‘When a journalist slanders
someone in mass media, what can the aggrieved person do?’ asks one of the only
three women in a training workshop for some two dozen radio and print
journalists.
It is a very unusual question for a
workshop on professional ethics. Front line journalists in small town Pakistan
are the least curious of the lot. They treat a discussion on ethics the same way
they deal with Friday sermon: listen respectfully without hearing, much less
questioning or retaining anything about upholding universal values and avoiding
unethical conduct. And here’s a young journalist thinking about her audience?
Impressive.
Seerat introduced herself as a
freelance journalist and columnist for local newspapers but didn’t have anything
to show. Then towards the end of the three-day event she privately reintroduced
herself: ‘I am no journalist’. Now here’s an honest one, I thought. The rest of
the group could but never did admit that they are journalists only because they
are employed with a media organisation, otherwise they know nothing about their
rights and duties as journalists, and the mythical ‘best practices’.
‘No, seriously, I mean I’ve never
worked with media. I am a teacher by profession’. She is wearing a burqa,
complete with a veil over her face, showing only her eyes, and there’s no hint
of a joke there. Okay ... nice meeting you Seerat the teacher, what brings you
here? ‘I wanted to meet journalists and see for myself what kind of people they
are’. Hmmm, not to get too personal, but are your parents about to marry you off
with a journalist? Or maybe it’s a silly question, let me rephrase it: why?
The answer to this one-word query
elicits an hour and a half of explanation.
As head teacher, she sacked a couple
of female teachers she found below par. The women ganged up against her and
threatened to ruin her life through local media. ‘I didn’t take them seriously.
I mean media only says what’s true, right? So why should I worry when I’ve done
everything according to rules’. Ah the innocence, the small town innocence of a
university graduate. What helped her grow up and learn the reality was an
identical piece in two local papers a few days later, displayed across the front
page. ‘The head teacher is corrupt,’ announced the headline, with more
sensational disclosures in the strap line: ‘teachers say she is mentally ill and
tortures students and staff alike’.
Her eyes water a little around the
outer corners: ‘Sir do I look like I am mentally ill?’ I try to make out her
facial expressions behind the thin veil, failing which I look straight at the
scar between her eyebrows and shake my head in sympathy.
‘You are teaching them ethics, so
tell me what can I do against unethical reporting that’s tarnishing my image,
bringing bad name to my family, and stressing me out even after I quit that
job?’ Nothing, I replied with emphasis on the first syllable to denote absolute
finality. ‘Nothing?’ she challenged me. ‘Well, a lawyer friend suggested that I
should get the two newspapers to retract the offending stories and publish an
apology’.
And did you? ‘Yes, I went to one
editor, he told me not to teach him how to be a journalist. And after I left his
office he called up the other party and received money from them for not
entertaining my point of view. Then I went to the other editor but this time I
had a few people call him before hand. He agreed the story against me was
one-sided but instead of an apology he offered to publish a piece written by me.
I gave him two and half pages of my side of the story, but this is all they
used,’ she thrusts a folded newspaper towards me. The story is about three
column inches and makes no sense, but the headline and strap lines are
definitely positive: ‘The head teacher refutes corruption charges – says she is
not mentally ill’.
So that proves it you are alright, I
found something to say when I finished reading the story. The tear drop in the
corner of her eye grew bigger, and rolled down gingerly, mixing with the kohl
line and leaving a streak of grey that quickly disappeared in the black veil. ‘I
didn’t write this line, they added it on their own,’ she said weakly, not sure
if this too is unethical journalism.
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