‘Journalism is an act of character’

Reading and watching the prize-winning entries, I am delighted to inform you that the winners — and the stories they have done — more than vindicate that hope.

But, more importantly, they also challenge a myth that seems to be gaining ground as the new conventional wisdom in our business. Ironically, in a business where conventions are made and unmade by the hour, where yesterday’s wisdom is usually seen as today’s folly.

It’s a pretty fashionable myth, I may add, and any dissent is seen as being anti-technology, as being stuck in the past. I’m sure all of you have heard this myth in one of its many variants.

Some of its most common versions go like this:

One, everybody with a camera and a cellphone is a journalist.

Two, broadband is the Holy Grail of this New Media.

Three, user-generated content is marching towards its inevitable, ultimate triumph.

Four, who needs the media, who needs editors, gatekeepers anymore, log in to YouTube or Google and get the breaking story — upload or download.

Of course, all of the above isn’t far from reality.

Of course, our business has changed in ways we had never imagined: today’s witness to an event would probably have pulled out his or her cellphone, recorded it before a reporter reaches the spot. Of course, there is a ceaseless deluge of information on the Internet: of news, of views, and more commonly, views as news.

What is usually unsaid is the fact that we need someone to make sense of this deluge, to ensure that the reader can keep her head above the water, know which wave is treacherous, which wave is the real one.

It’s here that journalists, good journalists, have to step

in with their compasses and their foglights.

That’s why never before has there been a more pressing need for the media to build public trust and credibility. The authority to say, look, this is what you have been hearing, this is what is accurate, this is what is false, this is what is unverified, this is noise, this is news, this is what it means for you.

There is another vital element to this trust: the courage and the commitment to do those stories that don’t pass the news-you-can-use test.

Stories of people and events that would go unseen and unheard, just because the people involved do not have a camera phone or broadband.

All the prize-winning reporters illustrate both aspects of this trust: with their meticulous attention to accuracy and credibility and their commitment to stories that had they not gone after, would perhaps never have been told.

Bill Kovach, a distinguished New York Times reporter, considered one of the conscience-keepers of American journalism, put it far more eloquently than I can, on what should be the role of the journalist in this rapidly changing mediascape.

In the end, whatever the technology, whatever the trend, journalism must be an act of character, he says. “An act built on the authority, honesty and judgment of the people. When people decide what news to buy, or what news to watch, or what magazine to purchase, they are making a decision about the judgment, the character, and the values of the journalists who have produced that news. In many ways those values are revealed every day when we decide what we cover and how we cover it — and what we don’t cover.”

The winners of the Second Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards reaffirm our faith in journalism as an act of character.