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.

What defines a journalist?

The question was asked by the father of a friend who wasn’t thrilled for his daughter to join me at daily The Muslim, that used to be the newspaper of choice for residents of Islamabad. And without waiting for my answer, he offered his own: ‘At any gathering the first few people to reach for food are always, always journalists.

After many moons the question sprung in my head while reading my Sunday newspapers. It was September 4, the last day of eid holidays, and arguably the leanest day for news but ‘the pages have to be filled’ as they say in every newsroom from Karachi to Kohat. And so there were stories filed by staff reporters, there were headlines composed by sub-editors, there were pictures taken by staff photographers, and there were opinions expressed by the more brainy staff members, just like any other day.

But there was precious little to inform, educate or entertain the reader. Unless the country’s prime minister threatening Karachi squatters is taken for entertainment; reproducing hand-outs and transcriptions goes for information; and subjective opinions are meant to educate.

One of the few original news items I found was on the back page of The Express Tribune and it was about two devolved government departments that have practically done nothing for months because the province’s assembly hasn’t done the necessary legislation to take them over. The departments have been sent but haven’t been received, like packages in the care of Pakistan Post. It was an interesting story with a couple of direct quotes as well, only it wasn’t presented as a journalist’s work. It was a piece in the Speakers’ Corner, written by Sonia Malik, who going by her head shot, seems young enough to be in school or college.

If her piece is journalism, what is it that fills dozens of broadsheet pages of that day? Does she have the right to introduce herself as a journalist, on the basis of this one piece alone? Do all the others who failed in their job to inform, educate or entertain the reader through their words, ideas and illustrations, have the right to introduce themselves as journalists? Is employer the only one to decide whether or not a person is a journalist? Who and what defines a journalist?