SAJAforum

PAKISTAN: The press pushes back against the Zardari gov't (Q&A)

[A guest post by Maha Atal, who works for Forbes and blogs here.]

Once a week, I go to my grandmother's apartment to watch Pakistani TV stations via satellite. Like many Pakistani-American families, we have spent the past two years glued to our screens as lawyers, politicians and citizens agitated for the restoration of the judiciary, disbanded by then-President Pervez Musharraf in 2007. Meanwhile, just as Pakistanis were tuning in, Musharraf and his civilian successors increased regulation of the televised and print media. Journalists ventured onto new media platforms and my mother and I spent many hours following the protests on news websites like GEO.tv, and when these too were restricted, on social media platforms like YouTube. Sometimes, we saw content from activists who used the web to promote their cause; sometimes, we saw journalists wander into the fray to cover it, and occasionally, to insert themselves into the protests. Now that the Chief Justice and the judiciary system have been restored, I asked Ayesha Tammy Haq, host of 24Seven on BusinessPlusTV what the convergence means for Pakistan's Fourth Estate.

SAJAforum: In some sense, there have been two protest movements underway here, one to free the judiciary and one to free the press. But the line between them is pretty thin, since many journalists have been active cheerleaders of and participants in the lawyers' marches and rallies. Can you describe how this happened? 

HAQ: When this started [in November 2007], an independent press was a relatively new phenomenon in Pakistan. We didn’t have a formal code of conduct yet. The journalists and young reporters who went out to cover the movement were sympathetic as they saw it as a force for change. The clampdown on the press brought them in to direct confrontation with the state hence their active role [in the events covered].

So the press became fairly partisan. During the marches, the producers would keep the frame tight so they never showed gaps in the crowd. People were killed in the streets in Karachi, but the media never showed the bad side.

The Daily Times did a whole series about whether the movement should be transitionist or transformationist. They became active participants not because they were marching with the lawyers but by using [their coverage] to shape government policy and saw this as their role. It was a conceptual movement.

Is there any concern about journalists giving up their objective stance to become newsmakers?

MEDIA: Q&A with media critic Sevanti Ninan on the Mumbai attacks coverage

[ See SAJA's full coverage of the Mumbai attacks, including our webcasts ]

In the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, we asked Sevanti Ninan, media columnist and editor of The Hoot, to give us her thoughts on the coverage. At the time, she was too busy, but the uproar over the Indian media's coverage hasn't subsided so we put some questions to her last week.

Some background: There's an ongoing debate in India over whether the government should impose greater controls on the media. Additionally, several prominent journalists are under constant attack from people who felt the media either did a poor job, or even worse, aided the terrorists during the operation by broadcasting sensitive information.

NDTV's Barkha Dutt, who seemed to report nonstop throughout the ordeal, has been taking constant heat since the attacks, from prominent pieces in The Telegraph and the Christian Science Monitor to a Facebook campaign ("Barkha Dutt for worst senior journalist on the planet" has 1,748 members now). She also has lots of fans who have come to her defense, but recently another controversy emerged over Dutt/NDTV's threats of legal action against a blogger who criticized her. As this Hoot article makes clear, the blogger retracted his original post and conceded that it had been "untrue and defamatory." Dutt and NDTV have been accused of trying to stifle free speech.

In that context, we caught up with Sevanti Ninan. We also asked her a couple questions about the state of the Indian media, which is now seeing a downturn after a period of intense growth.

SAJAforum: What do you think are the more constructive criticisms to have emerged of the media, in the wake of the Mumbai attacks?

NINAN: That it should be far more restrained in its live coverage, that it should be aware of the import of the information it is dishing out in an unfolding crisis, that its editorial bosses should be in the studio directing sensitive coverage and not out in the field reporting breaking news, because no one  in the studio is  senior enough to rein them in when they go overboard. That it is neither the place of  TV reporters and anchors  to editorialise constantly while reporting, nor to war monger or promote ridicule of politicians.And that there should restraint in labelling the news, and trying to queer the pitch with slogans like "enough is enough."

SRI LANKA: Lasantha's letter from the grave

A few days ago, we ran an important item on the assassination of Lasantha Wickramatunga, editor of Sri Lanka's Sunday Leader newspaper and a major critic of the government. Like other things Sri Lankan, Lasantha's death may not resonate far beyond the island: to outsiders, this may seem to be a bit verse in yet another epic ethnic conflict. But even if you read nothing else about Sri Lanka, please read the piece below, printed by his paper after his death.

It was, in a sense, Lasantha's final work, an essay he wrote with the understanding that he would be killed for what he did. If, as a journalist, you've fretted about your pay, or job security, or career prospects, read Lasantha's words and remember this: at its finest, its most tenacious, journalism is heroic.

I have read it twice--once at work, and a second time on the subway--and each time, it broke me.

And Then They Came for Me

By Lasantha Wickramatunga

No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.

I have been in the business of journalism a good long time. Indeed, 2009 will be The Sunday Leader's 15th year. Many things have changed in Sri Lanka during that time, and it does not need me to tell you that the greater part of that change has been for the worse. We find ourselves in the midst of a civil war ruthlessly prosecuted by protagonists whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty. Today it is the journalists, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been higher or the stakes lower.

Why then do we do it? I often wonder that. After all, I too am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. I too have responsibilities and obligations that transcend my profession, be it the law or journalism. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not. Friends tell me to revert to the bar, and goodness knows it offers a better and safer livelihood. Others, including political leaders on both sides, have at various times sought to induce me to take to politics, going so far as to offer me ministries of my choice. Diplomats, recognising the risk journalists face in Sri Lanka, have offered me safe passage and the right of residence in their countries. Whatever else I may have been stuck for, I have not been stuck for choice.

But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience.

MUMBAI ATTACKS: NPR's Philip Reeves on the coverage

[See SAJAforum's full coverage of the Mumbai attacks]

We recently heard from National Public Radio's Madhulika Sikka about how her network managed its coverage of the Mumbai attacks (NPR's Comprehensive Coverage). In that post we also noted all the reporting done by NPR's New Delhi correspondent, Philip Reeves. He just sent us his own thoughts on covering the attacks - including how his job was in some ways made easier - and offers a critique of the media's handling of the crisis. These are his personal thoughts, and don't represent NPR.

On the assignment and its challenges:

The assault on Mumbai was not an easy assignment. It unfolded on multiple fronts. There were three sieges at once. There were hundreds of unanswered questions. The attacks raised key issues - domestic politics, geopolitics, security, international terrorism, economics and more. All sorts of conflicting claims filled the air waves - as always happens in the aftermath of attacks. All had to be treated with care. The Indian and international electronic have grown a great deal in recent years: Officials were overwhelmed with a flood of demands for instant information. There were so many reporters and cameramen that it was simply impossible at times to get anywhere near some of the officials involved, because they were swamped and drowned out by yelling. The demand for material from NPR headquarters was naturally very high; the story could hardly have been more important, or more dramatic.

On access, and the kindness of strangers:

However, some of the conditions in Mumbai were helpful. One was the amazing candour and generosity of the Mumbai people. They were willing, in this time of tragedy, to spend time talking about what happened, and what it might mean. They offered help in finding places; advice about who to talk to, and more. Another was the access we all had. You could see a fair amount of what was going on. For a radio correspondent, this is obviously important: it means I was able at times to describe the scene with a fair amount of detail. And I was able to get close enough to hear and record the battles as they played out; this also helped me convey a picture of events to the audience.

On media hype:

MUMBAI ATTACKS: Valuing Different People's Lives

[See SAJAforum's full coverage of the Mumbai attacks]

We've previously noted the Guardian's observation of a disconnect in coverage of last month's terrorist attacks in Bombay, between "headlines of wealthy westerners fleeing Mumbai's terror frontline" and "ordinary Indians who bore the brunt of the bloody attack[s]." This week, a handful of articles explore similar themes, this time concerning media and public responses to the attacks within India itself.

In the Washington Post, Emily Wax reports that "[w]hile dozens of TV cameras were focused on the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and the Oberoi Trident hotels, some of the victims elsewhere in the city said few media outlets came to see them." She also notes contrasting public reactions to the Bombay train bombings in 2006, whose casualty toll of 209 people dead and more than 700 wounded was even higher than the toll from last month's attacks:

"For the train bombings, the outrage was there, but it was never really heard," [shoe store proprietor David] Ronel said, his hands black from shoe polish. "More people died in the train bombings, but they were ordinary Indians, not high-society industrialists or foreigners or film industry people. Where were the protest marches after the train attacks?"...   

In India, terrorists have usually targeted crowded markets and trains, seldom frequented by the wealthy. Typically, the victims have been the poor, including taxi drivers, deliverymen, shopkeepers and street sweepers. But the gunmen who struck several sites in Mumbai late last month focused much of their rage on the city's two most luxurious hotels and its most likely guests: business executives, socialites, Bollywood film directors and political bigwigs. [link]

The article situates these divergent responses within India's social and economic inequality:

"The hard reality of this country is that we are living in two Indias. One is for the rich, who matter, and one is for the poor, who are invisible," said Ashok Agarwal, a lawyer who runs Social Jurist, a group that litigates education cases on behalf of the marginalized sections of society.... "When poor people were attacked, the country wasn't suddenly insecure. This is a fundamental injustice, and it has led to authorities ignoring attacks."...

"They are all lighting candles in front of these temples of affluence, the five-stars, for the people who were engaged in an aggressive pursuit of pleasure. It is not the first time terror has hit Mumbai. When the trains blew up in 2006, there was unimaginable anguish," said Mahesh Bhatt, a well-known filmmaker. "Why did we not see this hysteric candle-lighting then? At that time, I did not witness this great sense of gloom and doom in the city. Because the local Mumbai trains are not a pretty wallpaper against which you can perform your scenes of urban middle-class activism. These are the kind of people who don't even look at the working class. The train bombing was not part of their tragedy; the Taj siege is." [link]

Media scholar Rohit Chopra points to a couple of essays striking similar notes. Focusing on the coverage of the attacks in India's English language media, Mukul Kesavan writes in the Telegraph that he "can’t remember the last time that social class so clearly defined the coverage of a public event, or one in which people spoke so unselfconsciously from their class positions":

MUMBAI ATTACKS: NPR's comprehensive coverage

[See SAJAforum's full coverage of the Mumbai attacks]

During the Mumbai attacks we tried to highlight resources for journalists and others. Our goal now is to look at some of the coverage itself. We asked a few questions of Madhulika Sikka, the Deputy Executive Producer of NPR's Morning Edition (see below). The show (independent of other NPR programming) has an audience of about 13 million people, making it the most listened-to radio program in America, after the Rush Limbaugh show.

NPR's coverage was anchored by Philip Reeves, its New Delhi correspondent. Here are some of his reports from Mumbai and its aftermath (full list here), ending with his earliest reports:

• In India, Anger Grows At Response To Attacks (Dec. 2)
• India, Pakistan Relations Hurt By Mumbai Attack
  
• Security In Mumbai: An Impossible Task?
• India Reeling From Mumbai Rampage
• Mumbai Siege Ends With Gunmen's Deaths (Nov. 29)
• In Mumbai, Militant Violence Not Quelled
• Indian Commandos Try To Oust Gunmen
• Indian Forces Continue Battle With Mumbai Gunmen
• Toll In Mumbai Attacks Expected To Rise (Nov. 26)

But NPR also turned to a number of Mumbai writers and other commentators to round out its coverage:

• Suketu Mehta: "Mumbai is India's New York" 
• Filmmaker Smriti Mundra & Journalist Sara Rajan: "Witnesses describe attacks on Mumbai"
• Sandip Roy: "Mumbai Attacker's photo haunts commentator"
• Sree Sreenivasan: "Technology helps speed Mumbai web call-in show" (ie., SAJAforum's webcasts)
• Shobhaa De: "Columnist: Mumbai bigger than terror attack"
• Vikram Chandra "Mumbai terrorist attacks echo an Indian novel"
• Shashi Tharoor "Mumbai stands out from other terror attacks"
• Madhulika Sikka's written piece: "Why the location of the Mumbai attacks matters" 

In response to a few of our questions, Madhulika gave us a window into NPR's work, in coordinating its reporters and commentators from around the world:

On the overall coverage:

We approached this as we would any breaking news story, try and provide the most up-to-date information we could (on a major holiday I might add), but also provide some context.  This was complicated by the fact that it was an ongoing story that lasted three days and obviously it was
constantly changing.

JOBS: U.S. newspapers confront outsourcing

U.S. newspapers, which are hemorrhaging readership, ad revenue and staffers, are dealing with the issue of outsourcing various aspects of their operations.

Speaking at a gathering of the Southern Newspapers Publishers Association in October, Dean Singleton, CEO of the MediaNews Group (The Denver Post, The Detroit News and 52 other daily newspaper), suggested publishers should look at outsourcing more closely:

Newspaper publishers should consider consolidating and outsourcing news operations — even overseas — to save money as revenues continue to shrink, the head of a major U.S. newspaper company said Monday. <snip>

"In today's world, whether your desk is down the hall or around the world, from a computer standpoint, it doesn't matter," Singleton said after his speech. <snip>

Singleton said sending copyediting and design jobs overseas may even be called for.

"One thing we're exploring is having one news desk for all of our newspapers in MediaNews ... maybe even offshore," he said during the speech.

Other publishers also have consolidated newsroom functions this year. Two Florida papers owned by The New York Times Co. said in August they were merging news and copy desk functions, design, layout and pagination. The McClatchy Co. papers in Raleigh and Charlotte, are sharing sports and political reporting staff.

But few have sent newsroom functions overseas, limiting off-shoring mostly to ad production and other non-editorial functions, said Ken Doctor, a media analyst with Outsell Inc.

Notable exceptions are Thomson Reuters, which has been using journalists in Bangalore, India, to handle some basic news such as corporate earnings reports, and a website called pasadenanow.com, which has five regular contributors overseas who write about Pasadena, Calif., using webcasts of council meetings and information provided by citizen volunteers.

Meanwhile, Ken Doctor, quoted above, wrote some more about this:

Well, Bay Area News Group (BANG) staffers decided Dean's words needed illustration. They created a new map showing the familiar newspaper titles, including the once-proud San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune and Marin Independent-Journal (with the Santa Cruz Sentinel written in) spread across the western India states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, the latter the state dominated by Mumbai, a major outsourcing center.

Here it is, in all its glory, photographed from one of its postings on a newspaper bulletin board.

At US papers, outsourcing of ad production has reached major proportions. Finance outsourcing is in process, and yes, newspapers are looking at what can't be done by lower-paid, English speakers.

Though farther-flung circulation is still being cut back at the dailies -- that's still publishers' favorite explanation for plummeting circulation -- maybe the move of the nameplates could be a smart counter-intuitive strategy.

After all, in India, newspaper readership keeps going up.

He also ran these stats from the World Association of Newspapers 2008 Trends report: 

  74 of the world’s 100 best selling dailies are published in Asia. China, Japan and India account for 62 of them.

  The five largest markets for newspapers are: China, with 107 million copies sold daily; India, with 99 million copies daily; Japan, with 68 million copies daily; the United States, with nearly 51 million; and Germany, 20.6 million.

  Indian newspaper sales increased 11.22 percent in 2007 and 35.51 percent in the five-year period.

OnJuly  9, 2008, WNYC Radio's "The Takeaway" ran a segment on the topic of outsourcing to India (listen to the segment at that link):

Guests: Brayden Simms, copy editor for the Miami Herald in Miami, Fla., Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Harsh Dutta, co-founder of Content Writing India in New Delhi.

Poynter's Clark wrote a follow-up column, "From Rim Editor to Ram the Editor":

I'm feeling more than a bit xenophobic these days, and I'm blaming it on the movement to outsource newspaper copy editing services to India.

I was interviewed on this topic recently for a public radio program in New York City called "The Takeaway" with John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji.

The conversation featured a 26-year-old American copy editor, Hayden Simms, whose bright eyes and bushy tail could not protect him from a Miami Herald pink slip. The premise of the program was that Simms lost his copy editing job to India and its pool of cheaper labor.

On the line with me was Harsh Dutta, a gracious and highly intelligent man from India and co-founder of Content Writing India in New Delhi, which runs a copy editing service for clients across the world, including newspapers in the U.S. of A.
Dutta admitted that Indian copy editors were trained in "the Queen's English" and had to be schooled in the peculiarities of the American idiom. I have no doubt that our copy editing colleagues in India have enough language competence to learn the difference between labor and labour and to put the comma inside quotations marks, thank you. Language, syntax, spelling and idioms are all important, but are beside the point.

Read his full piece here.

Earlier on SAJAforum:

Joe Grimm on outsourcing of journalism jobs

Post your comments below.

MOVES: NYT's Somini Sengupta leaving Delhi bureau, which now expands

After four years of covering South Asia, New York Times Delhi bureau chief Somini Sengupta is set to leave her post in a few months, making way for Pulitzer Prize-winner Jim Yardley, who shuffles over from the Beijing bureau. The moves are part of a major re-ordering of the paper's foreign bureaus. From a note sent out by Times Foreign Editor Susan Chira (reproduced in full below):

After four productive, hectic years covering an exploding story in India and the region, Somini Sengupta will be leaving New Delhi and moving with her husband to Amsterdam, where he is taking up an exciting new job running Doctors without Borders operations in the Netherlands. Somini has flung herself around the region from India to Pakistan to Nepal to Sri Lanka, infusing each story with her elegant prose, eye for detail and passion for social issues. Somini's series about water use shows how to combine coverage of big challenges for India with an intimate look at their concrete effect on real lives. When her husband's job winds down, we'll be able to discuss future assignments.

Yardley will be part of an expanding Delhi bureau (amazingly enough, given the shrinking state of newsrooms) that will also include West Africa correspondent Lydia Polgreen. She sent us this note from Dakar:

I am incredibly excited. India is an extraordinary story, and now is a great time to be covering it. I think Jim Yardley and I will bring really different perspectives on India coming from two different directions, China and Africa, which is great. My experiences covering the remarkable struggle of Africans and their leaders to pull the continent into the 21st century will surely inform my coverage of India, which has made it much further along that path but faces many more struggles along the way. But India is a story unlike any other, so I will approach it as so many millions have over the ages: As a humble, inquisitive seeker of knowledge about this vast and fascinating civilization. It is also really great that we'll be expanding our presence in India. It is a testament to how important the story is that even at this time of uncertainty in our business the Times is doubling down on India. I am hoping to make the move early next year.

More on Yardley and Polgreen, from Chira's note:

Jim's work in China has helped set a standard in how to conceptualize, report, and write a narrative-based series. And in the last year, as China became an urgent news story as well as a fertile source of grand themes, Jim worked nearly around the clock, collaborating on groundbreaking stories about the Olympics, the Sichuan earthquake, the uproar over Tibet, the burgeoning food and quality   scandals, and much more.  Michael Wines and Sharon LaFraniere, as previously announced, will replace Jim in Beijing. They have been in language training this year.

And further down:

For years, we have been wanting to expand the number of reporters we assign to India, given its growing importance as a regional and economic powerhouse, and we were finally able to manage another Delhi slot. Lydia will be ending a distinguished tour of West Africa, where she brought her incisive mind, fresh eye, and a willingness to trek pretty much to the ends of the earth -- through jungles, into mines, with rebels, you name it  -- to get to the story. She has won widespread admiration for her coverage of Sudan and Darfur, where she managed to take well-trodden ground and consistently break new stories, deepening our understanding of the complexity of the conflict. Her refusal to accept easy categorizations has defined her entire coverage of Africa.

OPINION: The broadcast standards of Indian television

[ See SAJAforum's extensive coverage of the Indian media scene ]

Here’s a screen grab from CNN-IBN’s streaming video of their Delhi bomb blasts coverage last month. I bring it up now because I found this image seriously objectionable.

An objection on content launches a debate where the pursuit and depiction of truth make a strong case against sensationalism and distastefulness. And in India where 24-hour news channels seem to be profitable business and regulatory authorities appear to be trying to grapple with the new media environment the lines get even more blurred.

But how difficult is it to decode the graphics on this newscast? The band with spots of blood on top.  The red vignette at the bottom. What journalistic intent justifies these aesthetic choices? Are they being used to highlight anything in particular or to heighten fear and create a spectacle of death itself?

In an environment where news channels are reaching new lows in order to generate TRPs and audiences feel frustrated at what they are being forced to watch, recent talks of self-regulation are a step forward. According to the Times of India’s article on August 25th, News Broadcasters Association (NBA) announced the setting up of a self-regulatory authority - News Broadcasting Standards (Disputes Redressal) Authority to enforce NBA's code of ethics and broadcasting standards. More from the TOI article:

PREZ RACE: Diversifying the moderators of presidential debates

From a press release from UNITY: Journalists of Color:

With the first presidential debate of the 2008 campaign days away, UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc. wants to ensure this will be the last election cycle that fails to include women or people of color as moderators. UNITY, the largest organization of journalists in the world, calls on the Commission on Presidential Debates to reevaluate a process that has failed to recognize the nation's changing demographics and has selected only one woman of color and one man of color to moderate presidential debates in the commission's 20-year history. "The journalists who were selected as moderators this year are outstanding, respected members of the profession. It is a glaring oversight, however, to have such a lack of diversity in a nation and an election where race, gender and age play such significant roles," said UNITY President Karen Lincoln Michel, during a meeting of the UNITY board of directors last week.
<snip>
"This issue occurs because so few of the nation's news outlets employ journalists of color to cover national politics, a fact underscored in a study by UNITY and Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Arizona State University," said O. Ricardo Pimentel, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. "In a recent interview on PBS, Bob Schieffer even noted the lack of women and people of color in key reporting positions and said that led the commission 'to go to three old white guys' when choosing moderators for the debates."

Press release in full below.

What do you think? Post your comments below.