Column

Sotto Voce

I never got an opportunity to work in Russy Karanjia’s newspapers, but met him often enough to get an idea of what kind of man he was.

I also was a regular reader of his tabloids, especially Blitz and when the news came of his death, I tried to think back to when journalism was something quite different.

Journalism in the 1970s, when Karanjia was still a name to reckon with and Blitz a popular tabloid, was in an critical transitory phase.

The earlier times of nationalistic media was almost totally over and the press — there was no electronic journalism to speak of — was caught up in the fervour of the era. The ferment all over the country — strikes, bandhs and general discontent — was reflected in the papers now no longer in the thrall of the political establishment.

There was something about Mrs Indira Gandhi that the intelligentsia just did not like. Perhaps it was her hauteur, her arrogance or simply that she tended to bypass them and spoke directly to the poor. Whatever it was, the media was steadfastly on the side of the opposition.

The railway strike of 1974 brought matters to a head and just a year later Mrs Gandhi clamped down the Emergency.

Chapter and verse has been written on that period, but try and imagine that all the freedoms one has now being taken away and all the media censored before it reaches you (though, watching our ‘news’ channels may tempt one to support such censorship. Just kidding.)

It was a dark period for the country and most of the media — owners and journalists included — came out of it rather poorly, caving in rather than standing up for their rights.

But this capitulation, voluntary and involuntary resulted in a backlash when the Emergency ended. The media became more fiercely independent and more raucous. It also became glamorous and more rewarding.

India is one of the few countries where newspapers are proliferating. Not a day passes without someone announcing yet another television news channel. India is a media-rich country and journalism is a sought after profession.

At one time the popular caricature of a journalist was of someone wearing a khadi kurta, carrying a jhola and wearing chappals; that would be considered an outdated parody today.

But that image had a sub-text and not merely that of the poor wages that journalists got. It also reflected the outsider status of the profession. Journalists were not welcome in polite society, but then they did not want to be part of it.

They were outside, looking in. They probed where they were not supposed to. They were simply low-life and a nuisance, a necessary evil, to be tolerated because of the power they wielded. The funny thing is that most journalists were comfortable with that
reputation; they loved it.

Somewhere along the way, the outsider slowly found acceptability inside. As the media proliferated, salaries went up and so did social status. A new breed of journalist emerged in the mid to late 1980s — the suave, smart and well-paid journalist who was comfortable in the upper echelons of society and power structures.

Any increase in salaries is welcome, and the profession began attracting a brighter kind of youngster, but the unintended consequence has been that the outsider status has disappeared.

Today, the journalist is not merely an observer or a reporter — he is a player.

Journalists join political parties and become MPs, they get national awards and they hobnob with the high and mighty. Many are stars in their own right. They may not have become corrupted, but they often get co-opted.

Has this affected their professionalism? Not necessarily, but when you are part of the establishment, there is so much you will do to rock the boat. So, it is difficult to shake off the impression that the claws have been blunted and the teeth are no longer sharp.

At the very least, the point of view has changed — the journalist now sits far removed from the ground. The great American journalist HL Mencken used to say that journalism was about “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” Today, it is about comforting the comfortable. Karanjia, ironically, was an insider socially but retained his outsider status; there is a lesson in it somewhere.
Email: sidharth01@dnaindia.net