Asleep At The Desk - (Indolink.Com, 22/02/2004)

-- By Dasu Krishnamoorty

Like all poets, Atal Behari Vajpayee seeks solace from earthly worries in spiritual relaxation. This tickled Alex Perry of the Time magazine no end. The guy began a serious report on the prospect of a nuclear war in the subcontinent with some juicy biodata about the prime minister. However, it is difficult for newsmen in a hurry to draw a line between Vajpayee the man and Vajpayee the prime minister. News at any cost, as Tom Goldstien says. Perry, sensitive to cholesterol like all health-buffs, wondered how Vajpayee could indulge in fried food and fatty sweets. Perry wrote a longish report 'Asleep At The Wheel' and it got past the copy editors asleep at the desk.

An unexpected backlash greeted and flattered Perry because some of the most articulate editors went after his blood. Editor of the Pioneer Chidanand Mitra says he was outraged by the 'supercilious, patronizing, white supremacist, flippant and crassly ill-mannered tone of the piece.' Arati Jerath of the Indian Express let the cat out of the bag when she revealed that Perry made good use of an interview L.K.Advani gave to Time's website a week earlier. Advani is worried about the cause and effect relationship between the interview he gave and the story Perry had filed. The BBC news thought the piece was not exactly hostile but for an international statesman to be called 'grandfatherly' is not a compliment.

I think Perry was worried about the consequences of a nuclear consummation, a worry that did not bother Truman from dropping two atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is that nightmare which is haunting the American press, speaking a new anti-nuclear language. If the helmsman, senile in his age, presses the nuclear button what would happen to America's No. 1 ally in fighting terrorism? Is this concern the subtext of Perry's story?

Perry's account bristles with several contradictions. First, there is no room for the prime minister's health in a report on the war situation. Agreed, there is. But Perry says 'no one questions that key decisions on national security and foreign policy are still made by Vajpayee.' Made by 'an unusual candidate to control a nuclear arsenal?' Second, if Vajpayee is not in control of his faculties, how does Perry believe that the prime minister had undergone a conversion from a peacemaker to a warmonger? Was it a conscious conversion? According to Perry, Vajpayee had urged Gujarat rioters to rediscover a sense of unity and brotherhood. It must be that Vajpaayee has been swinging between senility and sanity to suit Perry's assertions.

There is no doubt that the Time publishers will make amends but what is wrong with it, they ask. 'We call our president Dubya and whatever.' Here comes the cliché called communication gap. On our part we are strangers to American press traditions where bad news is good news. The American media are not familiar with our cultural sensitivity. It still is an Indian tradition to respect age. Touching the feet of elders is a token of reverence and, in politics, a token of sycophancy. It depends. In the US press, irreverence is a token of ultimate freedom. Such aberration creeps into our press also sometimes as when columnists made fun of Zail Singh's ignorance of English or Shankar Dayal Sharma's wobble or Sonia Gandhi's frown.

This is a time to get familiar with the traditions of the American press and live cholesterol-free lives. The Times of India editorial thinks that the government believes that that "anything that has the stamp of 'made in America' behind it is on the basis of that 'fact' alone worthy of its utmost attention." The Times, however, emulated the government, saying ' for all its reputation Time magazine is no gospel. Even in his anger, Chidanand Mitra refers to Time as a "magazine of such awesome reputation." It is we who refer to the New York Times as prestigious, to Time as free and fearless or the Times, London, as venerable and so on.

It is not words alone. We flatter these western journals by reprinting their lies. We derive our importance by printing those magic words "by arrangement with" the Times or the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Christian Science Monitor. There is a rush for tie-ups, India Today with Time magazine, Business Week with the Financial Times etc. This is how we confer prestige on these journals. This is totally a one-way traffic. Not a single article from our leading newspapers is reproduced in western newspapers. As Martin Lee and Norman Solomon say "such myths gain acceptance through the press itself."

Did I say 'asleep at the desk'? Perry's disaster suggests that the Time's desk had lowered its guards. Editors manning desks in America are not just gatekeepers but experienced fiction writers. "Firsthand observations by reporters may have little to do with the final copy. In New York suites, editors are slashing and rewriting stories filed from Moscow or Addis Ababa or Managua or Bonn. Reporters in the field are apt to take into account the proclivities of higher-ups back home." This again is from Martin Lee and Norman Solomon. On occasions, editors asked reporters covering Vietnam to change their stories from the front to suit the needs of the State Department.

One example from among several such dealing with the arbitrariness of the editors is the coverage of Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign against racism. He was always portrayed as a great civil rights leader totally eclipsing the truth that he was a great critic of the American free market. He argued that the issues of racism, poverty and peace could not be separated. So when he spoke against the Vietnam War, Time accused King of "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi."

In the case of China too, once the Reagan administration began selling police equipment to China's internal security force, expanding military ties and encouraging loans and investment, human rights violations in the Communist regime disappeared from American journalistic space. Time magazine selected Deng Xiaoping as the Man of the Year for 1985.

It must be conceded that Perry has great respect for the sourcing traditions of the American press. Fred Halliday writing in the Times of India long ago said that most of the stories regarding Kashmir and Punjab were written in the British and American chanceries in Chanakyapuri. We have no idea about who gave Perry the lowdown on Vajpayee's health. Here are some sources that gave him the information used for his story. 'One attending diplomat' (who said Vajpayee's appearance was half dead), 'one BJP worker (who said Vajpayee 'is very alert'), 'one diplomat' (who said Advani would really like to finish this proxy war), 'diplomats" (who refer to Brajesh Mishra) and 'observers' (who say that the BJP is hoping to use Vajpayee through the next general elections). Outlook editor Vinod Mehta alone was mentioned as an accountable source.

Granting anonymity to people who should be publicly accountable is another prop of American journalism. Do you remember those reliable sources like Kremlin watchers (watching from where?), Hong Kong arrivals and the very familiar 'sources close to the prime minister's office' etc. I remember the Indian journalists interviewing a 13 year-old Chennai boy returning home from Moscow and asking him for information on the collapse of the Soviet state. A school-going kid as a source on Soviet crisis!

Are Hong Kong arrivals expert enough to throw light on the state of Chinese economy? There was a joke in the days of Jawaharlal Nehru about 'sources close to the prime minister.' Sources here meant Hari, Nehru's cook. Wilfrid Sheed says that taxi drivers are generally the sources for foreign journalists. However, this kind of sourcing seems to be better than Pulitzer Prize winner Janet Cooke's creative journalism.

As British journalist Ed Harriman says, "despite the wonders of communications technology, the news often seems a little more than folklore, a steady stream of nursery tales for adults." Poor Perry, three tears for you. Also egg on the face of Indian press which has cozy arrangements with newspapers or magazines which are an extension of the U.S. State Department.