Mr Girilal Jain, former Editor of The Times of India and an eminent political commentator, says that quality has suffered considerably in the race to raise circulation of newspapers which are becoming like any other products and not an agent of change which it should be, specially, in a developing country like India
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I am in the position of the proverbial cat who set out on haj after devouring 900 mice. Having practised journalism for over four decades, I do not feel morally entitled to warn against the dangers of a profession which by its nature is full of perils.
But it is precisely because I am old sinner that I feel both qualified and compelled to speak of the temptations, sometimes irresistible, specially in difficult times such as these, to which we journalists tend to be prey. The temptations I refer to are not all physical. These do not worry me overmuch. I refer to subtler temptations – the temptation to believe, for instance, that it is in our power to launch a moral crusade and produce a moral order.
I have occasionally written about these problems. I have not been heeded in the past, and I am not likely to be heeded now. But habits die hard. So here I am to read you a lecture, though my own experience should have warned me against yielding to the temptation. I hope you will bear with me.
A little over two centuries ago when journalism was in its infancy, it was described as literature in hurry. Those were leisurely times, both in terms of the pace at which events moved and the speed at which they could be known and reported even over short distances. We live in very different I times. Events of great import follow one another with breath-taking speed.
They get known, reported and commented upon instantaneously the world over. Surely it is intellectual laziness, if not something worse, intellectual dishonesty, which can persuade us to repeat this worn out description of the profession.
Journalism today is only hurry, not literature in hurry. We report and comment, often without reservation and qualification, on developments about the background of which we know precious little. Quite candidly, more often than not, we spread misinformation even if unwittingly. We do not inform. We only create the illusion in the mind of the reader that he is being informed. And I am not referring to the casual reader who looks at the headlines on page one and moves on to the sports page, commerce page or the local reports or whatever else interests him. I am referring to the small minority who read the edit page of its newspaper. I am also not referring just to Indian newspapers. I am referring to papers the world over. It is the same case of the blind leading the blind.
This is not the only source of the dilemma the conscientious and responsible among us must face. As the profession has become increasingly competitive, Gresham’s Law of the bad driving out the good has come to operate. The Times, London, is a classical example within our knowledge. It has had to deliberately lower its standards in order to attract the kind of circulation which can help it attract the kind of advertisement support it needs to stay in business. Lord Thompson poured in millions and millions of pounds sterling to keep it going as the ‘National Institution’ he and many others the world over, regarded it, but to no avail.
The Times had to find a proprietor and an editorial style appropriate to the times in which it now operates. It has found them and thus ensured its survival, but at the cost of its spirit.
Whatever the validity of the concept of economies of scale in industry, size beyond a point must militate against quality in journalism. I for one am convinced that both mass circulation and bulk are by and large the enemy of quality in journalism. The second is, of course, a new phenomenon in journalism even in the west. It is the result of the unprecedented economic growth and the rise of the consumer society in the postwar period. But even the concept of mass circulation is not all that old. It dates back to the twenties and the thirties in Britain, for instance. Earlier journalism was quite an elite phenomenon. In India we are just beginning to move into that kind of situation. Even so, the English language press is protected against the dangers inherent in it to some extent by the more or less static nature of the total readership. That creates problems of a different kind. But that is another matter.
The fact that millions of trees are cut down every day so that so much piffle may circulate without let or hindrance and choke the reader’s minds with trivial details is a sad commentary on modern civilization. It is not for nothing that discerning minds in the west itself call it a predatory civilisation or organised vandalism. In India, the cost of newsprint, restrictions in its availability, and the smallness of the total outlay on advertisements have acted as constraints. But the drift in that direction is all too visible.
The size of a publication inevitably depends on the advertisement support for it. In the case of the successful one, it must, more or less inevitably again, concentrate the management’s attention on the publication’s commercial aspect. News and views then tend to be seen as editorial material thrown in between advertisements as if to break the monotony and to hook on the reader. This cannot but affect adversely the status of journalists, however exalted a view they may have of their calling and role. Again, we in India are far behind the so called advanced countries in this regard. But again, the trend in that direction is obvious enough.
As I see it, the dice is loaded against what one might call ‘Responsible Journalism’ though I must hasten to confess that, if asked, I would find it difficult to define ‘Responsible Journalism’. There is scope for genuine differences of opinion on what constitutes ‘Responsible Journalism’. Even so, I shall make a couple of points on the basis of my own experience as editor of The Times of India. First, an Editor of even an established newspaper has to be sensitive to the public mood, especially when a certain emotion seizes a significant section of the readership. Second, he can ignore it at some cost to his own reputation and the institution’s interest. Third, the cost may not turn out to be unbearable in the long run, but it requires stout hearts on both sides of the management-editorial divide to stick to the chosen course in the short run if the atmosphere is as surcharged as it was, for example, in 1977, and again in 1987.
To bring in a personal note, the proprietors of The Times of India stood by me on both occasions. But it did put considerable strain on me, especially in 1987.1 was torn between the demands of what I regarded as ‘Responsible Journalism’ and the demands of many readers, and therefore the interest of the ‘Institution’ I was serving. I would have in all conscience felt obliged to quit if the proprietors had as much as hinted that I was jeopardising the future of the organisation.
This is, however, an aside. The central point I wish to make is that ‘invisible’, indeed not so ‘invisible’, pressures have also begun to operate in the profession. These pressures do not come from the government and not, at least in some cases, from the proprietors and the advertisers. They come from the volatile section of the readership which, like the floating vote, can be crucial at least in the short run. Fellow journalists and publications catering to this volatile readership can add to one’s woes, even though they themselves do not benefit from this approach in the long run. The problem, if anything, is more acute in Indian Language Publications, which are closer to the people in their areas. Most Indian-language publications are therefore more vulnerable to mass emotion in periods of stress and strain, as on the occasion of sharpening of linguistic and communal and caste tensions, for example.
Up to the sixties, it was possible to talk of a publication in terms of it being compliant and non-compliant, that is sensitive to the desires of the chief authority. Since then, it has been even less than honest to use the old yardstick. These days it requires enormous courage to be on the side of the Prime Minister, or even a Chief Minister, the latter observation, of course, applying to the regional press. So who is compliant? Those who run against the current? or those who run with it?
There is a lot of vague talk of one being pro-establishment or anti-establishment in connection with journalists and journalism. I firmly hold that there is no establishment in India in any sphere of activity in view of the divergence of the social, economic, educational, and linguistic backgrounds of the individuals in top positions. There is, of course, a bureaucratic elite dominated by the IAS. But in the last 20 years, a majority of its senior-most members ruling the roast in the central secretariat have, to my personal knowledge, been opposed to the Prime Minister in office except for brief periods when the intelligentsia as a whole has, by and large, been similarly disposed.
We are a truly ‘Democratic’ society, if by ‘democratic’ society we mean that there is not much difference between the ‘views’ of a clerk and a secretary to the Government of India, or Chairman of an industrial corporation. So how can anyone be pro-establishment or anti-establishment? Indeed, one cannot even be pro-government or anti-government in the proper sense of the term. For the non-parochial press, the issue has since independence been personalised. One is either broadly for the Prime Minister in office or against the Prime Minister. This was true in Nehru’s Days. Only the problem has got accentuated since the Congress split in 1969 when Indira Gandhi came to practise what has been called the ‘Cult of Personality’.
This opposition to the Prime Minister is, in my view, not an aberration or passing phenomenon. It is there to stay. The reasons are simple. India is going through a social and economic convulsion. This convulsion must weaken moral and other restraints which held our society together in the past. This must in turn produce a nostalgia for a stable order even among those who have made fortunes in this period precisely because of unstable conditions. This nostalgia, accompanied as it must be by the need to cut corners, leads to the search for a scapegoat, especially among those who have felt left out of the loot, that is, salaried members of the intelligentsia. And who can be a better scapegoat than one who is seen to concentrate all authority in his or her hands?
‘Power without responsibility’, the saying goes, ‘is the privilege of the harlot’. In this line of reasoning, the critics have compared journalism to Harlotry. We are supposed to command power without accountability. The comparison is just to a point, though not for the reason which is cited. The journalist and the Harlot provide ventilation for emotions which can, if allowed to accumulate, explode into much greater violence than we already witness in our society. The experience during the emergency is an illustration in point. The absence of ventilation led to an accumulation of hatred against the regime of such intensity that it blew off the latter when it got an opportunity in the shape of elections.
But this argument should not be pushed too far. It should not be used to justify the doctrine of the adversary role of the press as a whole. In troubled times when discontent against the government is only to be expected, this is a very tempting proposition. But it is as dangerous as it is tempting. The argument runs as follows: the government is corrupt, inefficient and inept; Parliament does not perform its proper duties by virtue of the over-whelming majority of the Congress party; the effectiveness of the higher judiciary, though useful, is limited, especially in enforcing accountability on the government: so the people have only the press to look up to in their natural desire to impose on the instruments of the state certain standards of public morality and accountability.
The pitfalls in this argument should be obvious, but they are not for at least the more vocal and articulate in the journalistic community. For, if every institution of the state is in disarray and the people cannot be depended upon to elect legislators who will not cheat them, it is difficult to see how the press can escape the general collapse of standards all around. It is also difficult to find out how in fact attempts to discredit politicians belonging to the ruling party can help raise standards of public morality and performance when their worst critics acknowledge, even if not so publicly and frequently, that the malaise is equally widespread among the opposition and that no party in office can be expected to behave better than the Congress.
Quite frankly, arguments have less to do with the advocacy of a necessarily adversary role with a kind of messianism which has come to dominate certain sections of the press. Some of us have come to see ourselves as saviours of the nation.
It is a phenomenon which is not peculiar to India. The same kind of obsessive moralism is at work in sections of the American press. Moralism is the obverse side of rootlessness which modern industrialism must produce. The Americans are a people without history and strong tradition by virtue of having been immigrants. Our top crust too is tending to be rootless not only because we use an alien language, but also because as a result of its unintelligent imitation of the West and contempt for our past, it has developed a contempt for old values, traditions, mores, social arrangements and indeed people.
It is common among educated Indians, for instance, to speak of illiteracy as if it is a form of leprosy. Mercifully for us, traditional India has proved surprisingly tenacious and continues to provide an anchor for even the alienated among us. But that can only mitigate the disaster: it cannot eliminate it.
I am not about to deny that the problems of widespread corruption, inefficiency, ineptness, misuse and waste of scarce resources, lack of concern for the weak and the poor, low quality of education, and utter indifference to ecology are threatening to overwhelm us. Of course, they have assumed menacing proportions. But these are, in my view, the inevitable results of the policies fellow members of the western-educated intelligentsia have deliberately adopted and managed to impose on the Indian people. Most of the journalists have most of the time endorsed those policies and cannot in all conscience avoid responsibility for the consequences.
We have denigrated religion, which has been the centre of Indian life and activity, in the name of modernisation. We have turned upside down our value system and, in the process replaced the worship of Gods and Goddesses with that of the mammon. Success, specially financial and bureaucratic, has come to be prized above the old brahminical virtues of learning, austerity, and uprightness. We run down old established institutions in the name of equality and individuality, not realising that in the east, unlike in the west, we have traditionally sought fulfilment as members of a group and not as individuals, which concept must of necessity emphasise ahankar (ego) and deny the spirit.
It is not my purpose today to go into the relative merits and demerits of the western and eastern civilizations. Indeed, I refrain from engaging in such comparisons and contrasts because I believe every civilisation has its own logic and coherence. My purpose today is only to point out that we cannot possibly denigrate and discard existing social arrangements and value systems without paying the cost in terms of the evils we deplore. We have sown the wind and we have to reap the whirlwind. I for one do not see tranquility return at the end of the day.
In such a frame of mind, what advice am I to give except to say that we should try to look beyond the symptoms and address ourselves to the deeper malaise with whatever light providence has given each one of us in its wisdom? Finally, I may say that personal bylines, publication of pictures of writers as in a number of newspapers and frequent TV appearances cannot but aggravate the already acute problem of egotism among journalists and add to the temptations and dangers inherent in the profession by its very nature.
We should, if somehow we can, return to the practice of anonymity. For this by itself may help restore to the profession a degree of objectivity, fair-mindedness, restraint and modesty it desperately needs.
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INTERVIEW: ‘No ray of hope’
Mr Girilal Jain, who practised journalism for 40 years as few did before, is a sad old man now. Mr Jain believes that the country is past the point when solution can be found to its many problems, “Only divine intervention can improve the situation,” says the veteran journalist to Mr Imteyaz Khizar, Editor, Sulabh India, in an exclusive interview last month at his residence in New Delhi.
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QUESTION: Sir, What are you doing these days?
ANSWER: I am studying religion and history and I am contemplating. Contemplation is very necessary in life.
Q. Sir, a few days ago, a statement by you appeared in newspapers in which you said that both politicians and bureaucrats are damaging the country. Will you elaborate?
A. Frankly I don’t see any ray of hope. I don’t think the present system is going to perform better. Neither the politicians nor the bureaucrats can help the nation to go ahead. I subscribe to the traditional Hindu view that we are in ‘Kalyug’ (dark age in which spirit is obscured by matter). Only divine intervention can change this situation where corruption has become a way of life.
Q. Sir, are you saying that there is no possibility of change for the better at all?
A. I don’t think this system will change for the better. I don’t foresee any such possibility. As I said earlier, I don’t see any ray of hope. There is a decline of standards and norms in every sphere of life. Only a Master can bring about the radical change we need. But when he will come, no one can possibly say. We can go on performing our duty, but we can’t change the system.
Q. Sir, religion is based on belief. It is said religion starts when reason ends. There is no place for reason in the world of beliefs. If you seek a solution from religion does it not mean that you are an escapist? Are there not many people who are working to change society?
A. In reality, the truth is different There was religion long before the age of reason dawned. Religion represents a much higher faculty in man than reason. Religion by nature is impersonal and supra-rational; reason is personal and therefore much more limited in its scope. If you wish to use the kind of language which is common, you can say reason begins when religion begins to decline. It is true that there are many people who are working to change society for the better. But I don’t think they would succeed. The country had produced many great men such as Ram Krishna Parmahansa, Swami Vivekanand and Mahatma Gandhi. But who follows them? The person whom Gandhi made the Prime Minister, even he didn’t follow him.
I don’t at all try to escape from the reality. I am simply diagnosing the country’s problems. As I see things, the situation is beyond control. That is why I speak of the need for divine intervention.
Q. How can you leave things to religion? Rationalist oppose it.
A. First, I would like to clarify that I do not believe rationality can supersede metaphysics which is the result of what the Hindus call Buddhi (intellect in contact with the universal intelligence). Rationality is spurious by its very nature. Rationalism cannot be a replacement of religion. In its present phase, it began with the French thinker Descartes. In the 19th century, Charles Darwin gave it a new twist when he rejected the theory of creation and propounded the new theory of evolution. This has far from been established. One conjecture has been piled upon another conjecture and they call it evidence. I am not convinced. Religion deals with eternal truths and not current fashion in thought which change all too frequently.
Q. It means you seek solutions to current problems in religion. But today, we feel, people have moved away from the basic teachings of religion. People are divided by castes and creeds. How can then you leave everything to religion?
A. When I talk of religion, I talk of a divine force which is not and cannot possibly be discriminatory. I believe in the caste system and religious authority. To me, the caste system is a reflection of the hierarchical order which obtains in the universe. Ideally, a person’s caste should be determined by his karmas and not by his birth, but birth is also not an accident. The status of a soul determines the circumstances and environment of its appearance in human form. But all that apart, in this age of moral decline, it is not easy to find true Brahmins. Becoming a Brahmin is not very easy. Yes, you can become a trader more easily. You can even trade in ideology and politics. But to be a businessman in the true classical sense is also not easy.
Q. Sir, do you believe that the religion is part of Ethics. And instead of preaching religion, we should preach ethics and moral values. If a person is an atheist but he does all those good things which religion also teaches, what would you call him?
A. Religion is not part of ethics. Religion has to be taken in a wider connotation. It is search for God and indeed communion with God. Yes, ethics is part of religion. Ethics flows from religion. A man of religion is automatically an ethical being. But morality is not moralism. Indeed, when preaching of morality takes place, it is an indication that morality is in decline. That is precisely what is happening in India these days.
Q. Sir, it means whatsoever Salman Rushdie has written in his book ‘Satanic Verses’ is wrong because he has interpreted religion in terms of rationality. Would you comment on it?
A. Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses’ has nothing to do with rationality. The book is an attempt to hurt Muslims and to please Western readers. It is an attempt to cater to vulgar taste like what is called ‘tit and bum’ journalism.
Q. Sir, but don’t you think that freedom of expression is our fundamental right?
A. If it is Rushdie’s ‘fundamental right’ to defame the Prophet of Islam, what about the ‘fundamental right’ of Muslims? No, a definition of fundamental rights which sanctions the right to hurt millions of people cannot be accepted. Rushdie is not Galileo. He is not seeking to establish a fundamental scientific truth. Islam is a great religion. The Prophet was and is a messenger of God. You cannot trifle with him in the name of freedom of expression.
Q. Sir, what have been your pre-occupations in life?
A. My first pre-occupation in my youth, in addition to my studies, was the cause of independence of the country. So I went to jail in 1942. At the same time I was engaged in the search for the meaning and purpose of life. That took me to Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1944. Both interests have stayed with me even since. I don’t regard journalism as an independent activity. In my view, journalism must be an instrument to serve some noble cause. The cause in my case has been consolidation of India’s freedom and protection of India’s integrity.
Q. You have been a journalist for quite a long time. Do you feel any difference in the profession between now and earlier?
A. The differences are quite sharp and radical. But it is too big a subject for me to tackle today. I have written a lot on the subject, if you are interested, please read my articles on the subject.
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Cover story and Interview
Sulabh India, Vol. III, No. 5, May 1989