Beyond the newsroom

The Press deserves credit for exposing corruption in high places. But ironically there has hardly ever been an article or exposé investigating corruption in the Press itself. There is sometimes a tale to tell behind a news story.
What goes on Beyond the Newsroom? This is one question that the Press has mostly evaded or brushed under the carpet.
In the print and electronic media there’s hardly any reporting on corruption in the fourth estate, save for a stray article now and then.
An article in Outlook magazine way back in March 27, 1996, had said: “For years now, it has been common knowledge that a large number of financial journalists are not above accepting gifts, in cash or kind, from companies for services rendered—writing nice things about them or running their rivals down.” The Press Council of India (PCI) had then taken note of the situation. A Council subcommittee proposed a separate code of ethics for financial journalists, which urged them to refuse cash, gifts, loans, junkets, discounts and preferential shares from corporates. Justice P.B. Sawant, the then PCI chairman had observed: “There is no doubt that after liberalisation, financial journalists have become more powerful and there are enough instances to show that they have been misusing their position.”
But nothing much seems to have come of this PCI initiative, because the malaise of corruption seems to have spread over the years to journalists covering other beats apart from business and finance.
In August 2010, a probe conducted on behalf of the PCI discovered that the Indian media, a pillar of the country’s vibrant democracy, is riddled with corruption that sees journalists report stories for cash in a phenomenon known as “paid news.” The findings of an investigation for the PCI, seen by the news agency AFP but yet to be released publicly, throw a damning light on an industry that is meant to serve as a bulwark against corruption in other areas of public life.
In southern Andhra Pradesh state, journalist unions have estimated the size of the illicit market at 70-220 million dollars. In other cases, the report cites examples of how some newspapers routinely run political advertising as news stories without clearly indicating that the story has been written by the media team of a candidate.
Examples of dubious entertainment, society or product news being passed off as independent reporting have existed for a long time, says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, one of the authors of the PCI report. But it is the advent of political “paid news” that is most pernicious, he adds.
“When paid news enters the political realm then you are undermining the election process and therefore undermining democracy itself,” he said. The consequences are unfair election results and plummeting trust in the media.
The probe has been presented to the Press Council, which is currently debating how much of it to make public.

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