The Imperfect Partners
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The Imperfect Partner : Manu Moudgil
RTI Act seems to have cemented our belief in ever-so-desirable "change". The light at the end of tunnel has grown into a full blown torch of transparency held afloat largely by social activists and to some extent by a few dedicated government officials.
However, an unexpected laggard who is yet to exploit full potential of the legislation remains the Indian journalist. When the RTI Act came into force, it was herald as the best tool to be in hands of a journalist because his, it was said, is a profession hinged on information.
Four years down the line, the match still seems lacking somewhere. There are not many investigative stories coming out with the help of RTI. Fortunately, social activists are bridging the gap by procuring information and dispersing it to the media. But for how long this spoon feeding would continue? Which leads us to another question? What makes a journalist wary of using RTI? They know the inside stories of their beats, they can draft an RTI application well by asking the "right questions" and they also have the best means possible to disperse the information for public consumption.
The problem, it seems, lies not in the Act or the journalist but the time and persistence needed in first procuring the information and then analysing it to join the dots.
I remember watching Mr Hitender Jain of Resurgence India walk in to HT, Mohali office couple of years ago with two suitcases (were there more?) full of documents pertaining to misuse of Punjab Red Cross funds. The information made a brilliant front page story for several days and any journalist would have loved to get a byline on that. But ask him to go through the same pile of documents and he would believe you are joking. On second thoughts you realise it's not his fault.
In all media organisations, the stress is on exclusives and deadlines. A typical day of a print journalist starts with first looking at rival newspapers to check if he has missed any story, getting fired by his boss at the morning meeting, visiting his beat and then reaching office in time to file exclusives as well as jot down spot news.
Filing RTI applications, procuring documents after several appeals to the appellate authority and then going through them to first understand and then get a bigger picture means extra slogging. So he takes to the easier way. He cultivates a source and gets the same information (even if half baked). He gets his byline (read daily bread) and the newspaper gets its exclusive. The story maybe short of proof and the "reliable source" may abandon the journalist midway but nobody thinks long term.
To fill up eight columns of a broadsheet or 24x7 of video tapes, the media organisations need exclusives fast and now. The days of investigative journalism involving scrutiny of relevant documents have given into spy cams, audio recordings and irrevelant breaking news.
It's not that journalists don't file RTIs. But either they get frustrated with the appeals they have to make to appellate authorities and wait for CIC to give its rulings or the lure of 'sources' forces them to quit. Then the RTI-related stories are just confined to something like "how many prisoners were released on parole last year?" Don't get me wrong- this is not a trivial issue. The subject has been mentioned to highlight another point. A journalist friend once boasted how his counterpart from a rival newspaper filed an RTI on this issue and also got information on time. But before he could file a story, the PIO also shared the information with our friend.
So while he got an exclusive from a source who also happened to be the PIO, the applicants was left with documents he could no longer use. I am sure he would not have filed another RTI with the Prisons department. Now just imagine if the information sought had been more detailed (maybe asking for documents submitted by the prisoners to seek parole, why another prisoners serving similar charges did not get the permission or amount spent to relocate the prisoners who jump their paroles etc). It would have been lots of documents to study, but the story would have been worth it and the PIO would have been reluctant to share this "revealing" information with another journalist.
It all boils down again to time in hand. It's high time media organisations realise that to get a really good story journalists need to be persistent, patient and less burdened. The government has done its job, the social activists are doing theirs, whom would the media blame this time?
Manu Moudgil
Image courtesy: www.veer.com
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Re:The Imperfect Partners
May 05 2010 02:45:44 You have hit the nail on the head. I think the problem is much bigger than media not using the RTI Act. The main reason for this, I think, is not believing in research based news coverage. None of the newspapers, I am aware of, have any form of research wing. As a result they are largely dependent on what is fed to them.
The Government and a lot of interested parties use the situation to its fullest. They feed and the media jumps at it. As a result the common man often gets garbage and 'bundle of lies' in the name of news. You have touched upon an important area Manu. Hope this is taken note of by those who can! |
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