When news media talks to itself

If Indian news media has to begin acknowledging its problems, we need more forums as Talk Journalism

Pratik Sinha is a diffident sort of techie who co-founded altnews.in earlier this year. The website attempts to debunk fake news, videos, pictures and propaganda. It has arguably been one of the big slayers of fake news online in the last few months. 

When I bumped into him at Talk Journalism in Jaipur, I grabbed the chance to know more about him and his work. And we sat down for an impromptu cup of tea in the lobby of the Fairmont, the venue for the event. It was, however, impossible to have a proper conversation. In about 30 minutes we were interrupted over a dozen times by senior journalists, online editors, writers and even business guys, many of them speakers, some just the audience or the organisers. Each of them would recognise Sinha, grab his hand and say what a great job he was doing. The only other time I have been interrupted so often is while interviewing film stars or big directors in hotel lobbies. Clearly, Sinha is the journalistic community’s rock star.

After the first three interruptions I gave up on having a proper conversation and just sat back and observed the way people were reacting to him. Fake news is clearly a huge worry for journalism, democracy and India. And this was just regular people or journalism professionals expressing relief that someone was doing something about it. His session the next day with two other fake news busters — Jency Jacob of Boom and Pankaj Jain of SM HoaxSlayer — saw a packed hall where most of us had no place to sit. The big takeaway? Watch out for some of the markers of fake news — something that evokes extreme emotion through video or pictures (usually false), is badly written, has bad advertising (say, porn), where the website doesn’t have a proper “About Us” section and there are no source references or citations.

Talk Journalism then has hit upon the right issues to talk about. And it did that for three days. There were journalists from the Northeast of India, from Hindi, Marathi and Urdu media, from online and offline media, TV and print. And the topics were all the things that we worry about and grapple with as professionals — deepening confusion in media, polarisation, the regional divide and fighting defamation among other things.

Besides fake news, one of my favourite talks was a gentle but insightful one on the life of an Urdu reporter by Shakeel Hasan Shamsi, editor (North) of Daily Inquilaab. He spoke of the perils of associating a language with a religion and how that changes the way people read, write and use that language — something that has happened to Urdu. 

What I missed? The presence of more offline news media, of news TV and newspaper owners and how they think of developing journalists. And more on solutions to the problems ailing journalism. For instance, training a gaping hole that is showing up in the quality of journalism in India. News channels are more guilty of this — you see some of the most ill-reported, opinionated and badly done journalism anywhere on Indian news channels. But newspapers have also been terrible about spending enough money on training reporters, editors and other staffers. In my 24 years as a print journalist, every bit of training or every fellowship I applied for was my initiative. None of the papers or magazines I have worked for have suggested or invested in training me or any of my colleagues. So a workshop that offers practical tools for working journalists — on data, technology, writing, editing or any of the things that a journalistic organisation does — would have been nice.  

But Talk Journalism forces the news industry to talk to itself and examine itself. There need to be more such forums if Indian news media has to work better and provide the right fodder to feed the discourse for a healthy democracy.

Twitter: @vanitakohlik