Teacher meets journalist

Yeh Woh
(The News on Sunday)

‘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.

Making the horse drink

Yeh Woh

News on Sunday

If there is one thing the entire mass media of Pakistan, and indeed all Pakistanis with an opinion or two agree on, it is the need to inculcate some basic professional ethics into the news media industry. Every single newspaper, every television channel and nearly every anchor person and columnist has a stated position which acknowledges gross violations of ethics on a daily basis, and urges on the reform process.

We have done it for so long that we are getting rather good at it. We boldly accept we work in an unethical environment, thereby implying that we could be ethical professionals only if the environment was right. This opens up media people to plenty of support and encouragement from well meaning people in the world who believe there is no wrong that can not be righted in a five-day training workshop.

Every day somewhere in the country, a group of journalists is taught ethics of reporting on violence, or labour issues, or working women, or elections, or acid crimes … you think of a subject, a theme, and a donor promptly finds money to train or sensitise limited number of media persons in treating that subject professionally. International financial institutions have the money to train business reporters, INGOs are only interested in the humanitarian aspect of reporting, a UN agency can spend a fortune getting us a code of ethics for portraying children, and a country on the reverse side of the globe can fund a campaign to encourage reporting on our environmental issues.

Have the sundry admissions of culpability by all concerned, training of journalists, and five-star consultations with senior editors and owners, made our output any more ethical? Is it possible for an outsider to train part of a local industry, on the application of ethics to one part of the business only, and get wholesome results? Can an industry reform itself by simply shouting for help without putting in any effort, time, and money? And finally, having brought a thirsty horse to water, how do you make it drink?

These are not rhetorical questions, and their purpose is not to belittle the efforts of reformers – all of whom are foreigners or those relying on foreign funding. The idea is to consider the possibility that the horse is only pretending to be thirsty and that is why it won’t drink clean, fresh water. Or that it prefers muddy water that its digestive system is used to.

Ask any group of front line journalists – reporters, subeditors and camera persons – and they’ll tell you their editors are interested in quantity not quality. That they will never allow them the time, space, and material resources to work on a story professionally and ethically. And therefore the only advantage of sitting through a training is, getting a break from work.

At a recently held discussion, senior journalists including well known anchorpersons and working and former editors, agreed that the unethical influence in the news media is entirely the doing of media owners who are obsessed with ratings and breaking news.

Owners of mainstream media are loath to being questioned, but I’ve had the opportunity to ask a group of local media owners in Peshawer what or who stops them from running their business with due regard for the principles and ethics of journalism, and their unanimous reply was: the intelligence agencies.

So, where to begin the reform process then? From intelligence agencies? Or coax media practitioners at every level to know and be responsible for upholding professional ethics within our own spheres, and put in place a media watchdog with real teeth to ensure journalists are not penalised by owners for being loyal to their profession?

The owner is in the business of making money, or getting political patronage, or both, but they are not journalists. They hire a professional editor who exercises executive authority in the day to day running of news operation. Whatever little is ethical in the output then, is credited to the editor, and all the unethical stuff is thrown at the door of the owner, simply because no one dares knock on that door.

If the editor/director is not part of the solution, they are part of the problem. And a big part of a big problem. If the only way foreign donors know of reforming a pesky media is training, then let the senior most editors and newsroom heads be the first to go through it. They need it more than the fresh recruits who simply adapt to the culture created by senior editors.