I was always worried I would die without knowing enough about Arindam Chaudhuri. But last week, The Hindu and Tehelka put me at ease. Thanks to these two highly respected publications, I will leave this world armed with better information about the management mogul, his life and his works.

Arindam, the management guru turned academic turned author turned editor turned film producer has a way of staying in the news.  The latest is a 110-page “success book” titled “Discover the Diamond In You” that he wrote in five days flat on his mobile! That was provocation enough for these two publications to do lengthy articles followed, a few pages later, by paid advertisements from Arindam’s IIPM. (That’s another way of staying in the news.)

At 48, it’s a bit late for me to try to succeed at anything based on the wisdom of a book written in five days on SMS and, anyway, Arindam says he has written it for the young, in their language and idiom. If the diamond in me is destined to go to the grave without being discovered, so be it.

At least, I’m getting some serious insights into the life of a “discovered” diamond (more about that in a while). The Hindu wrote a glowing piece and aptly titled it “This gem’s aglow” (Metro Plus, Dec 10). “Anyone seen Arindam Chaudhuri without an impish grin on his face? Anyone? Well, chances are pretty bleak considering the man believes in turning every calamity into an opportunity,” the article began. The calamity in reference is the economic slowdown and the opportunity is the five days’ time that Arindam could afford as a result to tip-tap the book on his mobile (because he can’t still handle the desktop).

I quote him from the article: “I took five days for the book. Two days just to jot down the things I wanted in the book. Then I typed out the contents on my mobile for the next three days. I SMSed it to my designer.  Mobile is such an uncomplicated way of communication that I am not used to a computer even now. I prefer to speak the language of 140 characters than long mails.” (I can’t figure out why writing 110 pages of a book on the mobile is not the same as writing long mails…it takes a diamond to understand a diamond and I’m not one as I told you at the outset.)

The reporter now poses a profound question: Writing a book in times of economic recession makes perfect sense… but when did he (Arindam) realise he had the diamond in him? “The process of discovering the diamond in me started when I was a student. I aspired to be a teacher seeing a couple of my teachers. Then that unpolished diamond got exposed to good light and the urge to emulate only got stronger.” (Those damned 40W bulbs during my childhood… they destroyed the diamond in me.  Philips will pay this!)

The reporter is not done yet. Another profound question follows. With his quick read, is he (Arindam) not treading in the territory marked as his own by Chetan Bhagat who too speaks in the language of the young? Arindam is accommodative: “I have heard of that comparison but I have not read Chetan’s book.” (Chetan’s loss entirely.)

This glowing piece on Arindam appears as the cover story of Metro Plus and on the back page is a half-page ad of Arindam’s IIPM. The ad has nothing to do with the launch of the book, but it helps you understand the article better, if you know what I mean.

Luckily for people like me who strongly feel the media just doesn’t give us enough of Arindam, Tehelka also tried to address the need gap. On its Society and Lifestyle pages (Dec. 12 issue), it ran a two-page interview of Arindam with the launch of the book as the news peg. But Tehelka’s literary correspondent who did the piece — rather half-heartedly, I suspect — obviously did not think much of Arindam’s literary prowess.

The book is just one passing question in the two-page interview-biography that gives us critical, “you-can’t-die-without-knowing-this” kind of information about the author such as that Arindam:

• Lectures at IIPM campuses
• Writes the editorial for and oversees the cover story of “The Sunday Indian”
• Writes his books and reads potential scripts for films
• Gets his news primarily from print
• Doesn’t watch television except for the odd spurt of breaking news
• Is frank about his fear of addiction, particularly of the Internet
• A staffer operates his blog since he doesn’t know how to upload content
• Occasionally uses Facebook to interact with students but barely touches email
• Instead, claims to write mostly on SMS, including all of his latest book

Twelve pages later, on the inside back cover, is a full page IIPM ad. As with The Hindu, the ad has nothing to do with the book but helps us understand the report in better light.

It is quite possible that the editorial in both the publications did not know that the ad would appear in the same edition but the tone and tenor of the write-ups make one suspicious. While The Hindu is completely in awe of Arindam without once suggesting it has read the book (so forget about critiquing it), from the Tehelka piece it is clear that their literary correspondent did not even think it was worth commenting upon the book. Yet, there it is, the two-page piece.

There are two reasons to worry here. One, The Hindu and Tehelka (especially the latter) are two institutions that still revere honest journalism. So this kind of surrogate advertising (or is it surrogate editorial?) appearing in them is not good news for news.

Two, Arindam has just about started on his 22-city publicity binge for the book so you know there’s a lot more to come in the near future…

The Hindu is right. It’s hard to find Arindam without his impish grin. If you had the nation’s media eating out of your hands, you would grin too.

Tamilnadu is in the news for the arrest of two editors in quick succession on charges of criminal defamation. B Lenin, the news editor of Dinamalar, a widely circulated daily, was arrested on October 7 and A S Mani, editor of “Netrikan”, a Madurai magazine, was arrested in the last week of October.

After a TV actress was arrested for prostitution, Dinamalar published a report naming seven well-known Tamil actresses as also being involved in the racket. By way of proof they had what they called the arrested actress’ statement to the police.

The Tamil film industry rose in angry protest led by the likes of Rajnikanth and Vijaykanth.  Considering the filial connections of the Tamil film industry to politics, swift action was a given but the manner in which it came was reprehensible. Cops turned up unannounced and dragged Lenin away from the newsroom.  When you do that to the Dinamalar newsroom in Chennai, the intent is clear: open intimidation of the media.

Netrikan’s Mani had published a story claiming Union Minister MK Alagiri was receiving kickbacks for allotting road contracts in South Tamilnadu. Netrikan has very little reach even in Madurai so not many have seen the article. Once again, the story only named Alagiri but did not nail him with proof.

The Editors Guild of India was quick to pounce on the two transgressions on the freedom of the press. It said it was shocked to hear that the cops turned up without a warrant to arrest Lenin and even denied him legal assistance. “The Editors Guild of India has consistently held that arrest and imprisonment of Editors and Journalists for complaints of defamation amounts to intimidation of the media and is an affront to the freedom of the press. The section on criminal defamation is a hangover of the colonial raj, where editors and journalists were thrown into the prison on the pretext that they had committed criminal defamation. The British authorities used this draconian provision to terrorise the newspapers,” it said in response to Mani’s arrest.

I cannot quarrel with that view. Intimidation of media is a serious matter so it is comforting when the most respected body of journalists (current President is Rajdeep Sardesai) springs up in defence of professional freedoms. But that’s not to say I have no quarrel.

My quarrel is with what the Guild’s press releases did not say. In Lenin’s case, I read extracts of the Guild’s statements as published by newspapers.  In Mani’s case I was able to procure the full text of the statement (neither is available on the Guild’s official website). In both the statements, I did not see a word of condemnation of the poor quality of journalism in both the cases.

Dinamalar and Netrikan had published reports that may have been true but did not produce a shred of evidence to prove that. That is lazy, shortcut journalism when you want to be charitable but since freedom of press doesn’t come in charity, it should be seen as reckless misuse of the same freedom. While rightly protesting the excessive police action in both cases, the Guild would have done the profession a greater service by being equally vehement about this sad transgression and advising the profession to recognize that freedom of press is not an unencumbered right, that it is not absolute.

I mention this omission because I think it is part of a larger malaise: the media’s inability or unwillingness to look within and course correct. Because bang in the middle of these two arrests, something far worse was going on. The elections to Maharashtra and Haryana assemblies were in full swing and media houses were auctioning away the same “freedom” that the Guild wants to protect, to the highest bidder.

Newspapers big and small, were selling sacred news space to political parties and candidates. These were actually advertisements disguised as news stories.  Packages for interviews, profiles, campaign trail stories, stories favouring the paying-candidate or stories against his rival; every lousy trick was being used to make money by cheating the reader and subverting democracy itself.

But not a word on that from the Guild.

Thankfully though, not everybody is a mute spectator. The Foundation for Media Professionals organised a dialogue in Delhi on October 21 on the “blurring of lines between News and Ads”. The venerable Prabhash Joshi, editor of Jansatta, who has been writing on the topic since the Lok Sabha elections, painted a rather dismal picture of the media’s lure for lucre.

P Sainath wrote an equally shaming piece in The Hindu detailing the journalism of commerce in the Maharashtra election. But while Prabhashji and Sainath did not name names, TheHoot, a media watchdog website, gave enough examples of the rampant corruption.

These are brave efforts but just small ripples that will die out soon because most media houses are on the take in this new route to revenue and those that are not follow a silly convention of not talking about malpractices by competitors. Contrast that with the tide of criticism the Washington Post had to face from the rest of the media when its publisher tried to commercialise an editorial event earlier this year. The Post was forced to apologise to its readers for breaching their trust, and it was not even selling news space.

You will never see such searing, inward-looking, self-policing in our media. That’s why it is worth asking ourselves once in a while: Are we deserving of the freedom we seek?

 As a CNN regular, I have always marvelled at their readiness to not just pick important stories from rival channels but also give them full credit and play in their own bulletins. That’s such a rarity in our own country. Here, if one channel or publication comes up with a national scoop, the others will pretend as if nothing happened for as along as they can avoid it. When they can’t, they will simply pick the story and run with it like it is the fruit of their “exclusive” labour (TV channels can do this with consummate ease) or simply jump into it without giving due credit to the publication/channel that broke the story.

Hundreds of great stories have died a premature death in our country because media rivalry prevents one from picking up and following the other’s scoops.

 This is about one such story in the Times of India: “Jairam (Ramesh) for major shift in climate; Writes to PM that India should junk Kyoto Pact, accept emission curbs (Delhi edition lead, Monday, Oct 19). It quoted from the Environment minister’s October 13 letter to make the point that Jairam was proposing a complete reversal of India’s position. Just two months ahead of the Copenhagen talks this attempted reversal was like the Pokhran of India’s climate change with national and international reverberations.

This story needed to be followed up by everybody because if the shift happens, it can have long time implications for India’s growth story. As it happened, all newspapers followed it (I did not track the channels on this) but only to dismiss it and deny TOI the credit for a rare scoop.

Honestly speaking, they were only paying back TOI in kind because it was the TOI which started the trend of not naming any brand in its pages other than its own. Till about the late 80s or early 90s all newspapers extended the journalistic courtesy of acknowledging each others’ scoops by naming the rival which scooped them, a sort of professional doffing of hat for a good job well done.

The TOI threw this tradition to the winds because it did not want lesser papers to benefit from its unmatched and ever-expanding reach. It thus introduced us to such pathetic euphemisms as “reports in a newspaper”, “reports in a section of the press”, etc. Over the next couple of years, one by one all papers started returning the favour to TOI. So, no sympathies for TOI; if anything they deserve it.

But this is not about the TOI, this is about the readers of the other papers. The allegiance of every media organisation is to the paying reader who must get the correct picture on matters of national and international importance. The Jairam Ramesh story was one such. It talked about the crucial issue of climate change and India’s commitments to emission cuts that would impact our future for decades, if not centuries.

Any newspaper that claims to be a credible medium of information on serious national issues had an obligation to its readers to join the story and examine if indeed India was on the cusp of a drastic change in stance on climate change, why it was changing, what factors have caused the shift and whether it would be in India’s interest or otherwise. None of that happened.

The Hindustan Times, TOI’s principal rival in Delhi, took it upon itself to rubbish the TOI’s report in four short paragraphs on page 1 the following day (Tuesday, Oct 20, Delhi edition). In a “we-would-rather-believe-a-minister-than-the-TOI” kind of tone, it dismissed the TOI’s “major shift” claim by calling it just a “nuanced shift”. Of course, it cut out all references to the political uproar the TOI’s report caused in the Congress party and the Opposition and the extreme discomfiture to Jairam that caused him to issue feeble retractions.

The HT report neither named TOI nor referred to its previous day’s scoop. So there was absolutely no provocation, no context and no reason why it occupied costly real estate on page 1. But there it was, the HT, appearing more eager than Jairam to deny the TOI story.

I am not saying that it was HT’s job to validate TOI’s story. But once Jairam himself did not deny the existence of the letter or the contents of it as reported by TOI, it needed to quiz Jairam on his claim that TOI got it all wrong, that he was not laying the ground for a shift in India’s stand. For that it needed to interrogate Jairam and expose TOI’s poor skills at English comprehension. Instead it chose to take Jairam at his word and that’s just not good enough.

That sad narrative repeated itself in The Hindu and The Indian Express, too. They also took the HT route to this story of tectonic shift in India’s position by simply parroting Jairam’s protestations without bothering to put him through the trouble of mandatory questioning. Both the papers, of course, did not name the TOI.

Mail Today was one paper that showed it had a mind of its own. In a detailed report titled “New Delhi’s green policy gets fuzzy” it quoted Jairam’s earlier letters and public utterances to show that something was definitely up. But though it was less believing of Jairam, it refrained from naming the TOI preferring to say “Jairam…was reported to have written to the PM”.

The best coverage of the political avalanche after the TOI story came from one of India’s most transparent and ethical newspapers, Mint. There were many lessons for the big daddies from the way this baby of a newspaper covered the story. Firstly, it did not shy away from acknowledging the TOI’s scoop. Secondly, it refused to buy Jairam’s version rubbishing TOI. Thirdly, it quoted extensively from its own earlier interviews with Jairam wherein he had clearly articulated the same major shifts that the TOI said he recommended to the PM. And lastly, it did such a detailed story in such simple terms that even a climate change ignoramus such as me understood the whole issue.

So, I just have this to tell HT. If you have to copy anything from any paper, copy the ethics, the efficiency, the transparency and the new spirit of journalism from your own Mint, not the opacity of the Times of India.

Time to change this journalism of jealousy. Your reader deserves better.