Credibility in peril

The Niira Radia tapes expose the rot in the media and show there is a need for radical reform of journalistic and industry practices.

THE 104 leaked conversations between corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and some of India's best-known journalists continue to agitate the public. Although much of the mainstream media blacked them out, they have reached the public through the Internet, derivative media reports, and special damage control television programmes featuring some editors. The editors came through either as peevish, hysterical and abusive or as lame, compromised and bent on obfuscation. This has further dented their credibility.

An overwhelming majority of journalists a typically unsentimental, sceptical, even cynical lot, hardened by exposure to the ways of the world, and usually reluctant to publicly criticise fellow professionals seem to be appalled at the apparent crossing of many boundaries: between journalism and political lobbying/fixing; between using sources and letting them use the media; between legitimate and impermissible subjects of discussion; between sharing professionally relevant information with sources and offering them unsolicited advice; and between talking about other journalists on relevant matters and ratting on one's colleagues.

The tapes, whose authenticity is not questioned by most of those whom they feature, show that Niira Radia pressed editors to act as couriers and middlemen/women between political parties and facilitate a dialogue between politicians crucial to Cabinet formation, to support and propagate particular policies on the exploitation of hydrocarbons, coal and electromagnetic spectrum to favour certain business houses, and to extract from journalists information that could be used to influence, even capture, policymaking.

There is no way of verifying whether the journalists lobbied politicians as promised. But two things are clear. The content and tone of their conversations show extraordinary familiarity and chumminess. The fact that Niira Radia could make explicitly political demands on and ask them to fix deals suggests that the ethically crucial line of demarcation between journalism and lobbying was blurred.

Second, more important, beyond proposing specific policy approaches to natural resources, corporate taxation, and so on, Niira Radia laid out plausible-sounding arguments in favour of certain corporate interests. She asked for articles and stories that prioritised the national interest over a gas price agreement between the two Ambani brothers. These were duly delivered by journalists who had made up their minds before looking at facts, logic and merits.

Breach of ethics

This is a serious breach of journalistic ethics, including independence of judgment, balance, sound assessment of the long-term public consequences of official decisions, and eschewing collusive reporting. Niira Radia all but dictated the line and the editors followed it, disingenuously masking narrow private self-interest as the national interest. No wonder people are astounded at the magnitude of the stakes Rs.176,000 crore in the 2G scam and Rs.30,000 crore in the gas business and the role of journalists whom many considered icons. The shock effect is magnified given the star system that has developed with the proliferation of 24-hour TV news channels.

Some editors have long been known for their political clout and ambition, the temptation to gain power without responsibility, as Stanley Baldwin called it. Some have recently secured political positions and other favours. But not many people, including journalists, were aware of the reach and influence that corporate lobbyists now command. The Niira Radia tapes have naturally provoked righteous indignation.

A small minority of journalists minimised the disclosed wrongdoings and argued that those who published the excerpts did not get the journalists' side of the story or corroborate the raw evidence; this was necessary because the tapes cannot be forensically authenticated and their provenance is unknown; and that the media ignored the larger issue of the state's intrusion into privacy, while sensationalising the disclosures that only have short-term, ephemeral relevance.

In this view, Niira Radia was as good a source as any. The intensely competitive nature of the Indian media impels and justifies reliance on all kinds of sources. Corporate lobbyists are indispensable if you want to get a fix on things. There is no evidence of a quid pro quo. So there was misjudgment but no professional misconduct or violation of ethics on the editors' part. Therefore, the critics' shock-and-awe reaction and the whipping of a lynch mob or carpet-bombing mentality are deplorable. The named editors must not be hounded out or humiliated.

These arguments are profoundly mistaken. Lack of authentication of the tapes does pose a problem. We do not know who leaked them or why, nor what the as yet undisclosed 5,747 tapped conversations contain. Yet, on balance of probability, the tapes seem authentic. Many voices in the conversation are easily identifiable, as are their accents, style and tenor. The conversations are in the public domain, being part of Supreme Court records.

The privacy issue is significant only for the few strictly personal conversations. The bulk of the exchanges pertain to political events and the influencing of policies and Cabinet formation. They centrally involve the public's right to know how corporations subvert democratic processes and institutions. In this case, this right takes precedence over the individual's right to privacy, except where the conversations are purely personal.

True, the Indian state cavalierly taps thousands of telephone lines (it admits to 6,000 wiretaps and 500-600 e-mail connections). This violates the ethical norm that wiretapping must be done only in exceptional cases, after careful determination that it will prevent the commission of or incitement to a major offence. It must be properly authorised. India needs stricter and more transparent norms. At any rate, Niira Radia's phone was tapped by the Income Tax Department with due authorisation (although its basis can be questioned).

The question of getting the other side of the story is tricky. Some of the greatest media exposes for example, the My Lai massacre, Watergate and WikiLeaks took place without the other side being given its say. But where there are good grounds for believing that the tapes/documents are prima facie authentic, journalists must weigh the pros and cons of making them public. It is highly likely that approaching the other side would have resulted in the suppression of many great stories and this would be against the public interest. This is a reasonable judgment in respect of the Niira Radia tapes. Big business houses, with the enormous power they wield over the media through large advertising budgets, not to speak of other forms of influence, could have prevented the disclosures.

It is indisputable that journalists sometimes have to use shady operators as sources. Often, a company aggrieved at a decision that favours its rivals may leak information that serves the public interest without intending to do so. But journalists must make a distinction between normal sources and corporate lobbyists. Both put their own spin on stories. Good, experienced journalists know how to cull the facts. The lobbyist goes beyond spin. He or she presents a craftily worked-out package facts + inside information + heavy spin + arguments and demands that the story/article be displayed in a certain way. Besides, lobbyists control access to industrialists and trade it for favours, and this can transgress the boundary with outright bribery. Lobbyists have more influence than normal sources because they command enormous resources.

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It is futile to argue that the intensely competitive nature of the Indian media is inevitable, natural and healthy. There is something peculiar about our media: overdependence on corporations for revenue generation through advertising. In no other large democracy does advertising account for the better part of the total income of media companies as it does in India. This is by no means natural but is a consequence of publishers' deliberate policy of setting a high advertisement-editorial ratio coupled with the low cover price of newspapers, which typically meets less than a quarter of the cost of production. This process has been recently accelerated by predatory pricing to drive out competition.

Generalised overdependence on advertising threatens the survival of small newspapers with an independent, radical orientation critical of corporations. This discourages diversity and pluralism. In any case, it is wrong to plead that relying on corporate lobbyists and letting them dictate the agenda, signing private treaties, selling editorial space to the highest bidder, and other ways of sailing close to the wind are justified because TV channels must compete for eyeballs whatever it takes and no matter what the moral cost and damage to the elementary journalistic values of truthfulness, authenticity, balance and accuracy are.

The choice between adhering to these values and violating them cannot be left to individual journalists alone. There is a need for a comprehensive code of conduct that should include commitment to ethical methods, diligence in reporting and analysis, and disclosure of assets. There is also a need to investigate paid news and private treaty arrangements and discourage predatory pricing and other unethical practices.

Such reforms are part of the media's obligations to society. Unless it is held down to them, they will quickly squander the gains they have historically made as truthful chroniclers of events and processes, as a forum for debate, as the watchdog of democracy, and as whistle-blowers. Worse, the media will lose their greatest asset: credibility. That will be a great tragedy and a big setback to democracy.