Kanika Datta: Can't readers too be culpable?

SWOT

Ever since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh raised the point about the press and accountability, much has been written on the subject. It is difficult to take hard-line positions on either side of this debate.

The government has been as enthusiastic about disseminating inspired information (which it often denies!) as the press has of being economical or inaccurate with the facts.

But there is one point that has been overlooked in this discussion""and that is the accountability, or lack thereof, of the reader or consumer of news.

Journalists have often suffered being reviled when they publish accurate, negative stories""it's called a professional hazard. But in the world of print, this is mostly a word-of-mouth affair with limited impact. What happens when you're dealing with information on as global a forum as the World Wide Web?

The thought came to mind as I read, with increasing disgust, the controversy that has erupted over a youth magazine called JAM, which wrote a critical piece about a B-school called IIPM run by Arindam Chaudhuri.

IIPM and Chaudhuri have enjoyed a meteoric rise in recent years. Having interviewed him and reviewed one of his books, I can confirm that he is a smart businessman.

As for the article, it is, on the whole, a careful piece of journalism. The claims that IIPM advertises and facts it puts out in the public domain are compared against the facts as the journalist investigates them. Most of IIPM's claims are cross-checked through campus visits and interviews with students, alumni and corporations IIPM has named in its advertisements.

Perhaps the only weakness is that the writer posed as a student to conduct parts of the investigation. Admittedly, the jury is still out on the ethics of obtaining information under a disguised identity.

Nevertheless, questions based on the findings were sent to Chaudhuri, who did not reply.

No sooner had the piece appeared than Rashmi Bansal, the editor of JAM, and Gaurav Sabnis, a popular blogger who linked the story to his blog and made some unnecessarily provocative comments, have been assailed by a barrage of blogs purporting to be from loyal IIPM alumni, fiercely supporting their alma mater.

This upsurge of support might have been touching had it not been for its low and vicious nature. Reading through these comments, the striking point is they contain little by way of hard information rebutting JAM's story. Most of the bloggers appear to expend a considerable amount of energy focusing on Bansal and Sabnis.

Among other things, Bansal has been accused of doing a hit job for Amity, a rival B-school that has enjoyed similar explosive growth. One blogger has alleged that a tape of Bansal accepting money from an Amity functionary to write this story was caught on candid camera and was aired on Aaj Tak (date and time not mentioned).

Then again, Bansal's sexual proclivities have been called into question""though it is not quite clear what bearing these had on the issue at hand. This in itself became a source of intense discussion among some bloggers, many of whom even took time out to extend prurient invitations to her.

What is more, all the really malicious stuff about Bansal and Sabnis are written anonymously by people with IDs such as "OracleCoder", "IIPMstudent9" and so on.

To the rational reader, the nasty tone of these missives alone will detract from their integrity. The point, however, is that all manner of things have been publicly alleged about Bansal, the magazine she edits and Sabnis.

Unlike the original article, none of these facts have been graced with the slightest verification by their authors. JAM has reportedly been sent a legal notice for the article. But these anonymous readers get away scot free. Is this fair?

Also to the point, none of this does IIPM the slightest bit of credit, nor does it enhance its reputation. If it wants to defend itself with dignity and credibility, the institution would do well to set up a blog of its own rebutting the facts in the JAM piece and publicly dissociating itself from the more injudicious comments of its enthusiastic alumni.

The Net is increasingly becoming a pain point for corporations, especially large multinationals in controversial businesses. If there is a larger lesson for them in this incident, it is how not to deal with negative stories.

The views here are personal