Media After WikiLeaks
Posted on 07. Dec, 2010 by Ajay Goyal in A Rupee a Day, All Write
The titillating cables from US diplomats around the world, leaked to press and public by Julian Assange of wikileaks will keep making news for months in newspapers and web sites around the world.
Good writers can work reams of commentary and analysis for years off of leaked secret cables. Such information and facts would otherwise take light-years to uncover. It will be good time for many media organizations to fire half their investigative reporters because they cannot do even a fraction of wikileaks treasure trove in a lifetime. That is if they wanted to.
For far too long, media insiders in major democracies have taken on the role of king-makers and influence peddlers. Journalists’ job description is to reveal the truth – not exploit it or leverage it for commercial gain. That is precisely what many media owners and journalists have been upto. Public at large do not value the ideological rants and demagoguery coming from media anymore. People want to know facts, they want to know the truth and they can make their mind up themselves about who to vote for and who to vote out. Of late, US, European and Indian media has given us everything except the plain unvarnished truth. The first lesson of wikileaks is that media should cultivate and encourage whistle-blowers more than “sources, in high places.
Wikileaks has demolished many a kingdom of lies. Newspapers and other traditional media organizations are the first victims of wikileaks – they just dont’ know it yet. They should do some soul searching about how news and information is gathered and spun. It presents a unique 21st century opportunity to news organizations to restructure their news gathering and reporting operations, rid their newsrooms of self-important celebrity reporters with God complexes and cut their costs to levels they can be economically sustainable. People in public office have an obligation to tell the truth to reporters and they in turn have a sacred duty to report it. Wikileaks has shown that in the age of email and unfettered internet access, getting to truth and facts is easier than ever before. News organizations need to be more open to what their readers have to tell than what their journalists do.
News and journalism should not be about eloquence or fine prose. I have seen much vaunted media awards given to reporters who fabricate news but put it eloquently. There are shocking levels of deceit, lies and cheating in newsrooms of many journals of record. The ease with which Russian oligarchs and gangsters have been able to buy fawning press in leading journals of record in London and New York is telling about the real priorities of western media. They have focussed for far too long on the public relations machinery to bring them dirty money in return for favorable press from corporations, bankers and robber barons instead of revealing the truth. If investigative journalism toward politicians is it at its lowest in history – it is simply non-existent toward corporations and white collar criminals. How else could the financial fraud on Wall Street go on for so long without any revelations from armies of reporters who cover it. It is simple, reporters are no long looking for truth. They are looking for rides on private jets, entry to exclusive clubs and a piece of lifestyle they write about. Any of hundreds of reporters could have unearthed the crimes of Wall Street bankers in any of the press-briefings or champagne-caviar cocktails by asking one simple question -” what is it you do to make all this money?” No one did.
Indian star reporters caught red-handed peddling influence and whoring their columns never told the public who were the real forces behind allocation of cabinet positions in current Indian government. Corporate lobbyists used reporters to carry messages back-and-forth to politicians while reporters made themselves available for any services to the business barons. Their greatest service would have been to simply tell the truth to public about who was lobbying and jocking for certain ministers to be put in place.
Plain and simple reporting of truth is not all that difficult a task if reporters take an irreverent attitude to people in high places. They must shun greed and personal profit before they can report truthfully. But that is not going to happen. It is time real media people started opening their doors and plumbing to leaks from within corporations and governments and reveal the truth to people. They can have their credibility back in no time.
In 2004, a series of misfortunes befell me and my newspaper in Russia. My home was burgled and nothing except computer disks were stolen. Thieves were not after money or valuables. Denial of service attacks on my web servers crippled them nearly each week. Death threats were routine – headless fish, hangman’s noose and bullets were left inside my Moscow apartment on pillows. My business editor’s car was burnt in wee hours of morning after he was booted out for asking very uncomfortable questions of a hedge fund managers. It all proved to me we were doing something right and gave us the joy of being in media. I had to shield my reporters and editor from the stark reality we were facing but we could not plug the exodus of “reporters,” that had no interest in finding and telling the truth. Those who compromised on the simple standards of telling the truth survived and even flourished, my newspaper did not. But the joy and satisfaction of doing what is right cannot be compared with any material gain. Intimidation and violence continues till today against some columnists and investigative reporters I have the privilege to know and work with. But no major media organization has ever had an interest in reporting any of it – not even the physical attacks — because our work, the work of these handful of true reporters has been as much about exposing the cowardice and corruption in media as in big-business. It is clear, too many in media have their priorities wrong – they are on the wrong side of truth and honesty in journalism.
The influential media just left these reporters to hang out and dry. Just as Julian Assange of Wikileaks will be. But we should know that what happens to individuals is not as important as what those individuals do to the society. Today media organizations are reveling in the treasure trove of documents from wikileaks. Tomorrow they will have to ask about their own relevance in the post-wikileaks world.
When they do, a new kind of media will emerge in the Web powered world in which one person with an itch to tell the truth can marginalize billion dollar media empires.
National motto of India says “Satyameva Jayate :Truth Alone Triumphs”)
Media can be on the side of truth or side by the lies and spin. Because the only given is, truth alone shall triumph.
