Amplify’d from www.southasiamail.com
If RTI (Right to Information act) is the supreme example of the declaration of an Indian citizen’s right to know on a personal level, Radia tapes and Wikileaks are instances par excellence of extracting that right – willy-nilly -- from governments, diplomats, business corporate and power brokers who fail in their corresponding duty to function transparently on national and international levels. In the process some of our supposedly independent extractors of news, apparently have become partisan fellow travellers or manufactures of tomorrow’s news. This last twist in the turn of events is the third dimension – shameful and disturbing -- of the still unfolding scenario.
“Candid Camera” used to be the name of a regular TV programme in the US, though I have not seen one this time. In it people in various walks of life are caught off guard by hidden cameras – at home, on road or in office -- and their spontaneous, cute and shocking reactions are presented for entertainment, edification and instruction. It is also a test case to find out who is well-behaved both in private and in public and who puts on a mask where, when and why, and who can be entrusted with leadership posts for the common good. Radia tapes and Wikileaks have provided for the world at large a candid camera presentation on how some of our so-called towering personalities in government or diplomatic circle, as well as our industrial tycoons, and media celebrities behave. Some have been acting irresponsibly, crookedly or shamefully in private while putting on a gentlemanly brave face in public.
In a democracy we the people, we the voting public, are to be the masters and government officials only public servants. “I am the first Servant...” That is how Nehru described himself in his midnight speech. Those in government are to be honest and upright public servants. Then, where is room for secrecy in government? Have servants any right to hide things from their masters? Secrecy is the mother of all corruption. Our country is drowning in it. Thieves do the looting under cover of darkness. Daylight of transparency is the sole bulwark against wrong doing by public servants. One may never do the morally and legally right thing to save his soul. But he surely will do it to save his face, if and when he is doubly made aware of being in the glare of public gaze.
Privacy and Secrecy
No one has made a hue and cry about the right to privacy and secrecy except the Tatas who pays 30 crores and Ambani an equal amount to Radia for her PRO service, according to reports. Have public figures any claim for privacy? This is a much discussed and settled issue for many, not for all. But it is generally agreed that the more one’s office demands to be in the public eye, the more such a person has to forego his privacy. One is reminded here of the hen which makes hell of a noise when it lays an egg but keeps dead silent when hatching.
The Industrialist trumpeted that he was not a person to pay Rs.15 crore or so as bribe to a minister to start a new domestic flight. That filled me with admiration for him. The same industrialist now goes to court to cover up some of the unflattering leaks coming out through the Radia tape. If there are no skeletons in his cupboard why should he feel nervous about his “straight forward wheeling and dealing” in private? What Tata needs in his public corporate life rolling out crores in business transactions is not privacy but transparency.
US and Wikileaks
That brings us to a similar plight President Obama finds himself placed, in the case of Wikileaks. “Earlier this year, President Barack Obama was ‘troubled' by the cyber attacks on Google, which were said to originate in China, and wanted those responsible to face the consequences. The more freely information flows, the stronger society becomes, he had said during an earlier visit to China. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also strongly critical of Internet restrictions in China. Now the boot is on the other foot. Concern for free speech is nowhere in evidence as extra-legal methods are deployed to deny Americans their First Amendment rights.”(Hindu editorial: Digital McCarthyism, 5/12/10)
Need more reactions? Someone suggested in New York Times that it is now China’s turn to do a tit-for-tat, that is, to declare Assange the winner of China’s Nobel Peace Prize for promoting openness, free speech and transparency in US and world over. Didn’t the US blame China for imprisoning for 11 years its free speech advocate and Nobel prize winner Liu Xiaobo? It is quite a different thing if Assange happens to be detained in UK or Sweden the model of modernity, with trumped up sex charges, involving misuse or non-use of condoms.
True, some in US government like Senator Lieberman of Homeland Security and others went hysterical to call Assange a “traitor” to be prosecuted or incapacitated(meaning killed). But Obama so far has kept his cool. How can he, the custodian of free speech and expression do anything else without making himself a laughing stock? Besides Assange had received the leaks, according to reports from an American traitor in the Army and had even asked US government more than once through its embassy in UK if it had any suggestion to redact the stuff received and got no answer. Therefore Assange with foresight supplied the stuff to four prominent news organizations and websites: The Guardian(UK), El Pais (Spain), Der Spiegel(Germany) and Le Monde(France) -- the Guardian shared it with the NY Times -- to make it doubly sure that the leaks remain in public domain even if he is going to be incapacitated.
Typical Reactions to Leaks
Listen to some sample reactions to Wikileaks in US media: Is it right to prosecute people for believing, saying or writing what is true? First amendment gives freedom of speech and expression to all. To go against it would be a radical change in American policy. Secrecy in government would be disaster for freedom of speech and quality journalism. Besides US doesn’t have a punishable Government secret Act. Senator Lieberman wants to act against NY times. How will he stop papers like Guardian and Le monde? Secret-revealing is no Big Deal. What is to be done is to plug the leak, not muzzle the press. Is it a crime to expose truth? Honour Assange with an award “Medal of Freedom” or US citizenship.
Pity, there was no Assange to reveal the ground realities during the Vietnam and Iraq wars at enormous cost to innocent lives. Those wars would never have happened had there been a Wikileaks. I fear more secrecy of governments than the bitter truths revealed by Wikileaks. Citizens of world have finally hit upon a tool to hold governments accountable. Lovers of freedom and transparency international unite, we have nothing to lose except our illusions and misplaced trust and admiration for governments and diplomats. Many are vociferous about Wikileaks, why are so few commenting on the bad behaviour -- double speak and double dealing – of US officials and diplomats abroad and at home?
Internet as Whistleblower
Time was when dictatorial regimes could block the free follow of refreshing information from outside world with their bamboo curtain or iron curtain and rule over people kept in ignorance with brute might. With the advent of internet, mobiles and taping to pry into private life, people are forced to come clean even in their private life. What is hacking and stealing? They are crimes only for those who hide or hoard. For the hungry man grabbing a morsel of food to quench his hunger is not stealing but taking what is his due. So it is with hacking.
Extracting information which is one’s right to know is not hacking but investigative aggressive journalism. Assange’s Wikileaks is the emerging face of a heaven-sent whistleblower to suit our internet era. Any one pretending to stop the flow of heaps of classified secret information is like trying to stop with a finger the outbreak of waters from a dam of secrets breached at multiple locations. It is here that internet managers have become whistleblowers for the equitable distribution of information.
Electronic media have now become the advanced face of an aggressive investigative journalism. It is in doing this job that some media personnel have fallen from grace to become accomplices or manufacturers of tomorrow’s news. Referring to it reads a headline in New York Times:
Journalist in Headlines
“Journalists in India Ends up in the Headlines,” by Lynsey Addario 3/12/10: “ALMOST any night of the week, Barkha Dutt can be found under the harsh glare of television lights, asking tough questions and demanding frank answers. But last Tuesday Ms. Dutt, the most famous face of India’s explosively growing 24-hour cable news business, found herself the subject of the kind of grilling she normally metes out.
“Before a jury of four of her peers, she parried questions and struggled to control her anger. It was, perhaps, the toughest interview of her career. Caught on tape talking to a corporate lobbyist, she stood accused of cozying up to the powerful people she should have been covering and agreeing to pass messages to the governing Congress Party.
“It is an error of judgment of enormous proportions,” thundered one of the panellists, the editor of Open Magazine, Manu Joseph. India’s vibrant and hyper-competitive news media have been celebrated as a great success story. They have played a vital role in exposing corruption; highlighting India’s growing inequality and rooting out abuses of power.
“Ms. Dutt, as the 38-year-old star reporter and anchor of the biggest English-language cable news network, has become the most recognizable face of this media explosion. But the scandal threatens to undermine the reputation of members of the news media as guardians of the world’s largest democracy, and Ms. Dutt has found herself, fairly or not, at its centre.” A double edged tribute indeed to India’s free, frank and vibrant press.
If Ms Burkha was picked up and highlighted in Times it was because she happened to be the most famous, not the infamous face of Indian Journalism. She was just one of the 30 or so media persons caught on the Radia tape. That included Vir Sangui whose counter point reportedly is read by lakhs, and was made to suspend his column after the tape revelations. That gives enough compelling reason to submit other media power brokers too to similar public grilling to get their version of the story, also to satisfy the legitimate complaint of Ms. Dutt: “At a moment when the public gets anxious about the state of the Indian media, I am suddenly made to answer for everybody else.” Rajdeep Sardesai, the TV journalist is quoted as saying: “The robust Indian tradition of adversarial journalism has been mortgaged at the altar of cozy networks.”
Journalist’s Pastoral Profession
According to Dipankar Gupta: “A journalist, like a soldier, judge or priest, belongs to a pastoral profession because he is supposed to put the collective, the flock, before private gain.“ The question is how many take it in that spirit. In that context it is worth recalling what Jesuit Fr. John Courtney Murray of Vatican Council fame said in 1963 to international journalists in Rome:
"The Catholic press is not the organ of some class within the church. It does not exist to further certain interests of the church merely, especially if these interests be conceived in some narrow and rather sectarian sense. The Catholic press does not exist to glorify the clergy. The Catholic press does not exist in order to create a public image of the church that will be untrue to the reality of the pilgrim church, the wayfaring church, the church that trudges along the road of history and gets her feet dusty at times, the church that has hands by which she takes hold of dirty stuff of history... because history is rather dirty stuff...
"If the church is going to guide the course of history as indeed she must, sometimes the hands of the church -- of churchmen, perhaps I should say -- get dirty. And therefore this public image of the church must be the true image, the image of the pilgrim church, the wayfaring church that we have discussed in this session of Vatican II. The Catholic press can be nothing but the vehicle of truth and of fact. Freedom therefore is the indispensable condition for the fulfilment of the social function of the Catholic press within the church and for the church. The freedom of the press to inform is nothing really but the other side of the rights of the people to be informed. And therefore, through these rights of the people to the freedom of the press knows only one limitation, and that is the people's need to know. And I think within the church, as within civil society, need of the people to know is in principle unlimited."
The New Leader from Chennai published and discussed these principles in detail some 40 years ago as a prelude to what its readers were to expect from an open discussion of all relevant issue in the weekly. The message Fr. Murray conveys is relevant for all journalists, especially for those who happen to get caught in compromising situations.
The writer now in Chicago can be reached at jameskottoor@gmail.com
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