"School master cannot be a good journalist"
New Delhi
Commencing October as we mark the onset of autumn, India enters into festival season.The period involves Durga Puja, Diwali and ultimately Christmas and Happy New Year.
Ideally, this should be the time when ill-feeling and rancour ought to be expunged from the soul. Well, as human beings it is not possible.
This festive season I thought of some soul-searching --- gazing in my own heart.
Journalism in India - if one trusts V S Naipaul - has been a clerical pursuit.
Sometimes this clerical approach is done with precision. Reporters in big bureaux and big cities fight it over 'beats'. I often say, we journalists often behave like beat constables.
For instance, a Chief Minister dies in a road accident and you are an eye witness; should you leave it for the beat 'constable' aka reporter to report ?
More 'average' stuff the guy is intellectually, the more strictly religious he/she would be about these fuss.
So a hardworking and 'over sincere' journo would be advised even to curb "your enthusiasm".
In Mumbai sports journalism, a senior colleague once lamented, "throughout the year you slog like a donkey, but the moment Olympic or World Cup cricket is around, you will find the big donkey in the office has decided to send a huge donkey to cover it".
This is related to junkets and foreign trips. This is a very delicate area in Indian journalism.
No friendship, no sincerity and being passionate about the job helps. Delhi's well-known 'Jugad' helps. It is worse in small cities and regional newspapers. You will find the newspaper owner (once it was a Guwahati episode) or the owner's son traveling abroad with the Prime Minister or someone like that!
Blogger and daughter |
Half the journalists are displeased with PM Narendra Modi as he has kickstarted a totally new phenomenon and there is no free lunch, drinks and junkets now.
There are a few northeast experts in Delhi. Their knowledge about the region would leave people in shock.
" .... the entire north east India is matriarchal...," one expert would say!
Move over, once I met one such 'news agency' guy who said -- "I also know the north east very well, I have been to that region".
As an ill-informed idiot from the region, I asked innocuously, "where did you go?". Then came the Delhi-variety of response - "I have been to Kishanganj ''. Foolishly, I said, that's in Bihar!
If you or your family is in Delhi for a long, chances are that the kid may pick up the Delhi-style. The response from the 'self-styled northeast expert' was --- "All trains to northeast go via Kishanganj ''.
There is another more fundamental thing about Indian English journalism. It may be called 'Indllsh'.
Of course, there are opportunities when 'liberty' is taken with headlines. And on this, I am always with the Sub-Editor or senior fellows on the desk. Some lovely headlines have come in Journalism -- because people took liberty for the pun.
L K Advani's visit to Pakistan in 2005 and his comments on Jinnah was reflected well in 'The Asian Age' headline -- 'Jinnah Partitions BJP'.
In the 1980s and 1980s, Late J N Chatterjee worked with 'The Nagaland Times'. A typical old school gentleman, once he shouted at a friend (who tried to be over smart with his Wren and Martin Grammar book knowledge).
"Every school master in the town cannot be a good journalist".
Some of us enthusiastically told him(1993) - "Sir, you deserve Plaza noodles or Apna Hotel Samosa".
But Indlish is also a 'disease'. The Articles 'A, An and The' never did justice to Indians or vice versa.
There's also a problem with words like 'Noted'. Often we use it liberally for 'said' -- which is not correct English.
"Note as a synonym for Said, where do they get this conviction from," wrote Jyoti Sanyal for 'The Statesman' on April 23, 2000.
Interestingly, I was with PTI those days and even the so-called 'book reviews' by the premier agency used to be written - the book 'said', the author 'noted', he 'added' style !
On the use of 'noted' wrongly -- 'The Statesman' article had said -- "That absurd....can only leave the reader wondering whether the speaker (VIP in his speech) had choked when he was speaking; so that the reporter recorded the only bits he heard with 'said' and 'noted'."
There can be another instance of a phrase -- "both parties did not have a moral right to raise the issue".
Sanyal in 'The Statesman' piece had observed -- "Since few journalists in India's English-language papers have a better acquaintance with English than the average lower-division clerk, it would be too much to expect them to expect to understand the absurdity in 'both parties did not have'.".
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