The word ‘Attempt’ is used because we can only try. There are no absolute answers to right and wrong, and one must consider the pros and cons of a situation in order to make any decision.
The philosophical foundations of ethics juxtaposed against the real-world scenarios often turn out to be a poignant stir, especially in the grounds of media. And today, we have Mrs Nasima H. Khan, who has been a print journalist with 19 years of experience in India and abroad. She has worked at the Economic Times, New Delhi, Sunday Economic Times and later at India Today as an editor and writer. In 2004, she was awarded the prestigious Wolfson Press Fellowship at Cambridge University, UK, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Thereafter, she moved to Muscat, Oman, and worked at Oman Tribune, then at Times of Oman and as Editor of Thursday Magazine. She joined as lecturer of Journalism and Communication at the Ministry of Higher Education in 2009 where she has groomed 10 batches of journalism students for the market.
“I would like to begin with a word of appreciation for the Global Media Education Council and its Global Communication Education Conclave. Congratulations on this grand initiative, which brings together many media educators, practitioners, media institutes, and university departments.
The topic of discussion this evening is ‘The Violation of Ethics in the Electronic Media’. To begin with, the definition of ethics is seen as difficult as numerous factors influence moral reasoning within groups and between individuals. In his book The Elements of Moral Philosophy, James Rachels defined ethics as “…the attempt to achieve a systematic understanding of the nature of morality and what it requires of us.”
The word ‘Attempt’ is used because we can only try. There are no absolute answers to right and wrong, and one must consider the pros and cons of a situation in order to make any decision. ‘Systematic understanding’ includes understanding a society, its culture, environment, laws, religion, traditions, family background, and personal values, all of which impact how one thinks about ethics. The ‘Nature of morality’ also varies between cultures, religions, and even amongst individuals. And ethics requires us to take action. But that would again vary according to society, gender, age, education, individual belief and other factors.
After this, let’s go back to what the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates said about ethics: “We are discussing no small matter, but how we ought to live.’’ Wise words indeed!
Since I have practised as a journalist in Oman and later became a media educator there, I would like to talk about how the media works in Oman, a monarchy in the eastern part of the Arabian Gulf. Hierarchy is extremely important, with every minister, including the Minister of Information, being directly answerable to the Sultan. In such a situation, the country's Media Laws are clearly put out to the media, and these must be followed to the letter -- or, as a foreign journalist, you should not be practising in Oman. Many expatriates work in the English media in Oman and know that only some areas are open for reportage. These are business (stories must be positive), sports, art, culture and society (again for positive stories). They are not expected to critique anything happening in Omani society. Political news is reported only by the government-run Oman News Agency (ONA). To function in Oman, the media practitioner must know and follow the media laws.
I would like to cite an example from the Arab Spring of 2011. One may recall that this movement began in Tunisia, where a young man in desperation immolated himself because there were no jobs and he had no means by which to sustain his family. Copycat protests soon followed the Tunisian people’s uprising against their government in other parts of the Arab World. The most reported protest was in neighbouring Egypt, where thousands gathered at Tahrir Square in Cairo, demanding jobs and a regime change. One such protest was also held in Oman, in the northern city of Sohar near the UAE border.
Well-established English newspapers of Oman -- the government’s Oman Daily Observer and the privately-owned Times of Oman and Oman Tribune -- did not report the happenings in Sohar, not on their front page, not on their inside pages. But Muscat Daily, a new entrant in the market, having opened in 2010, had one of our journalism graduates working with them as an intern. He happened to be from Sohar, so he convinced his editors to allow him to report on the protests from there – an assignment foreign journalists were reluctant to take on. He went to Sohar and filed stories and pictures, all of which were edited in the Muscat newsroom and run the next morning on the newspaper's front page. It was the only paper in Oman that reported the protests. There were no repercussions to the newspaper as journalism courses in English, promoted by the Ministry of Higher Education, were new in the country. The reporter was from the first batch of our Omani journalism graduates.
The Arabic press is quite different in that it is by Arabs for the Arabs, focusing on developmental reporting. It is positive journalism with awareness stories, for example, about the harmful effects of ancient traditional medicines, modern-day government health campaigns, etc. Journalists are especially careful about one law that says nobody should write or report something that could tear ‘the fabric of Omani society’. Penalties for breaking laws are harsh. Television, too, is run by the government, and private channels are only just coming up.
Due to local cultural beliefs and strict privacy laws, in Oman, a person is required to ask permission before taking photographs of people. In India, too, traditionally, journalists are expected to get permission before they use a person’s name, picture or quote in their article. Sometimes, a journalist gets information from a source who says, keep this ‘off the record’ – meaning, “don’t get my name in it, don’t get my quote in it”. However, the information can be used if authenticated by another source.
In the Indian context, I feel a topic needs to be discussed, namely the tapping of private conversations. Of course, we have heard about The Watergate Scandal of 1972 in the US -- the story of illegal wiretapping and the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Complex. The news in its complete form was broken by the Washington Post and is one of the first investigative journalism reports. Subsequent abuse of power by the US president and his administration officials resulted in the impeachment of President Richard Nixon in 1974. This scandal was published as a book, All the President’s Men, and later made into a movie of the same name.
In the Indian electronic media today, private WhatsApp messages are unfortunately flashed on television screens. With some basic groundwork, a journalist would know that WhatsApp messages are private and end-to-end encrypted. So if an investigating agency is ‘leaking’ such messages, they should doubt the source's veracity and double-check with lawyers about this. Instead, reporters happily lap up the leaks, and these are repeatedly screened on television as ‘breaking news’. The result is a confused public that may believe in the falsities they are being fed. We have seen this in the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide case as well as in the Aryan Khan drug allegations case.
A Supreme Court ruling of June 15, 2021, has clarified that WhatsApp messages are not equivalent to other evidence. The prosecutor must prove who sent the message and the sender's intent and authenticate any such message presented in court. In the above cases, the media slandered and libelled people even before the courts could rule on the cases. The public was made to think certain individuals were guilty. Indeed, it was a trial by the media. These incidents showed that amid all the noise surrounding these reports, journalists were not doing their jobs: they were ‘making’ the news rather than reporting it.
When it comes to ethics in any country in any medium, the truth must be adhered to. The main job of journalists is to present the truth, make sense of what is happening in the world, be fair, be balanced, quote sources accurately and make sense of the news. Laws against libel (as in written words) and slander (as in verbal or gestures) give legal protection against defamation and are meant to promote responsible reporting. In television, journalists are expected to give equal airtime to all individuals involved in a discussion and not favour one candidate over another to prevent manipulation of elections.
In reality, television journalists in India appear to be setting the agenda, deciding what news to cover to draw the most viewers, often leaning towards sensationalism and under-reporting other major issues that impact the public. Of course, there is the saying: If it bleeds, it leads. Bad news is good for a journalist because it gets published on the front page or at the top of the bulletin. But in this race, what loses out is coverage of development issues or economic problems such as the public is facing in the wake of the Covid pandemic. Journalists in the electronic media seriously need to consider ethics and their impact on the public. The golden rule to stand by is, ‘do no harm to anybody’. Half-baked news and inaccuracies certainly do harm people.