Illiterate TV journos

Let's deliberate on media and sting operations in the backdrop of recent attack on TV9 crew by staff of the MNR Medical College at Sangareddy. The TV9 team was manhandled when they attempted to carry out a sting operation. Seen from any angle, the incident shows media in an extremely poor and negative light. First, freedom of expression does not cover a sting job which is a clandestine job and violation of the rights of others. Second, under the Constitution, there is no freedom of expression separately for the press. It is the right of a citizen extended to the press through a Supreme Court judgment. If it is a crime for a citizen to capture images of people without their consent or notice, it is a crime for the press also.

The glorification of Tehelka’s West End operation in the English media does not confer legitimacy on what it did or on what prospective copy-cats want to do. To think that anybody would welcome you when you declare you are there for a sting operation is the height of imbecility. It shows that the crew lacked minimum media literacy and the failure of their bosses to brief them on the meaning and sanctity of privacy. TV channels are releasing into the wide world reportorial virus that is fatal to citizens’ right of privacy.

While on briefing, I remember Sagarika Ghose, who is an experienced journalist, heckling the foxy Ram Jethmalani. She asked him why he was defending Manu Sharma, principal accused in the Jessica Lal murder case. Her very first question spelt her nemesis. She asked, "In defending Manu Sharma, are you in some sense defending the indefensible?" She must first be clear whether she is contesting the case as morally indefensible or legally indefensible. If morally, she must tell us who sets moral norms and who polices and enforces them. In the absence of any such mechanism, the question sounds juvenile, especially when the TV media have begun acting as courts of first instance. If legally, she must know that all the legal remedies have not been exhausted yet in this case. It is only uninformed judicial charity that encourages media to tread on its toes.

A few days before this incident, the Supreme Court asked journalist Vijay Shekar and the Zee television channel to explain why they should not be prosecuted for conducting a ‘cash-for-warrant’ sting operation that caught an Ahmedabad magistrate issuing warrants against the President, the then Chief Justice of India and two others. “Such mischief cannot be allowed to tarnish the image of the lower judiciary," said a bench of the court on which sat, among others, Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan also. The bench rejected the petitioners' plea that their objective was to expose ‘cash-for-warrant scams’ in the lower judiciary. Such a rebuke should have come as early as the first Tehelka strike involving an NDA minister, even before the judiciary itself became the target of a sting.

Undercover reporting has two aspects: journalism and jurisprudence. Vir Sanghvi of the Hindustan Times outlined the journalism aspect, “Sting operations with concealed cameras constitute a huge black hole at the moral centre of Indian journalism and it is important for us to sift fact from fiction and wrong from right.” This ethical element is the heart of government’s planned guidelines for the broadcast media. Investigating agencies often carry out sting operations but they are done on the basis of a complaint from an aggrieved person, and not by trapping public servants with bribes and going beyond the limits of acceptable journalism.

The success of the first sting spurred scores of small-time clones to specialize in images of unabashed sleaze and forgettable crime. Now, even a mobile camera phone can do it. The BJP proved that a sting operation is no great shakes by trapping Ajit Jogi, employing the same methods that trapped Bangaru Laxman.

Fortunately, few newspapers thought a clandestine sting operation was a legitimate exercise of freedom of expression. Where information can be gathered without resort to trickery reporters need not look for short cuts. Sucheta Dalal and Chitra Subramanian did long and painstaking research without snaring anyone. Is the West End story of greater consequence than the Bofors story of Chitra Subramanian and the Harshad Mehta story of Sucheta Dalal? Were they less enterprising that they had toiled for months to get at the bottom of truth?

How dangerous and devastating sting enterprises can be will become clear when some TV crew creates a Gujarat-type riot only to be able to report it. Staged sting operations do not fall under any of the three categories of reporting familiar to media: Scheduled, like press conferences or public meetings and conventions; unscheduled, like accidents or outbreak of violence and investigative, when media on a hunch that something against public interest is brewing commission a story. Can you imagine P Sainath manipulating a weaver into committing suicide so that he can write a story about it? Manufacturing news is not a category of reporting known to media.

But why do not public-spirited media like TV9 turn the cameras on themselves? Why do not they uncover conspiracies that end up in cable TV operators killing each other? Or, find out how night shift women journalists are victims of aggressive overtures from male colleagues. Find out how editors dish out junkets to reporters or how newspaper owners doctor accounts to cheat wage boards. Are media buildings safe in the event of fire? Most media houses are owned by profiteering (not profit-seeking) moneybags. And, corruption and money are like Siamese twins.

Every year Transparency International tells us what these staged operations seek to tell us: there is corruption in the country. Karnataka Chief Minister Kumaraswamy openly said that the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE), which is executing the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project, had attempted to "purchase" him using a former minister and a journalist as intermediaries. Here, the electronic media crusaders can find out the identity of the journalist, using the methods they habitually employ. No. They won’t do it because it calls for the patience of a Sucheta or Chitra. It also means self-flagellation. There is no instant glory in it. TV channels have won laurels for their Mumbai blasts coverage. They should not forfeit audience faith by faking reality.

Another norm of ethics as well as law that TV channels should respect is not to show people who do not want to be seen in a poor light. For example, undertrial prisoners being taken to court in handcuffs. How would you like it done to you? Why was Rajdeep Sardesai so sensitive about being seen escorted by the police to the UP Assembly to answer charges of contempt of the house that he went to the Supreme Court to seek an exemption? Why does not he tell his reporters not to show any person without his consent? Do not they have the same kind of dignity that Rajdeep has? The only way to stop these daily invasions of privacy is for the Supreme Court to step in and award deterrent punishment to big fish.

Sting operations are legitimate where there is a clear indication of crime or impending crime. “Between 'snaring' or 'tempting' people into accepting 'gifts' or 'bribes', where a cause of action does not exist, and exposing corruption regarding specific deals, a vast gulf exists. Not to recognise the significance of this difference would be a grievous mistake,” said M K Narayanan, security adviser to the government. Consensual relationships are common and media are not moral police. They better tell the people of this country whether this mushrooming of millionaires in the country that excites them no end has anything to do with alleviation of grinding poverty in the country.