In the newsroom, there are deadlines to meet and when a journalist gets a press release, (s)he might not have time to verify the facts if something big happens
The explosion of information, advent of technology, and social media platforms have made the job of some journalists easy. Now a reporter can churn out a copy without going through the old grind. Some reporters prefer doing stories over phone or by relying on second source or just by doing a follow-up of what appears on the social media without bothering to visit the spot and see the real incident unfold.
There is no doubt that filing reports from the comfort of office help some reporters and mushrooming online publishers to meet the deadline and “break” the news in time, but in the rush to do so real journalism takes a back seat. But reporters should not be blamed for all this as with the news going viral within a few seconds because of social media platforms and WhatsApp, reporters are under intense pressure from their organisations to be the first to report the event for TRPs and viewership. They rarely have time to visit the spot and speak to people.
At times one is so pressed against time that reports are filed based on press releases or speaking to sources over phone, who could just be interested in pushing his/her side of the story or version. As parasitic reporting is increasing many publishers don’t care a lot as it saves the costs of travelling to cover stories.
Interestingly, this is something that is not only restricted to newsroom in India only. “In the newsroom, there are deadlines to meet and when a journalist gets a press release, s/he might not have time to verify the facts if something big happens,” said a senior South African sports journalist, Thato Moeng, adding that armchair journalism is becoming part and parcel of the media industry because of deadlines and the nature of the industry itself.
The case in point is an incident that unfolded in New Delhi’s Madanpur Khadar in November 6, 2014, just a few days before the Delhi Assembly elections. On that day, news emanated of a dead pig being found in an Okhla mosque. “Dead pig found in mosque, Okhla shows restraint,” read a national daily headline.
Within hours, the news was everywhere with every national daily, online and TV channels shouting their lungs out. On that day in the evening when this writer visited the locality and met with the mosque Imam an all together different story surfaced. It was known that no media persons had visited the spot.
Quoting a local Okhla leader, who is now a public representative, a daily reported, “In the morning, a slaughtered pig was found in the mosque near the JJ Cluster. There was outrage among the people but it was decided to let police deal with the issue.”
Chances are that as the leader was easily accessible, reporters spoke to him on phone and filed the report little caring about the truth. Surprisingly nobody took the pain to travel to the spot to verify the information.
The Imam, who was the first to spot the dead pig, didn’t interact with the media on that day. When pointed out that online reports are doing the rounds of comments taken from locals, the Imam then said, “Nobody has visited us.”
The Imam said, “local leaders turned up at about 1 pm when the issue had already died.” When asked about the slaughtered pig being found, the Imam was a bit surprised and said it was a whole pig. As the mosque was being run in a DDA Park temporarily surrounded by people breeding pigs, chances could have been that the piglet had died on the mosque premises. But reporters in their rush to meet the deadline and be first to report the incident cared little to investigate these issues.
It is understood that after the piglet was found dead on the mosque premises, the Imam informed the Station House Officer (SHO) of a local police station, who rushed to the spot and picked up the carcass, dumped it in a sack, and then carried it on his bike.
The Imam and the police officer were the real heroes, not the leader who grabbed limelight on that day. But they were nowhere to be mentioned in the media reports.
It was only the next day when some curious reporters started thronging the spot, which was too late as the damage was already done. It is another story that nothing untoward happened in any other part of the city. But journalism was the first casualty.
“As a journalist, you are bombarded with a lot of press releases and in most cases, the PR companies will only tell the good stuff (that their company has been doing, they won’t tell you of the negative stuff that their company has been doing.) Most journalists fall prey to this as they only publish the article without doing their own research or going out and getting a second opinion,” wrote Dineo Matomela, an experienced journalist.
Armchair journalism at times can do harm as readers get confused and don’t get the real picture, ending up making a biased view of the event. To avoid such circumstances, reporters are taught to cover the event and interact with people so as to get to the root of the story and add element of real towards the report, an arduous task indeed.
Another story that grabbed the headlines recently was of an inebriated Delhi cop in Metro, whose video went viral even leading to his suspension. In this case also, TV channels and many social media users didn’t think twice before running the video last year. As the video went viral on the social media, some TV channels grabbed it and ran it.
The real story came out a few days later when it was found that the cop, Salim PK, 50, was not drunk but had serious health issues. Three years ago he had suffered a major stroke. And on that fateful day when his video was grabbed, he had suffered an attack and felt so dizzy that he had difficulty in locating the doors of the train, but many riders took it as if he was drunk.
As the news got front page display in dailies, many channels rushed in to cash in on by running prime time TV debate on safety of metro commuters.
Salim’s didn’t speak to the media, but his lawyer Wills Mathews told Mail Today, “When the video went viral and Salim was suspended, it made front page news. When he was taken back, not a single newspaper or TV channel carried it. In the eyes of the general public, the petitioner was drunk in the metro and he is still under suspension.
“Otherwise the only option for the petitioner was to live and suffer in silence as it is humanly impossible for him to locate the source of the video, or to take legal action against the thousands of print, visual and social media, particularly when the petitioner himself is half paralysed, with serious economic, health, emotional, and physical disabilities, and has to take care of his wife who had a serious heart attack after this incident and his aged father who is paralysed for over 5 years.”
These are not isolated cases. On daily basis, several such stories do surface. It is another story that out of them only a few get scrutinised.
(The writer is a Deputy News Editor, The Pioneer)