To be fair, this is not a Pakistan-specific phenomena. India too has many challenges with it.
Under siege
SEVANTI NINAN
A reality check will show that journalists are under attack everywhere. What is more, judges are increasingly handing out judgments unfavourable to the media ... Speeches, processions and black bands will not alter that harsh reality.
Tarun Tejpal ... journalism under attack
BEING under attack is an occupational hazard for journalists, but that does not mean we get used to it. We protest vociferously every time there is a fresh assault, particularly if it is from the government. Speeches are made on the lawns of the Delhi Press Club. We take out processions, and wear black arm bands. And we just did all of that this past week. The latest provocation was the fleeting imprisonment of Tehelka's Anirudh Bahl on the allegation that he had attacked a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officer. An impressive assemblage of editors cried that it was an attack on democracy. One demurred, but the majority prevailed. It was a replay of a similar meeting in March this year, when the press was being blamed for its alleged excesses in Gujarat. There is solidarity in the midst of alarm. By the end of such exercises all those present are convinced that the profession is under siege.
Last week Vinod Mehta, editor of
Outlook, and Vir Sanghvi, editor of the
Hindustan Times, made a specific, rousing point: this is not the time to talk about the means adopted (by Tehelka). Our profession is being attacked. Today Tehelka, tomorrow the rest of us.
So what do we do about it? First, a reality check is in order. We are not alone in being under attack, journalists are under attack everywhere, not the least in the land of the First Amendment, the United States. There is a considerable increase in the arrests of reporters and photographers who are just doing their jobs. What is more, judges there are increasingly handing out judgments unfavourable to the media. The police and the courts are less sympathetic to the newsgathering process, less willing to give the media a break, says the
Columbia Journalism Review, in issue after issue. Speeches, processions and black bands will not alter that harsh reality.
Looking to what's happening in the U.S. should sober us up when we declare indignantly that this is not the time to talk about the means adopted. Lawyers for the plaintiff are increasingly zeroing in on the means adopted, and judges are lending them a ear. Jane Kirtley, a First Amendment fellow of the National Press Club in Washington DC was writing two years ago of the change that has come about in how the Judiciary interprets the First Amendment. To invoke constitutional protection, the information has to be obtained legally. Journalists are subject to laws just as any citizen would be. There have been a number of rulings, she says, adding that a reporter's failure to disclose his or her status as a journalist was misrepresentation amounting to fraud.
She wrote that more and more, judges are asking: did the reporter use a hidden camera, or hidden microphone? Was she forthcoming about her identity or her purpose in seeking entry into private property or a medical establishment, or an office? Did he induce a source to violate a confidentiality agreement with an employer? Did he violate a criminal or civil statute in the course of gathering news?
If the Government is increasingly hammering journalists here, there has to be a sea change in the way we respond. Protest is hardly enough, particularly protest which stops at making speeches and going home. In societies that have nurtured press freedom longer, solid, organised responses have evolved. Our editors guilds and unions of journalists have nothing to show by way of information and legal resources that can respond quickly to attacks on journalists.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in the U.S. was created in 1970 at a time when the nation's news media faced a wave of government subpoenas asking reporters to name confidential sources. What began as a part-time shoe string operation is today a major resource in free speech issues, with a quarterly legal review, a 24-hour hotline, and various handbooks on media law issues. It helps some 2,000 journalists every year and no reporter has to pay for the help. Because State laws for the press differ in the U.S., it has brought out a practical guide to the reporter's privilege for 50 States and DC.. A non-profit organisation, the committee operates solely on donations and the sale of publications.
The more aggressive governments, commercial establishments and individuals seeking libel redress or disclosure of sources get, the more journalists and lawyers have to come together. More lawyers have to be involved in pre-publication reviews. Tarul Tejpal may repeat
ad infinitum "we just went with the story" but he should have stopped to consider the legal implications before he did. Less heroic may be, but a lot more pragmatic. And there has to be more work on judicial trends to see if judges can be more effective allies for the press than they are today. There is a Libel Defence Resource Centre in the U.S., we need not just institutions like that, but also a similar body to go into the fundamental right to protect sources, as A.G. Noorani pointed out at the Delhi Press Club meeting.
If there is more media today than ever before, it is also far more free-wheeling than ever before. That may be heady in the short run, but in the long run, reporting adventurism will come up against people seeking protection from too much media. Either through the courts, or through the police and bureaucracy.
The problem is, who will institutionalise the media's response to repression in a way that it can resist it effectively? Where are the organisers to create resource and protection centres, the foundations who will foot the bill, the lawyers who will volunteer time? The owners of media are not losing sleep over protecting journalists. Editors and working journalists have to recognise one thing: their freedom to function is dear only to them. If they stop at speeches and marches, nothing much will change.
E-mail the writer at sevantininan@vsnl.com
http://www.thehindu.com/mag/2002/08/18/stories/2002081800210300.htm
