Wiki and other leaks: The same old story

For all the furore that the WikiLeaks create, their essence is no different from that of a typical gossip session where various conjectures are aired.

It is taken for granted during such speculations, for instance in an adda of Bongs, that there cannot be any formal confirmation or denial of the suppositions and analyses.

What is curious, however, about these parlour games as well as the WikiLeaks, is that they rarely reveal anything out of the ordinary. Like all intelligent guesswork, they seem to come close to the truth by relying on common sense.

This is true as much of international diplomacy as of local politics. When Anne Paterson, the US ambassador in Islamabad, is quoted as saying that no amount of American largesse will stop the Pakistani army chief, Pervez Ashfaq Kayani, from siding with the jihadis, she is hardly exposing a deeply hidden secret. Anyone familiar with the region could have made the same prediction.

Even then, Paterson’s comment carries weight because of her status. And, yet, no one will vouchsafe that she actually said it. So, despite the sound and fury, it all remains very much in the air. Similarly, the latest rumpus about the cash-for-votes has been along the beaten track except for the fact that never before have the Americans enjoyed so much credibility with the Left.

However, the charge that the Congress is not the epitome of virtuous behaviour will only elicit the response: surprise ! surprise ! So will the allegation that Manmohan Singh is pro-American.

It is like saying that the BJP is communal or the CPI(M) is pro-Chinese or The Hindu is pro-CPI(M). Neither assertion will make anyone gasp in wonder. The only difference between these observations and the one about the Congress is that there is no documentary evidence even if one assumes that the Wikileaks are based on official communications.

In The Hindu’s case, however, the inference about its bias is warranted by a strange episode, unprecedented in the annals of journalism. It is that the newspaper wrote three editorials on the nuclear deal (the issue to which the cash-for-votes scandal is related) - actually two editorials and an explanatory op-ed piece about the volte-face.

Commenting on these bizarre changes in the editorial position, the reader’s editor of the newspaper at the time, K. Narayanan, wrote that “in recent days, uncomplimentary comments have formed a bigger proportion than usual. And with good reason … (the) grouse revolved around … (the) ‘cover-up’ referring to The Hindu’s ‘contradictory’ editorial stands on the Indo-US nuclear deal … If the detour was surprising, more surprising was the explanation, a ‘comically brave attempt to justify the turnaround’ “.

Narayanan also said that “editorial stances the paper adopts do not fall within my purview. But this was the first time in my long innings in journalism that I was coming across a newspaper (particularly one with which I have been associated all along) having to convince readers that there was no contradiction in the positions it had taken within a short span of time”.

To be fair, there was another instance — also related to the nuclear issue. After the Pokhran blast of 1974, The Statesman (with which I was associated for nearly three decades) wrote an editorial condemning the blast and the describing the decision to undertake it as “daft”.

After a furious reaction from the readers, however, the newspaper changed its line. But politics or prejudice or peer pressure from outside had nothing to do with the mea culpa. It was a misjudgement caused by the fact that the first editorial was written by Lindsay Emmerson, whose British background evidently made him insensitive to the depth of sentiment among the average Indian about what was seen as a matter of national pride.

In The Hindu’s’ case, it may be worthwhile, a la Wikileaks, to quote a letter published in the Outlook magazine in response to Noam Chomsky’s recent praise of the Chennai-based newspaper. The contributor, D Anjaneya, of Chennai said that “in staid old newspapers like The Hindu and its stable mate Frontline … propaganda dressed up as reportage gets fair play. No one is fooled by the panegyrics Hindu editor N Ram pens every now and then to the Chinese administration. Has Chomsky read his report on the Tiananmen massacre?”

Like the Nira Radia tapes, how much more entertaining the Wikileaks would have been if their compilers could pry into the media houses.