बिना विचारधारा का कोई पत्रकार नहीं होता…

4 July 2011 No Comment

पिछले साल पत्रकार हेमचंद्र पांडेय की आंध पुलिस ने फर्जी मुठभेड़ में गोली मार कर हत्‍या कर दी थी। उनके शहादत दिवस पर इस साल एक व्‍याख्‍यानमाला शुरू की गयी। इस पहले व्‍याख्‍यानमाला में मानवाधिकारों के लिए लड़ने वाले पत्रकार सुमंतो बेनर्जी ने कहा कि दिल्ली व मेट्रो शहर का पत्रकार लेखक थोड़ा सेव है, क्‍योंकि यहां मानवाधिकार की बात उठती रहती है, पर संघर्ष के इलाकों में स्थिति बहुत बदतर है। उन्होंने कहा कि यह बहस चलानी होगी कि बिना विचारधारा का कोई पत्रकार नहीं होता। उन्‍होंने पत्रकारों के लिए नया प्रेस कमीशन लाने और यूनियनों के सक्रिय होने की बात भी की। हम उनका पूरा व्‍याख्‍यान यहां प्रस्‍तुत कर रहे हैं, जो कि अंग्रेजी में है : मॉडरेटर

Let us today pay our homage to Hem Chandra Pandey who has joined the illustrious ranks of media activists starting from John Reed, Edgar Snow, Jack Belden, Harish Mukherjee, Brahmabandob Upadhyaya to Saroj Dutta and various other anonymous conscientious reporters functioning courageously in distant corners of our country!!!

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Professional ethics, careerism and socio-political obligation – conflict and convergence in Indian journalism
Today, we are meeting here to remember Hem Chandra Pandey, a young journalist who was killed by the Andhra police this day exactly a year ago. Hem Pandey paid the price for exercising two rights – first, a journalist’s professional freedom to interview underground political dissenters in the course of investigative reporting, and secondly, a journalist’s personal choice to sympathize with a political cause. At the time of his killing, he was accompanying Azad, the spokesperson of the CPI(Maoist), when both were picked up by the police, taken to the interior jungles of Adilabad, and were killed in cold blood by the police. The Andhra police later gave out the story that they were killed in an armed `encounter,’ and that Hem Pandey was a member of the CPI(Maoist). This police version has been repudiated by the CPI (Maoist) which has come out with a detailed statement saying that Pandey was never a member of its party. Hem’s wife Babita also, at a press conference in Delhi on July 12, 2010, released documents to prove that Hem was a freelance journalist who regularly wrote articles (under the name of `Hemanta Pandey’) for three Hindi newspapers – Nai Dunia, Dainik Jagran, and Rastriya Sahara – and was also employed on a regular basis, as a sub-editor for a magazine called Chetana, run by a company called DARCL Logistics Ltd. Curiously enough, soon after Babita Pandey’s revelations about Hem Pandey’s journalistic credentials, all the three Hindi newspapers issued statements that Hem Pandey never contributed to their papers ! The wording of the statements sounded similar – as if they were dictated by one mandatory authority – the Home Ministry.
The above-mentioned developments surrounding Hem Pandey’s killing, raise certain wider fundamental questions involving journalistic functioning and the Indian state’s treatment of journalists – (i) how far Indian journalists enjoy security in the exercise of their professional duties ? (ii) what is the role of the Indian police in scuttling press freedom by intimidating and killing journalists who expose their misdeeds ? (iii) to what extent the newspapers owners and editors knuckle under governmental pressures to refuse to protect their journalists who expose misdeeds of powerful politicians, bureaucrats and policemen; and finally (iv) the moot question – what compels a journalist from stepping out of his/her office to participate in socio-political movements ?
Threats that journalists face
Let me take up the first question regarding the security of journalists who function in conflict situations. Hem Pandey’s killing was not an isolated instance of suppression of a journalist’s professional rights and duties. In fact, it has become a world-wide phenomenon. According to the international media watch group `Reporters without Borders’, at least 57 journalists were killed, and 124 arrested in different parts of the world in 2010. According to another source – Media Watchdog – the number of killing was 102, with Asia leading the list where 40 reporters were slain during 2010, earning it the title `the most dangerous region in the world.’
So, when we are gathering here today to commemorate Hem Pandey’s sacrifice, let us also pay our respects to members of his profession who were killed in the course of their duties, by both state and non-state agencies in Asia. While a large number of these reporters died in the war zone of Afghanistan, even non-war zone countries like India and Pakistan saw the killing of journalists by both the state and non-state agencies. In fact, a recent report reveals that in the last 34 years, at least 23 journalists were killed in Assam alone (including correspondents and editors of widely circulated Assamese dailies and journals) – mostly by various insurgent groups (like ULFA) (Indian Express, June 17, 2011). They were caught in the cross-fire between the insurgents’ demand to publicize their press statements on the one hand, and the government’s threat to these journalists to prosecute them under the various anti-terrorist draconian laws if they published them.
In the current Asian context, this year (2011) have seen two cases which have caught wide-spread attention. First, the murder of Saleem Shahzad, a prominent Pakistani journalist who had been exposing the connections between the top brass of his country’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. He was abducted from the centre of Islamabad, and a few days later his body surfaced in a river canal. It bore marks of torture, broken ribs, use of rods. It is being alleged by his colleagues in the Pakistan press, that he was bumped off by the ISI, which wanted to send a warning to other journalists who would dare to expose its underhand dealings. In fact, as many as 12 journalists were killed in Pakistan during 2010 – either by the state’s security forces or the Islamic terrorists (re: Reporters without Borders). The second case occurred soon after this killing in Pakistan. In India, J. Dey, a senior crime reporter of MiD Day, was gunned down in broad daylight on the streets of Mumbai by some unidentified persons. The Mumbai police are yet to identify the assailants. But as in Pakistan, where Saleem Shahzad’s colleagues accused the state security agencies of his killing, in India too, J. Dey’s colleagues in the Mumbai press are pointing their accusing fingers to the Mumbai police establishment, suspecting that certain senior police officials could have been behind his physical elimination, since he had come too close to their connections with the Mumbai underworld mafia.Again, Dey’s murder was not the first of its kind. It was the third murder of a journalist in India in a six-month period. In Chhattisgarh – a state notorious for extra-judicial killings – during December 2010-January 2011, two reporters – one from Dainik Bhaskar and the other from Nai Duniya – were murdered. Neither case has been solved so far. Apart from murders, journalists have been facing assaults and persecution in recent times. In March this year, in Srinagar, a Hindustan Times photographer was assaulted and his camera seized by security forces when he was trying to photograph two dead militants. In Kerala in April, a senior reporter of Mathrubhumi was beaten with iron rods by a gang of hit-men hired by a deputy superintendent of police, since he published reporters against the police officer. In Mumbai, in May a Mid-Day reporter was arrested under the Official Secrets Act, for exposing lapses by railway security forces. It should be noted that across different states, it is the police and para-military security personnel who are behind the killing, assaults and persecution of journalists who dare to expose their misdeeds. Of the 11 odd cases of physical attacks against news personnel during the first six months of this year, as many as seven were perpetrated by the police. All these cases – whether in Pakistan, or in India – demonstrate the nefarious role of the state in brutally repressing the rights of journalists in the performance of their professional duties.
The role of the media establishment owners
This brings me to the third question that I raised at the beginning – the role of the newspaper owners in their duty of protecting journalists who work for them. As we have seen in the case of Hem Pandey, the newspapers to which he was a regular contributor, instead of condemning the murder, disowned him after it was reported that he was killed along with a CPI(Maoist) leader. This is a typical case of guilt by association – holding someone guilty or a suspect merely because he was found in the company of a wanted person. It also shows the attitude of the newspaper industry towards political dissent.
In this connection, it is necessary to understand the structure of the Indian media industry. The owners of most of the mainstream national newspapers (Hindustan Times, Times of India, Indian Express, Statesman, etc.) and the various language dailies and their chains, as well as the television channels, are tied to big business houses. They are also beholden to larger corporate houses as well as the government for advertisements, business contracts and other benefits. They therefore instruct their journalists to avoid reporting certain events or developments that may annoy big corporate houses which could withdraw lucrative advertisements. In their policies towards the prevalent government, these media business houses are politically divided. The Goenka group which runs the Indian Express, is more inclined towards the BJP, while the Birlas who publish Hindustan Times are oriented towards the Congress party. Depending on these different interests, some of the newspaper houses move close to certain ministers in the present Congress-run government, and promote them in order to win business contracts or similar privileges. Some others promote the BJP leaders of the Opposition, hoping to gain similar contracts and privileges – if and when the BJP comes to power.
Irrespective of their political affiliations, whether they support the Congress or the BJP, all these owners of the mainstream newspapers and TV channels are proponents of the neo-liberal model of development. They are in favour of giving a free rein to big private enterprises and suppressing popular movements of protest against encroachment on land and other forms of oppression. Thus, the media owners prioritize their commercial interests and political and economic opinions over the basic journalistic duty of disseminating news and a wide range of informed views to the readers. In their objective of total commercial gains, the media owners manipulate a new breed of journalists on their payroll, who are ignorant of the basic norms of reporting and indifferent to the social responsibility that is required of their profession. These young journalists are mainly coming from the upper middle class, and have been reared upon the belief that class inequality and consumerism, promoted by economic liberalization, are natural and even necessary for India’s growth. They look at labour as an unruly force and hold trade unionism in suspicion. For them, it is axiomatic that socialism is bad and capitalism is the panacea, and that personal self-aggrandizement in a laissez-faire economy is their only goal. The ambition of promotion and reaching the top of the ladder in their jobs, leads them to please their employers by any means – even by acting as their agents and lobbyists in negotiations with the government. It is this over-zealous ambition that prompted some of the leading journalists like Barkha Dutt of NDTV, Vir Sanghvi of Hindustan Times, M.K. Venu of the Indian Express group, to use their contacts in the government to try to influence appointments of cabinet ministers and allocation of 2G spectrum. The Niira Radia tapes and the on-going investigations are now revealing their acts of unprofessional participation in this drama of corruption involving corporate houses, ministers and bureaucrats.
Let me add that this decline in professional ethics is not confined to the high-profile mainstream English language dailies. Most of the regional vernacular newspapers are also owned by various groups of local commercial and political interests – ranging from prosperous traders to MLAs , to mafia dons who dominate transactions in the construction and mining industries, and in the trade in liquor and forest products among other things. These people invest their black money in bringing out newspapers and tabloids, that help them to escape taxation, and also promote their personal interests. They appoint journalists who are ready to serve their interests – propagating reports and pictures of these proprietors whether inaugurating an exhibition, or addressing some meeting, or supplicating before some deity. These journalists are also instructed by their employers to avoid reporting events that are uncomfortable for the owners – like operations of the mafia dons, or popular protests against the local administration and police repression. Those journalists in the regional media who dare to defy these instructions of the owners, and expose the nefarious nexus between politicians, mafia dons and the police, are silenced by retrenchment by their employers, or assassination by the `supari-killers’ employed by their powerful enemies. (Sometimes, the supari-killers are the Indian state’s own policemen !)
Such is the pathetic picture of the Indian media scene – where both the national corporate and the regional business house proprietors are turning newspapers and TV channels into the handmaiden of the huge nexus of big industrialists-traders- businessmen- politicians-bureaucrats-police and mafia dons. This nexus, like a company, offers dividends to all the share-holders, in the form of benefits like publicity to the merchandise of the industrialists and messages of selected politicians, or defence of the corporate sector’s model of development through the usurpation of agricultural land of the poor. In such a situation, journalists have two options. They may either join the rat race of upward mobility that is being offered by the present owners of the media, or dare to strike out on their own to remain true to the professional ethics of journalism.
Journalistic ethics and socio-political obligation
This brings me to a fundamental question that had always troubled working journalists. In which category do we locate the communication media ? Should it be treated as a profit-making industry (like other commercial activities), or a public utility service (like hospitals, schools, colleges ) ? There is a certain ambiguity in the understanding of the role of the journalists working in today’s media. There are some who subscribe to the view that since the employer calls the tune, the journalist employee has no option but to write whatever he/she is being asked to. There are others – very few in numbers – who feel that working journalists have a duty to society that is beyond the profit-making motives of the press barons.
The way I look at it – from the point of view of the ethics of journalism – this profession (unlike other media forms like advertising consumer items, or making commercial films), deals directly with political education. According to their professional norms, there are two indispensable functions that journalists must carry out in our present day society. First, they must provide reliable information and a wide range of informed opinions on the important social and political issues of the day. This is the role of journalism as an agent of education. Secondly, they must provide a rigorously investigated account of the activities of people in power and those aspiring for power, in the political sphere, as well as public and private sectors. This is the role of journalism as a watchdog, as a monitoring agency.
I should acknowledge that some among the journalists in the mainstream media are carrying out their role as watchdog by exposing certain acts of corruption and crime among politicians and bureaucrats (like the recent exposures of scams – the 2G spectrum, the Adarsh Housing Society scandal, etc.) They have often exerted pressures on the judiciary to take action in certain cases – the 2G spectrum, the appointment of the Central Vigilance Commissioner Thomas. Some individual journalists are courageous enough to investigate and bring to light struggles by the poor and the underprivileged in different parts of the country. Besides, in recent years there has been a healthy growth of what is known as the `alternative media’ – represented by a variety of small journals (Tehelka, Combat Communalism, etc.), video film-makers, internet websites and bloggers, community radio stations, etc. which reach out to the ordinary citizens. These have been an asset for social activists in voicing dissent and organizing resistance (re: the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle; World Social Forum congregations, etc.)
This is what we can describe as `media activism.’ It is a process where the journalist while carrying out his professional duty of reporting events of political importance, also participates in the historical unfolding of those events. This particular form of journalism – `media activism’ – has a long tradition, both in Europe and India. One of the pioneers of `media activists’ in modern European history was the American war correspondent John Reed. He is best known for his famous book `Ten Days that Shook the World’, a chronicle of the 1917 Russian Revolution, where he openly joined the Bolshevik revolutionaries, since according to him: “On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer, and for which it was a glory to die…” But even before that, John Reed, as a journalist expressed his commitment to the cause of the poor and the underprivileged – whether by joining the striking workers in his own USA, or by writing about the anti-imperialist rebel leader Pancho Villa in Mexico. John Reed was a symbol of the reporter fused with the man of action, an observer of history and a maker of it. The next two major media activists in that tradition of participation in the making of history were again two American journalists – Edgar Snow (in Red Star Over China) and Jack Belden (in China Shakes the World). Like John Reed who covered a historical revolution, these two journalists some three decades later revealed to the world the contours of another revolution – the Chinese Communist revolution – which they observed and recorded from within it.
Tradition of media activism in India
Coming to India, media activism has a tradition that goes back to the 19th century. Harish Chandra Mukherjee edited the newspaper `Hindoo Patriot’ in Calcutta from 1856 to 1861. Although in the columns of this newspaper, Harish took a pro-British stand during the 1857 war of independence, he was soon to change his views when the `Neel-bidroha’ or the Indigo Rebellion broke out in Bengal in 1859-61. This was a rebellion of small farmers/tenants against the forcible cultivation of indigo that was imposed upon them by the oppressive English planters – a practice which led to the destitution of agricultural families in Bengal at that time. Harish Mukherjee came out in support of these farmers, carried investigative reports about their economic distress, and wrote editorials attacking the British administration. He exposed in his paper how one of these planters, an Englishman called Hills abducted and raped Haramoni, a Bengali village woman. Harish had to pay the price for this. The indigo-planter Hills immediately instituted a case of libel against him, demanding Rs 10,000 as compensation. Without any financial resources, Harish fought the case in the courts. Broken down under the stress, Harish died in 1861 at the early age of 37. His widow, unable to continue fighting the case and pay the amount of compensation, had to face the consequences. The police attached Harish Mukherjee’s house, and his widow finally managed to borrow a few thousand rupees to pay off the English planter in an out-of-court settlement. As a contemporary Bengali intellectual observed in a sad comment: “Behind Hills, there were the indigo planters. Behind the widow of Harish, there was no one.” (Shibnath Shastri: `Ramtonu Lahiri O Tatkaleen Bangasamaj.’)
This comment sums up the eternal conflict between the powerful and the powerless in an uneven playground, where the former enjoys a superior position. Journalists who are committed to their professional duties, at one stage or other, are compelled to be pro-active in their opposition to the ruling powers, out of their ethical obligation to report the plight of the common people who are victims of the policies followed by these same ruling powers. At the beginning of the 20th century, a conscientious editor in Bengal named Brahmabandhob Upadhyay took the cause of media activism a step forward. He became the voice of the revolutionaries who took to arms to oppose the partition of Bengal by the British colonial powers in 1905. Through his journal `Sandhya’, he spread the message of armed resistance to the oppressive policies of the British. He was arrested on the charge of sedition. From inside jail, he declared that he would not accept any verdict by a British court since a colonial power had no right to judge an Indian patriot. He died in jail in 1907 – thus defying the colonial judicial system even before it could deliver its judgment on him. Brahmabandhob Upadhyay’s legacy of media activism was revived some sixty years later by another politically committed journalist – Saroj Dutta. Saroj Dutta’s life history is a revealing account of media activism. In the 1940s, he was a well-established journalist working in a senior editorial position in the office of the famous `Amritabazar-Jugantar’ group of newspapers in Calcutta. At the same time, he was drawn to the Communist party, and later joined the party’s daily organ `Swadhinata,’ and became an important ideologue of the party in cultural matters. In 1967, when the Naxalbari revolt broke out, he joined the Communist rebels, and decided to lend his journalistic talents to the running of their magazine – `Deshabrati’. Like the fiery anti-colonial editorials in Brahmabandhob Upadhyay’s `Sandhya’ some seven decades ago, Saroj Dutta also penned vitriolic editorials in `Deshabrati’ against the contemporary Congress regime’s oppressive policies in the late 1960-early1970 period. As in the past the British police chased Brahmabandhob Upadhyay, in the 1960-70 period also the Indian police of Independent India chased Saroj Dutta. But while the British police arrested Brahmabandhob Upadhyay and announced in public his incarceration in jai1 in 1907, the police of Independent India, in the midnight of August 4-5, 1971 in a secret operation, captured Saroj Dutta from a hideout in Calcutta, brought him to a deserted corner in the Calcutta Maidan in the early hours next day and shot him dead. Again, let us remember, this notorious operation was also exposed by a few courageous journalists who interviewed eye-witnesses and insiders in the Calcutta detective department.
The future of media activism
As evident from the above history, a time comes in the life of conscientious journalists when they feel compelled to supplement their writings with active participation in social and political events. They step out from their professional enclaves into the wider sphere of public movements, from their role as mere observers and recorders of events to that of participants. Today’s media activism reflects the popular urge for an alternative model of development, as opposed to the mainstream media’s objective of `manufacturing consent’ (the term used by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman in their book carrying that title) in favour of the neo-liberal global order.
In India today, media activism is represented by two types of activists – one, courageous individual journalists who dare to engage in investigative reporting by directly empathizing with the revolutionary struggles of the poor against exploitation; and two, practitioners in the alternative communication system (represented by a variety of small journals, video film makers, internet websites and bloggers and radio stations, etc.) which reflect the concerns of the various popular movements (like those of tribal communities asserting their rights on forests, by women fighting for their rights, by dispossessed villagers demonstrating against industrial projects that would oust them from their homes; by social activists and environmentalists protesting against the policies of hegemonic globalization). These two streams in the media scene – individual journalistic political activism and collective alternative journalistic endeavours – need to converge to become an essential part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice and socialism.
It is in the course of this struggle that Hem Chandra Pandey laid down his life. Let us today pay our homage to Hem Candra Pandey who has joined the illustrious ranks of media activists starting from John Reed, Edgar Snow, Jack Belden, Harish Mukherjee, Brahmabandob Upadhya to Saroj Dutta, and various other anonymous conscientious reporters functioning courageously in distant corners of our country.