Friday, November 14, 2014

Change in working style – political reporters in India

I have started falling back on my idea of writing everyday. As said earlier, I was travelling, but then agree its more of an excuse. Perhaps I could have written. Just don't know how or when. 

Off late I have had the chance to read up on certain interesting pieces and also think through some of the problems. For example. 

There was an interesting article in Business Standard on how government reporters are now finding it difficult to get information from the Lutyens. (Click here.) The author then writes about how the flow of information is very stifling on the corporate side.

The one sentence from the article that perhaps can sum up the problem when corporate stifle reporters from carrying their job would be --
"When an entire group gives up probing on a certain company altogether that results in blow ups such as Satyam and NSEL scam."
Perhaps something similar can happen with the government as well if it starts creating choking the freedom of the press. Perhaps political reporters should take a leaf from the corporate reporters' book. Now political reporters should also start reading all documents and make noise for transparency in governance.

They should perhaps think of themselves as auditors who are looking for paper trails and mismatch in the stories or some hard facts. It will increase the work load but perhaps this may be the new way of working.

Sometimes the only way of doing an interesting thing or achieving even decent result is by slogging hard. Now the time has come for journalist to show if they are in the profession because they actually like it or if it was just a coincidence and they don't like to do hard work. 



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