Opinion - News Analysis

When hard news is a casualty

Every journalist must have a nose for news, said my editor to me one day long years ago. I gently answered, sir, you must agree that each nose is different.

What is news, is the basic point on which journalism teaching courses begin. There are standard definitions and the selection of news for publication is based on generally accepted norms. This is why one often sees a sameness in the content, particularly in English language newspapers.

Yet the treatment varies, as also the choice of not-so-routine stories. An element of subjectivity comes into play in the angle, emphasis and placement a story gets, depending on the copy-handler's interest. What do you find in this story, why do you throw away that one — these are frequently heard questions in newsrooms, because perceptions differ. Consultations and exchanges are absolutely essential in newspaper production for doubts to be cleared and creative ideas to emerge.

Also coming into play in decision-making is an element of uncertainty. How will the superiors react if I carry this news item? In such situations, the easy way is to play safe, by either referring a piece for clearance or just sitting tight over it.

In bringing out a daily newspaper, the fight is on two fronts — one against the clock, to get it ready within the deadline, and the second to get a huge volume of news into the limited space available.

In any fight, there have to be casualties. If the deadline is not met, production is affected. When space is the constraint, there may be omissions, sometimes of important developments, which get prominent play in rival publications.

Readers' interests are so diverse that reactions to gaps in news coverage vary in intensity. From gentle admonition to sarcastic and scathing comments, we see them all.

The most recent reader reactions came in response to the developments relating to the Sabarimala temple and their non-reporting in The Hindu. The temple attracts crores of pilgrims from all over the country and even abroad, and their offerings total up to impressive figures. Caste, class or creed have no place in this temple; but there is a bar on women between the ages of 10 and 50. The Deiva Prasnam (astrological probe into a temple's state of affairs) at the temple conducted recently and the sequel to it got quite some attention in the print and electronic media. The interest was not confined to Kerala.

Why was The Hindu ignoring this, when so much space was devoted to the "Da Vinci Code", which concerned a smaller section, asked a reader.

In the non-Kerala editions, there was a brief report on the second day of the Prasnam. This could have been in keeping with The Hindu's policy of not promoting astrology and keeping out features like astrological forecasts (from the time of Kasturi Srinivasan who described predictions in newspapers as "mass cheating", though he himself personally believed in astrology). But when such a probe comes to the conclusion that there were malpractices and mismanagement in a rich temple, that becomes news.

This was not a religious or communal controversy, the highlighting of which would harm society. That has always been the conscious policy of the paper, but these considerations did not apply in this case, even though it involved temple rituals. The enquiry, spread over four days, had interesting, newsworthy features.

The finding that a woman had entered the sanctum sanctorum and touched the deity, and a Bangalore actor's claim that she had done so got noticed in The Hindu late, only when the Karnataka Assembly debated it. Then come the proceedings in the Kerala Assembly.

But Assemblies were not the place where the real news was. There were many developments, and many other angles that could have been covered. We are reporting the controversy in a non-sensational way was the response I got to my queries. The most innocuous story can be made sensational; and the most sensational story can be made tame. It is the presentation, the angle taken, that matters. There was nothing "sensational" in the Sabarimala related events, which other sections of the media covered in detail.

The Hindu's core values are secularism and rationalism and it seeks to promote these. This does not preclude news relating to religious activity, or to religious institutions when there are major developments. But the news handlers are often in doubt when a news report has some aspect of religion attached to it.

I came across an example of this in my very early days as Readers' Editor. The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam conducted a Kalyanautsavam in Chennai which drew a massive crowd. The Hindu did not report it and my office received a flood of messages. In my initial enthusiasm, I took one call and received a torrent of abuse.

When I referred the matter to the Editor-in-Chief, I was told there was of course no bar on reporting such events; it was a matter of news judgment and editorial judgment but especially in the Indian socio-political context, care needed to be taken not to highlight or exaggerate inter-religious as well as intra-religious differences. He emphasised that religion was a subject that needed to be covered journalistically, factually, professionally; certainly not by the journalist assuming the voice of the impassioned devotee or through religiosity or theological partisanship masquerading as journalism. However, from time to time it was possible that religious or other events that warranted news coverage would not make it to print because no newspaper could claim to be comprehensive or complete and no process of news or editorial judgment could claim to be perfect.

He added: "As for astrology and various cross-cultural forms of mumbo jumbo, I regard it as part of the social responsibility of a great newspaper not to promote or spread irrationality in any form. There are more than enough outlets for such irrationality, as it is!"

Where does one draw the line? There is need for clear guidelines defining what types of stories are to be excluded, setting out the parameters within which the news department can function.

readerseditor@thehindu.co.in

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