They are journalists
without qualifications, without training, without identification and
without ethics. These journalists are with lots of perceived power but
perhaps without responsibility. Most of them have their own business, or
some other source of income other than journalism. They don’t get a
regular salary or stipend from their employers. They are primarily local
language newspaper journalists. They are also video journalists for
several local, regional and national TV channels. On an average, they
report 5-10 stories a month. They are also responsible for bringing
advertisements to their respective newspapers.
However, none of them are
given appointment letters or any letter for that matter from the
newspaper they claim they write for. This means the members of National
Union of Journalists of India East Champaran (NUJI-EC) in Bihar work
with two contradictory tasks, that of journalism and as an advertising
agent. There are more than 200 members and all of them are male. For the
past one year, NUJI-EC has been requesting Digital Empowerment
Foundation to hold a workshop on how new media could be helpful to the
journalists and teach them how to use various tools of information and
communication technologies. About 85 journalists attended the workshop. I
asked how many of them do not have an email ID, expecting that nobody
would raise hand. To my surprise, more than a third did. When I asked
what was their expectation from the workshop, the unanimous demand was
that they all wanted to have a Facebook page and if they could be trained to create an email account.
All the journalists I
talked with individually confessed that they cannot write anything
against any officer or business house or government department once they
have got any form of favour including advertisements. The journalists
also said there is immense corruption in each of the government
departments, but since they have to get advertisements, they usually end
up not writing against several such corruption cases, which happen
openly.
So, how does the system
work? We all know that all major regional language newspapers have
editions that go easily down to the district level and have city pages
of district headquarters. Ever since the local newspapers started
growing and mushrooming to the district, tehsil and panchayat levels,
they started playing on unemployed youth and the perceived power of
journalism. Getting a byline for their reports further proves their
power. However, they are also given the opportunity to earn money by
bringing in advertisements from the local government departments and
businesses.
What I could not
understand was why all these journalists wanted to pursue journalism,
although their livelihood comes from their individual businesses or some
other jobs. Most appeared to me as capable and smart. But all of them
were unanimously of the opinion that they are constantly exploited by
their newspapers. But when I asked why do they have to subject
themselves to such exploitation, they have no answer. Which is a clear
indication that at the local levels, everybody wants to be in a position
of power.
Since journalism is called
the fourth estate, it is imperative for the newspapers to clean up
their act. Even if they want to dive deep at the village level in terms
of getting more and more subscribers and readers, they have to find
ethical ways to create a network of journalists and not mix advertising
and revenues with journalism. Otherwise, they have no right to say who
is right and wrong, considering their own act is questionable.
If this is the situation
in East Champaran, imagine the number of such journalists in the entire
country. There would be about 120,000 such people who claim they are
journalists but have no identity and they play the role of advertising
agents in the mask of being a journalist. Would online journalism or
citizen journalism be the final frontier for such journalists?
Osama Manzar is founder-director of Digital Empowerment Foundation
and curator of The mBillionth Awards. He is member of the working group
for Internet proliferation and governance, ministry of communication and
information technology.
Follow him on twitter @osamamanzar
Follow him on twitter @osamamanzar
Courtesy-
