The internet has proven to be a major disruptor in the 21st Century. Every profession has been touched and is now almost being controlled by it, from law and investment banking to teaching and journalism. Name any job or work profile and the internet has influenced and changed it.
However, it is journalism that has had to make a sea change. There was a time the shortest print run used to be 24 hours; now, it is a matter of seconds. Everyone wants to be the one breaking the news (almost down to the second). However, that is true of television news as well, you might say. There is a crucial difference. When reporters are on the ground reporting an event live, they are doing what their professional tag suggests – they are ‘reporting’. They are stating facts. They are not out to give an opinion on what is happening.
Take, for example, the contempt of court case filed against the Editor and Publisher of The Shillong Times earlier this year. The contempt proceedings were initiated based on reports published in The Shillong Times on December 6, 2018, and December 10, 2018, under the headings, “High Court pursues retirement benefits to judges, family” and “When judges judge for themselves”, respectively. Read the latter headline carefully. The headline insinuates that those who benefit from the judgment (the judges themselves) are also those who are pronouncing it. “When judges judge for themselves” – The headline is one you would expect for an op-ed. It states an opinion and does it quite clearly.
However, the byline read, “By our reporter”. Reporters report. They do not express opinions. Opinions come with an inherent bias. There is a reason a special page is dedicated to op-eds; this is so people know that it involves analysis and the forming of an opinion. As the saying goes, “A crown does not a king make”. Similarly, presenting a piece like a report does not make it one.
This problem is magnified countless times over with online journalism. Reporters, in a bid to make their ‘reports’ stand out, no longer stick to getting the facts straight; they weave in opinions which they believe can draw more people to their site. Take the recent outrage against Aaj Tak anchor Anjana Om Kashyap. She entered an ICU ward in a government hospital in Bihar which was grappling with an overflow of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome patients. At the very outset, it is clear that the doctors are overwhelmed and that the ICU is bursting at the seams. She walks in with a whole crew and begins to shout at and criticise the doctors for allowing more than one patient to occupy a single bed.
Gone are the ethics necessary to be a journalist. Journalists are no longer concerned about integrity, staying true to facts while ground reporting and restricting opinions to the op-ed page. Hits, clicks, and TRPs reign supreme.
Before social media became ubiquitous, it was easy enough to separate the two worlds. If you were a reporter, your personal opinions stayed within your circle of friends and family. The field was a place to glean facts and show people what was happening. Now, everyone wants to give their two cents; opinion means no hits or TRPs. If the outrage over Anjana Om Kashyap is anything to go by, journalists have to rethink their approach towards bringing news to the people. There is widespread mistrust of what is shown on TV and on the internet. It is also not surprising that India ranks a dismal 140th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, 2019.
We have moved from an age where information was scarce and inaccessible, to one where there is an excess of it, and ironically we are quickly losing control of what this information conveys. In a post-truth world, the truth is what you want it to be and the internet has made facts irrelevant. Everyone has an opinion. The profession of a ‘reporter’ – which made the careers of many, is officially dead.
Writer: Laetitia Bruce Warjri
