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Interviews | Vinod Mehta, Editorial Chairman, Outlook Group interviewed by Hartosh Singh Bal

Vinod Mehta, Editorial Chairman, Outlook Group interviewed by Hartosh Singh Bal

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published Published on Apr 20, 2012   modified Modified on Apr 20, 2012

Q The idea of regulating the media is very much in the news. What are your views on the matter?

A Obviously, the ideal way to do this would be self-regulation. I don’t think anyone in the profession has any doubt about that. Everybody agrees that self-regulation is a very good thing, but we don’t seem to move beyond that. And we are consequently opening a window for people who want outside control. We are not only giving them an opportunity, but since there is a crisis of credibility in the media, we are losing public support and therefore the forces out to impose some restrictions on us get stronger and stronger.

At the moment, if you notice, besides the Supreme Court, there is the Government; in the Lokpal Bill there was a mention that editors and newspapers should also be included. There is a clamour of voices saying that ‘Since these guys are not going to do anything themselves, we will have to do it from the outside.’ And if it does happen, we can’t blame anybody but ourselves, because by our masterly inactivity, we have provided an opening to those people who would like to tame the press.

Q In the years that the idea of self-regulation has been discussed, have you seen anything concrete emerge? Have you been part of any initiative?

A I have been on, I forget, how many TV discussions, how many Editors Guild meetings, [seen] how many blueprints. I have discussed them personally, and I remember on a programme with Prannoy Roy, N Ram and me, at least ten years ago, the same subject came up and we all agreed that by next week we will form some sort of committee.

As far as the media is concerned, when you talk of self-regulation, it is for the other guy, not for yourself. And because the freedom of the press is a sort of holy cow, nobody, no politician in particular, wants to be charged with trying to undermine the freedom of the press. We have got away with it, but I just wonder how long we can do it.

Q But amid this talk of regulation, isn’t it reasonable to allow for some mistakes in the larger interest of an open media?

A No. Some mistakes are allowed obviously, but when the public sees a mistake of Himalayan proportions being made, I think, they have every right to ask for an explanation, an apology, regret or a clarification from the offending publication. If it doesn’t happen and the publication says they stand by their story when everyone knows that that story was baseless, then I think it strengthens all those who say that ‘These people are never going to do anything, because if they cannot even explain why this kind of mistake was made, of this proportion, and if they don’t own up to that, then the minor mistakes are just like ‘Mamata Banerjee said something’ and she says ‘No, I said it out of context’,’ and then you have this tu tu main main going on. But really, it is the mother of all mistakes.

Q You are referring to the (Indian Express) story on the coup?

A Yes.

Q You believe it was not justifiable on any journalistic grounds?

A Absolutely not. We hear a lot about mischief-makers and now the only alibi seems to be that some mischief-maker misled the paper. It is the job of mischief-makers to mislead papers, but it is the job of editors to detect the mischief and nip it in the bud.

If you are a daily newspaper, almost on a weekly basis the editors will come across stories that will require them to make a judgment. Whatever the mischief-maker is saying, one assumes that the publication itself is going to exercise some rationality.

If tomorrow some mischief-maker is saying that ‘India will drop a nuclear bomb on Pakistan’, and you print that and when it turns out that it is not true, you say, ‘Some mischief-maker planted it on me and therefore what can I do?’ That’s hardly a defence.

Q But one of the things being said about the story—and clearly there is a point to it—is that what the story reflects is the confusion within the Government.

A The confusion is the later part of the story. It emanates from the fact that the paper believed and was convinced that the Army Chief was up to no good. There is no doubt, if you read the story... the story is not about mischief-makers, the story is about an Army chief, a frustrated Army chief, who wants to topple the civilian government. There are so many things here of national interest.  It is not just the fact of confusion, but that you cast a slur on the entire Indian Army. When these mischief-makers were trying to plant this story or trying to get the story in the press, someone should have looked at it and said ‘This is nonsense because 800 people marching to Delhi can’t topple a government.’

One’s own judgment or one’s own sense of whether the story has any conviction must be exercised, and we editors are paid and are given jobs and are given control over newspapers because it is assumed that we have the powers of judgment to [distinguish] between what is manifestly false and illogical and something that is a borderline case. This is certainly not a borderline case.

But I would still say that I have no problems with printing this kind of story. You print it. My problem is that if it is subsequently found that the story is unsustainable, then you have to come up with some clarification, you have to come out with some explanation of why you did this. You just can’t pretend you move on to the next day and next page and this is forgotten.

Q How would you, as an editor, have reacted to such a mistake?

A At the risk of giving an example from my own career, in 1989 I did print a false, baseless story, and that too came from the Intelligence Bureau. The story was that the mole in the Indira Gandhi Cabinet was not Morarji Desai but YB Chavan, and I had a lot of documentation which confirmed some people in RAW had written to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi saying you are blaming the wrong man or Seymour Hersh was blaming the wrong man and we are casting grave allegations against Morarji Desai. Well, I printed that and two days later, the Prime Minister’s Office and Home Ministry said that the story was baseless. So I put out a front-page apology in The Independent asking for forgiveness of my readers and saying that I had made a big blunder, and one day later, I resigned. I took responsibility for my story.

Q You think the final responsibility must, and should, lie with the editor?

A Of course, the buck stops here. In my case, I didn’t take a byline for the story; my reporters got the story, but certainly, the processes the story went through, of checking and verifying, I was very much involved in that. Indeed I made the final decision that the story can go in. Newspapers can’t demand accountability from others... whenever a politician makes a mistake and there is an enquiry, we say ‘He should resign’, and so we demand accountability from others, but there is no accountability of ourselves. This kind of thing does not just damage the individual paper, it damages the entire media. Because people will, you know... on television, the thing is that you are doing this for your TRPs, and it has become a favourite phrase these days… someone will turn around to newspapers and say, ‘You are doing this for sensationalism or to boost your circulation.’

Q How would the same questions apply to the story we at Open ran on the Radia tapes? Vir Sanghvi wrote an article raising questions about the tapes that were used.

A In the case of the Radia tapes, there was an audio [record] and once I listened to the audio, I had no doubt that the story was 100 per cent correct. I also knew that certain vested interests may have released that story or may have put our correspondent in line with it, but you have to make up your mind as an editor whether the story, while it benefits the person who has given it to you—obviously he has given it to you because it benefits him—has a larger public interest. Even if you may be serving the interests of the leaker, the larger public interest is greater. We had endless debates in this very room, about its authenticity and the fact that we may be playing into the hands of people who gave it to us, but once we heard the tapes, the leakers’ interest was infinitesimal compared to the public interest.

Q Questions were also raised about the cover Outlook had run. There were some mistakes made in the presentation. How do you see that today?

A Well, I am prepared to discuss that. That is one per cent of the story; 99 per cent of the story, you may say ‘Why did you put this chap’s picture on the cover?’, ‘This chap’s picture should not have been on the cover, but the story was authentic.’ You can say ‘Some wrong emphasis was given here or there.’ I am prepared to concede that, but the core of my story was a glimpse into the workings of Indian democracy. And that was hundred per cent correct. In fact, till today, except for Vir Sanghvi now, even Ratan Tata has never said that what he had said was inaccurate or that the story was doctored. Nobody said that; they all said it was an ‘invasion of privacy’. That is a different matter, but the authenticity of the tapes has never been questioned.

Q You mentioned Ratan Tata. Why is it that over the past decade, the media has had greater difficulty dealing with corporates than with politicians?

A This is a fact of life and editors have to be careful here. While it is open season on politicians, the Indian media’s record in exposing corporates is not particularly good and is becoming worse by the day because our proprietors and managers make it clear to us that ‘You investigate politicians, political parties, scams, but keep off the big boys—the industrialists.’

Q It seems you are suggesting we are creating an environment in which regulation of the media will become necessary.

A We will not be able to defend self-regulation. And people will say ‘We gave you so many chances, we gave you so much time, you didn’t do anything.’ In fact, they could even go out and claim ‘We are doing this very reluctantly, we don’t want to do this, but what can we do, you are not doing anything yourself, so we are forced to step in.’ I can hear phrases like ‘I am paid to do what I am doing’. They will justifiably use our inability to set our own house in order for their intervention.

Q But what do we do? If an N Ram and you and Prannoy agree to set up a committee and nothing happens, then at what level can things move?

A That is a very good question. As I said, if you have a big story, then all the checks and balances that should go along with the verification processes of that story, you should use. But when you don’t use them because the story itself is so juicy that you print it and all the justifications come later on after you print it, I think the sword of Damocles is hanging over our head, as it has [been] for eight or nine years. I see no serious effort on the part of the profession or on the part of the editors to set norms for self-regulation. Because of this Indian Express matter, we are talking about these things. In a month or so, we will forget them and it will be business as usual.

In Britain, they have a Press Complaints Commission and that has got a chairman and is made up of people in the press, editors, owners etcetera, and that commission is paid for by the industry, by the press. If I am not wrong, it has a duty, it is mandated to examine a complaint and give some sort of answer in 30 days.

Q Is it time we considered a similar body?

A We should consider it. This is the kind of self-regulation I would like to see.That the profession regulates itself through norms it has set and not outsiders’ norms. You set your own norms. One of the things that I believe we should be doing is this whole question of how we address mistakes we have made, clarifications and errors. Most papers have very small columns, where in small type some sort of mistake is acknowledged, but the guy who has suffered, the guy who is the victim of your misreporting says that ‘You printed the story on the front page and you are giving me a regret on page nine.’ So They say ‘You give us that regret or apology using the same amount of space that you used in making that allegation.’

I believe that may not be practical, so I think it is a good idea that when you are making the clarification, you flag it on the front page and you carry it inside, giving it the priority it deserves. But the victim must be seen to get justice from the press.

You see, we are not gods. Editors are human beings, we make mistakes. Therefore, once we make mistakes, there should be some protocol for how we are going to acknowledge and admit those mistakes.

Q In this context, we have always considered reporting on other media a sort of taboo. Is it time to end that?

A Oh, that’s humbug from day one. You see, it is hardly a secret, and the Radia tapes revealed this… and we have many other instances, that there is a lot of dirt in our profession. We refuse to acknowledge this, but fortunately there is still a lot of public confidence in the media, which is sadly being eroded day by day. It is also a reflection on the other institutions of our democracy, which are completely hobbled and not working, that the media even while doing all the wrong things it does still gets away with it. But the basic point must remain that the media is very quick off the mark when public servants or politicians or bureaucrats are concerned, and if there is even a slightest hint of wrongdoing we say ‘He should step down’.  We were asking Chidambaram to step down so that an independent enquiry can be held on his conduct.

Q Now if we can make all these demands of others, then surely people will ask, ‘What about you?’

A So our ability to set other people’s houses in order must be accompanied by our ability to—from time to time when these things happen—set our own house in order. I would say that the worse thing is silence and hoping that public memory is short and that ‘I can get away with it’.
 

Open the Magazine, 21 April, 2012, http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/the-mother-of-all-mistakes


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