanding anonymity,” he asked.
There are at least five columns on this subject: “ >When readers deserve more ” (July 1, 2013), “ >Sources: where to draw crucial lines ” (August 12, 2013), “ >Means and ends matter ” (September 22, 2014), “ >When to grant anonymity ” (July 4, 2015) and “ >Moment to cherish, moment to reflect ” (October 24, 2015). I had recollected Norman Pearlstine’s observation that “the journey has been revealing, showing the abuse of anonymity, the incestuous relations between reporters and sources, particularly in Washington, and the far too casual way journalists can imperil their own freedom and even the survival of their publications through the careless granting of promises or through the assumption of promises never explicitly made.” Readers could come up with a list of recent stories which they feel contain quotes from sources that reporters have granted anonymity to rather easily before exercising other options.
Vidya Reddy from Tulir, an organisation that works to prevent and heal child sexual abuse, felt that the headline, “ >MNS chief Raj Thackeray for Sharia-like law to curb rapes ” (July 25, 2016) was not only presumptuous but also dangerous. She argued whether something becomes “Sharia-like” just because a politician says that the limbs of molesters should be “cut off”. Some of the columns that explored the importance of headlines are: “ >What’s in a headline ” (Feb 11, 2013), “ >Those magical four or five words ” (June 16, 2014), “ >The art and science of headlines ” (December 15, 2014) and “ >The essential reader ” (January 5, 2015). I had asked the headline writers to mull over Harold Evans’s words as they put the pages to bed: “Accuracy, intelligibility and vigour are the requirements, and any newspaper which is careless with its headline writing is careless with its own purpose and vitality… Where every headline goes unerringly to the point with precision or wit, the whole newspaper comes alive. The art of the headline lies in imagination and vocabulary; the craft lies in accuracy of content, attractiveness of appearance, and practicality.” I propose to introduce a tailpiece to some of my columns on the lines of the section, “The Lower case”, in the Columbia Journalism Review, which deals with headlines that editors probably wish they could take back. I invite readers to actively participate in this exercise. Next week we will look at some more issues before opening up this space for readers’ evaluation.
readersditor@thehindu.co.in
