Editorial: Press-ing for answers Friday, 06 January 2012 02:55

German President Christian Wulff’s diatribe against the Editor-in-Chief of Germany’s top-selling newspaper has yet again roiled the waters of the media-government-public complex that was much in contention last year.  Wulff, hoisted on the presidential chair by none other than Chancellor Angela Merkel, is said to have used threatening phone language when he called Bild’s Kai Diekmann from Kuwait. Wulff reportedly used intemperate language in asking the editor to hold a story which said that he had obtained a home loan on favourable terms. The script of the controversy reads like an I-say-but-don’t-take-offence drama with the 52-year-old German politician giving an apologetic sounding interview last Wednesday in the aftermath of the raging row. Though authoritarian regimes are known to do their best to gag the Fourth Estate in ingenious ways, it is least expected of western governments known to stand by long-cherished values of democracy and liberty. The Arab Spring speaks volumes for the role of a free media — traditional or social— in trumping attempts at muffling the voice of the people. Barring a CNN or a BBC from a Libya or a Syria wouldn’t do much to stifle the voice of dissent. They will get in in one way or another and the end result is for everyone to see.

The phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom, however, makes one look at the press-public relationship from the other end of the pipe. The Leveson Inquiry on Culture, Ethics and Practice of the Press is writing a new chapter in the relationship of the media with the public and the government. With one of the largest newspapers — News of the World — folding up in the wake of the scandal and its owner, media baron Rupert Murdoch facing immense heat, throw pointed questions that beg elaborate answers.

The phone hacking scandal shows that not only are governments vulnerable to crossing limits set by their constitutions for letting free media flourish, but also the press has an immense responsibility to go by ethical practices and not do away with scruples. No amount of hack work forced by media outlets competing in a dog-eat-dog world can replace the viability of ethical journalism, history has shown. The press in the largest democracy, India, has weathered many a storm. Newspapers were forced to leave their leader spaces empty— refusing to toe the government line — in the dark days of the emergency slapped on a nation in transition in the 70s by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. There were so many direct threats to newspaper editors and reams of newsprint was rolled in criticising the authoritarian streak in the government. The Indian media survived all that and here it is — largely free and flourishing.

The media, governments and the public are tied up in a queer troika — inseparable yet distinct and independent yet dependent. Each constituent should strive not to discount any ethical value.