An error in judgement or "evasion of responsibility"?

I was busy reading articles on the Radiia tapes last week, and sharing some of the views which seems like good reads. Thanks to my good friend Musthafa, who insisted on starting a blog of my own, but realized that writing is not my cup of tea. But sharing information may also be considered an art :)


List of stories in chronological order.
The transcripts that follow are from Niira Radia’s conversations with highly influential people. Going by the evidence of the phone taps, these include journalists Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt, and Ranjan Bhattacharya (foster son-in-law of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee), who seem to have played out the roles of mediators between the Congress and Radia, who was in turn speaking to Raja and Kanimozhi. According to these tapes, Vir Sanghvi seems to have relied heavily on his discussions with Radia to write his column on the gas judgment. The transcripts that appear here do not suggest any direct role for the person Radia is in conversation with, rather they reflect the power and the ability she commands to influence events.
To read full story Click here -- Open story

As did a 14-page document that did the rounds in Delhi, talking about how individuals were caught on tape boasting about influencing policy changes at the highest level. The names oftwo senior journalists —one a well-known anchor of a national television channel and the other a former editor, columnist and TV personality—also kept cropping up in media stories as having allegedly being caught on tape, lobbying on behalf of industrialists to secure ministerial berths for friendly politicians.
To read full story Click here-- Outlook story

A week has passed without India’s mainstream media—print or TV, bar Outlook magazine and Mail Today newspaper—following up on the story of the Radia tapes that was broken by Open. The only time the issue figured on Indian TV channels was when Times Now and CNN-IBN hosted half-an-hour shows on corporate lobbyists without mentioning the names of the two most prominent journalists who figure on the tapes—Vir Sanghvi, advisory editorial director of Hindustan Times, and Barkha Dutt, group editor of NDTV. Newspapers, bar The Hindu, have restricted their discussion to the editorial rather than news pages, and again without naming Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt—the equivalent of discussing the allotment of 2G spectrum without naming A Raja. This closing of ranks betrays one of the weaknesses of the media in this country: eager as we are to hold others up to scrutiny, we shy away from the truth where our own are concerned.
To read full story Click here --Hartosh Singh Bal , Open magazine

In the days following the publication of the Open story, most of Indian media pretended that such a story was never reported. It was expected. Apart from the simple fact that most editors do not want to embarrass Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt, there is also the more complex truth that almost all big media houses have something to hide. And the media does not want to be at war with itself. People who watch the media take on politicians every day feel deluded into believing that Indian journalism is fiercely free and independent. But the truth is that the media is able to take on the Government because the Government has become a minor advertiser. The new governments of our times are giant corporations and they very efficiently control all media. The most outrageous aspect of journalism is its very revenue model—advertisements.
To read full story Click here -- Manu Jospeh , Open Magazine

I have avoided television debates on the Radia tapes not out of funk but because most of the media people mentioned are friends. Moreover, I dislike getting on a soap-box and lecturing colleagues on the dos and don’ts of journalism. Least of all do I wish to get into a slanging match of the type witnessed during the questioning of Barkha Dutt on NDTV. Vir Sanghvi I have known since the early 1980s. When I was unemployed, he gave me a column in Sunday. Barkha I know less well. Her rise and rise as an anchor and editor has been astonishing and fully deserved. The others too I know and regret they have become casualties in an ugly but critical controversy which shows us as a "banana republic". One of the positive results of the Radia affair is that we journalists will henceforth surely be more alert to the designs of fixers and lobbyists lurking in the corridors of power. The whole business of "sources" is a minefield. Are we using the source or is the source using us?
To read full story Click here --Vinod Mehta, Outlook

Every political journalist develops a cosy relationship with sources. This is the price you have to pay for knowing what is actually happening. Since I am not a daily reporter but write opinion pieces, I am privy to a little more information than those who are in search of exclusives. I can use the sense of what politicians reveal in confidence without having to flesh out the details.
To read full story Click here --Swapan Das Gupta, Columnist

If the allocation of spectrum by the Manmohan Singh government in 2008 and 2009 is one of the biggest scams in independent India, then the involvement of businessmen like Ratan Tata, Sunil Mittal and Mukesh Ambani in lobbying for their choice of telecom minister when the UPA government returned to power in May 2009 is surely a very important part of the back-story. But it is a story none of the journalists who liaised with Ms Radia during this time chose to report. More than the squabble within the Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK) or between the DMK and the Congress, the involvement of India's biggest companies in the process of cabinet formation was the story that should have been headlined. Ms Radia talks of Sunil Mittal and AT&T using Times Now to push out stories about Dayanidhi Maran being the frontrunner for telecom and Mr. Raja being in disfavour. Her own strategy appears to have been to use her relationship with Barkha Dutt and Shankar Aiyar to get the opposite message out onto news channels like NDTV and Headlines Today.
To read full story Click here -- Sidhardh Vardarajan, Hindu

The second case annoys me more because it relates to Counterpoint. This column is rarely about business but on two occasions I touched on the subject. One column was about how oligarchs were cornering India’s natural resources such as gas, minerals and spectrum. "Anybody who knows how to pay off the DMK has no difficulty in cornering spectrum..." I wrote.

Because the High Court had just ruled on the Ambani gas dispute, I referred to it though the column was on a larger issue and not specifically about the Ambanis. I spoke to both sides. The Mukesh side (Radia) went on and on but two points seemed to have merit. One was that the gas belonged to the country. Two: Anil had benefited from a deal struck by Amar Singh on his behalf.

I put both claims to Anil’s side. I was not convinced by their position on gas (neither was the Supreme Court, which also agreed that the gas belonged to the country not the Ambanis, some months later) but I thought they were right on the so-called Amar Singh deal and said so ("I am happy to accept their denials...").

But equally I did not think it was right for any one industrialist to have control of our natural resources. As I wrote: "It’s one thing for an industrialist to pay off a politician to build a factory; quite another for him to corner our gas...Allow industrialists to do this and you will end with a new league of super-businessmen not unlike Russia’s oligarchs who nobody can ever touch and who become laws unto themselves."
To read full story Click here --Vir snaghvi's defence

In the pursuit of news and information, journalists talk to an array of people from all professional backgrounds; this case being an an unfolding political story on cabinet formation, after the general elections. To caricature the professional sourcing of information as "lobbying" is not just baseless, but preposterous.To read full story Click here -- NDTV’s defence
The tapes seem to add up to hundreds of hours of conversations between Nira Radia and people from different backgrounds, including scores of well-known journalists and editors from all the major media organisations (TV and Print) in India. Despite this, much of the commentary has been strangely selective in its focus. And quite often, vindictively personal. Consider, for example, that online it is being dubbed "BarkhaGate." I cannot speak on behalf of any other journalist on the tapes. Framed in the backdrop of a larger media debate, every journalist's conversation on these tapes must, of course, be evaluated on its own merit. So, speaking only for myself, the insinuation made by the magazines are preposterous. By definition, the insinuation of "lobbying" implies either a quid-pro-quo of some kind or a compromise in how I have reported the story. As anyone who has watched my coverage of the ongoing 2G scam over the past year would know - to suggest either is entirely absurd.To read full story Click here -- Barkha Dutt's defence

http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/ndtv-special-ndtv-24x7/barkha-dutt-other-editors-on-radia-tapes-controversy/178964 --Barkha Dutt's defence on NDTV

http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/135950/radia-tapes-probing-journalists.html?from=tn --Karan Thapar on the tapes

The NDTV statement goes on to say, "NDTV believes the magazine should first verify and corroborate facts before participating in a defamatory smear campaign. These are unsubstantiated, baseless and defamatory allegations and we reserve the right to take appropriate action."
Open magazine is sure of its content, which is why it decided to run the story. Open is one of the most respected magazines in the country, it has among its staff some of the finest journalists in the country and it has no interest in participating in any smear campaign against a well-known journalist. The cover story is self-evident and anybody who has read it can see very clearly that there have been no "unsubstantiated, baseless or defamatory" allegations.
To read full story Click here -- Open's response

She kept asking whether it was good journalistic practice to carry ‘raw material’ like telephone transcripts. The answer is yes. Also, as a celebrated television journalist pointed out to me after the show, NDTV is very enthusiastically covering the Wikileaks story. So, why the pretence of moral outrage against the Radia tapes coverage? In unedited transcripts (whose authenticity she does not dispute), there is no editorial bias. These are the conversations that took place, and people can read or hear them as they happened. Dutt says that the transcripts painted a wrong picture of her because she was only lying to her source, she did not keep most of the promises she made to Radia, and so she was not always a courier of information between a corporate lobbyist and the Congress. But here it is important to note that this is merely Dutt’s claim. There is at least one recording in which Radia clearly mentions that Dutt has made some calls to the Congress. Dutt and Radia can then claim that the other is lying. That such a dispute can occur is not reason enough to treat authentic transcripts as unworthy of print. I believe that there are times when journalism need not be a process of telling the whole truth; instead it can become a way of finding extraordinary devices to tell a fragment of the truth. It is indisputable that the people of India came to know of some startling facts because of the publication of the transcripts. It was a story that people like Dutt did not tell their viewers and readers, and would have never told. But as they are forced to clarify themselves to clear their own names, information gathers more mass, more truths emerge. Yes, it is good journalism.
To read full story Click here --Manu Joseph, Open magazine, reply to Barkha Dutt

Post script :
One interesting portion from Manu Joseph "Dutt’s situation reminds me of a magic realism novel that a friend had written, in which a lowly journalist is in search of a great story. Every day, when he comes home defeated, he speaks to his talking lizard. I find this novel absurd because any journalist would know that a talking lizard is the greatest story ever in the history of journalism"