The world of ’district reporters’ is cheap and cheerful or cheap and cheerless depending on their willingness and ability to use the freedom of expression (and the identity card that gives them the freedom in the first place) creatively and to the mutual benefit of their households and employers.
I have used the word ‘employer’ for the want of a better term. It is someone who hires a servant on the promise of two meals only for part-time work, and tells him his job will be to go to the nearby shrine at the time of food distribution twice a day, get some for himself and bring a bowlful for the family. The list of such employers include every news media house in the country except for Dawn and Jang groups. The former pays regular salaries and the latter an honourarium – a reporter working for Jang, The News and occasionally for Geo for quarter of a century gets a monthly cheque for Rs. 730, for instance. The rest not only don’t pay, even for the expenses incurred on news gathering and communication, they demand to be paid handsomely by the employee instead. What then makes small town journalists hang on to their jobs by their toe nails? And fight daily battles with rivals who want to snatch their coveted Press Pass?
Jang was the first national newspaper that boasted of a network of correspondents in every district of the country. And they did it on the cheap. Others followed the example, and the correspondents started mushrooming on tehsil and union council level. These newly minted newsmen had, and still do, very little interaction with their employer or for that matter the world of journalism outside their little area of influence. They are given a press card and told to find ways to make money with it. Then came Khabrain, the truly visionary newspaper that did not invent journalistic blackmailing but did turn this furtive and criminal activity into an accepted art form. It auctioned its bureau offices in every city through large advertisements. No qualifications required, the highest bidder will have the right to represent the paper in that city.
Today, every small city and town has scores of press pass carrying men (tobe fair there are a handful of women, but only a very small handful) who have very little formal education, no professional training, and little or no sense of news, but they make up the bulk of 17, 000 journalists, Intermedia estimates are operating in Pakistan. I have come across correspondents for mainstream media who are high school dropouts and can’t write one sensible sentence in their mother tongue. They are all active within their communities, looking for ways to make money. Their inability to report does not come in the way because more often than not they get paid for NOT reporting something. There is an occasional report praising a local official’s dutifulness or a businessman’s philanthropy – which is supplied by the beneficiaries themselves – but mostly their job is to look for news that someone doesn’t want in the public domain and is willing to pay good money for keeping it out. Understandably, their regular paying customers are local police officials and rival groups of politicians and businessmen.
And when it comes to sharing the spoils of their money-making enterprise, the district reporter is not alone any more. The sub-editor/page maker, all the way to the news editor, everyone gets to partake of it. A majority of correspondents also double as advertising agents and the commission they get from booking ads is the only money they ever get from their employer. The downside is, someone may decide to pay in kind, i.e. in the shape of an ad in return for a favour, restricting the correspondent’s share to only 8 to 10 per cent whereas a direct payment in cash means the reporter gets to decide other colleague’s share.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
