Bill the bard, put it better, of course: “‘Tis the time’s plague, when madmen lead the blind.”
Aakar Patel is no Shakespeare, but he makes a similar point: Indian media doesn’t know but they are trying to show us the way. Patel, formerly of Asian Age, Deccan Chronicle, Mid-Day and Divya Bhaskar, tears into our information providers in a column in Lounge, the Saturday supplement of the business daily Mint.
Indian journalists do not know how to ask questions. Indian journalists look for validation of their views rather than fresh information. Indian newspaper proprietors are more knowledgeable than their editors. Indian writers are rarely asked to write for publications abroad because they are so bad. Etcetera.
“There are good journalists in India, but they tend to be business journalists. Unlike regular journalism, business journalism is removed from emotion because it reports numbers. There is little subjectivity and business channel anchors are calm and rarely agitated because their world is more transparent.
“Competent business reporting here, like CNBC, can be as good as business reporting in the West. This isn’t true of regular journalism in India, which is uniformly second-rate….
“You could read Indian newspapers every day for 30 years and still not know why India is this way. The job of newspapers is, or is supposed to be, to tell its readers five things: who, when, where, what and why. Most newspapers make do with only three of these and are unlikely to really you ‘what’….”
Where would Indian journalism be if it weren’t for its columnists?
Photograph: courtesy My Space
Also read: SEBI chief: Business journalism or business of journalism?
Raju Narisetti: ‘Good journalists, poor journalism, zero standards’
New York Times: Why Indian media doesn’t take on Ambanis
CNBC barbs that resulted in a Rs 500 crore lawsuit
Pyramid Saimira, Tatva, and Times Private Treaties
How come none in the Indian media spotted Satyam fraud
When a music mag (Rolling Stone) takes on Goldman Sachs
When Jon Stewart does the business interview of the year
Also read: Aakar Patel on working at The Asian Age
He’s right in the sense that journalists today have terrible `news sense’. They fail to gather the basic bits of information required to turn in a good story. Often comment seeps into news reports and the desks let these pass along with spelling and grammar errors. I don’t agree that business journalists are any better. they turn in equally sub-standard stories that have factual errors and biases. The business TV like CNBC are worse as their anchors sit and speculate and say stuff that can influence the market and mislead small investors.
Especially Kannada TV News readers have horrible sense of questioning. Once I have laughed whole for a question asked by the journolist who was questioning a Sitting MLA who was trailing in counting and was definitely going to loose “Ee Bagge Nimage enansista ide?”. And many time the enlightened elite sitting in studiio reading the news will ask to reporters when there is any calamity “what the food packets supplied containing. Is there any complaint about taste?” etc., instead of actually seeking any informations regarding how it has happened? is the calamity man made? and to find out whether it could have been avoided? or to say least, if anyone wants to help how best he can be some help. For me watching a kannad news that to in TV9 or Suvarna is most entertaining as they will reveal their in-depth knowledge about so many things on earth.
why just journalism? take sports, science and research, health care, quality of (almost) any infrastructure, quality of politics and bureaucracy, politeness in public, sanitation or even drinking water supply (the most basic necessity of all human beings): we seem to uniformly second rated in almost just any field. There are miles to go for us. Hopefully, a strong economy will automatically change many of these (like in Japan or in any east Asian tiger countries).
second rate journalism for third rate citizens.. journalism certainly better than what average Indian deserves. Indians as a race are not rational and that gets reflected in journalism.
As the education and knowledge of urban Indians have improved so has the journalism..Can you imagine anything ill being written about Nehru or Gandai Khan’s offsprings in the press in 60s, 70s and 80s?
So that way journalism has made that leap.. But our other pillars of democracy still stuck in quagmire!!
Antonia Maino’s sacrifice if it had happened in 60, she would have got Bharat Ratna’s ten times and her name would have got added in our national anthem through yet another constitutional amendment.
Nothing of that sort happened in this decade because free press elucidated the reasons for Antonia’s sacrifice. If we need more improvement in free press we have to start teaching our kids how to be rational and ask what and why questions.
Aakar Patel hits the spot!
Patel writes that Indian journalists, as a tribe, fail at objective reporting because they “look not for information, but for agreement with the convictions they hold.” That’s so true!
Really, the only part of Patel’s article I disagree with is his view of Macaulay’s contribution. If India had adopted an education model based on Swami Vivekananda’s conceptualization, we’d have almost certainly been better off than with Macaulay’s cynical, self-hating, Vedas-are-redundant, English-is-the-best-way-forward model.
Indian journalists look for validation of their views rather than fresh information.
So, true. Applies to all bigshots like Barkha, Sardesai, Prannay Roy etc.
div and Narayana, I wholly agree with you.
“You could read Indian newspapers every day for 30 years and still not know why India is this way ”
nice.