Barkha Dutt and Aroon Purie need to learn a thing or two from Fareed Zakaria.
by BV Rao
I suspect that the interest shown by the “mainstream” Indian media in the Fareed Zakaria plagiarism controversy was more because of his Indian origins and celebrity status than his professional transgressions. There are many good reasons for my suspicion but the most significant is that most journalists and media organisations would have no comprehension of the “crime” committed by Xerox Zakaria, as Newsbusters, the website that outed him, has wickedly dubbed him.
In India, what Zakaria did is not even worthy of a pause, look and sneer. Here, our media gangs up to successfully cover up even the journalistic equivalent of genocide, so petty theft is no more than fleeting amusement. Zakaria’s American employees, too, thought the violation was minor and exonerated him but not before he was put through the ignominy of instant suspension and intense probe into his work. The plagiarism charge against him is so nuanced that it is important to explain what Zakaria was accused of and why it is such a big deal in America but a piffling issue for Indian media houses.
Some time in April, Jill Lepore wrote an essay for The New Yorker magazine on gun control. In the essay she quoted from Adam Winkler’s book Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, to trace the history of gun laws since 1813. In August, Zakaria wrote about gun law, too, and quoted the same contents from Winkler’s book. He accessed Winkler via Lepore’s essay but credited Winkler and left out Lapore.
Zakaria did not steal any original thought from either Winkler or Lepore. He merely borrowed general facts about dates and events. There are only so many ways in which you can express a fact like “the sun rises in the east” but, in the given context, it was clear that along with the facts, Zakaria borrowed Lepore’s words, too. Worse, whether by design or default, it seemed he wanted to camouflage the debit transaction, else he would have given a second level attribution to Lepore. He was guilty not of first degree murder but second degree manslaughter. But that was enough because when it comes to ethics and morals there are no degrees of difference. You either have them or you don’t.
In contemporary journalism there is nobody, perhaps with the exception of Thomas L Friedman, who is as widely read and as highly revered across the world as Zakaria is. AFP
Time took the nuance to another level altogether. “Time accepts Fareed’s apology, but what he did violates our own standards for our columnists, which is that their work must not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well.” In short, Time was telling Zakaria he was in for trouble if he was having his column ghost-written by a junior. If you don’t have the time to write, don’t write. That is not the dictum in India as you will see shortly.
Fareed Zakaria is in a league of his own. In contemporary journalism there is nobody, perhaps with the exception of Thomas L Friedman, who is as widely read and as highly revered across the world as Zakaria is. Zakaria is tipped to join Obama’s team in the state department — if there is such a team after 2013 January. That’s how big Fareed Zakaria is.
Yet, the slightest whiff of moral turpitude was enough for his many employers to bring him down to earth. Time suspended his weekly column and CNN pulled off his web blog on a similar topic as the one he wrote for Time. Both announced an internal review of all his work. Underscore “all”. That was perhaps par for the course, but The Washington Post also suspended his column and CNN International switched off his hit Sunday show “GPS”, though both these works were unconnected to the offence at hand. But the logic was simple: if Zakaria’s work in one place in one organisation was suspect, all his work in that place and everywhere else becomes suspect as well.
Indian media owners and star journalists would laugh at such ethical sanctimony. Here, the media, especially the media elite, is above reproach as case after recent case has demonstrated. I will give just two examples at the highest level: Aroon Purie, who was in a plagiarism row in October 2010, and two months later, Prannoy Roy, who twiddled his thumbs when his channel needed to benefit from his image, integrity and leadership.
The news of Zakaria’s plagiarism and suspension hit the front pages of all major English newspapers (in Delhi) instantly. But when India Today editor-in-chief and promoter Aroon Purie found that his ghost writers had xeroxed (I’m sure that was not the intention, but….) copiously from a Slate article on Rajinikath, the media outdid itself in its familiar ostrich act. Forget about placing the scandal on page 1, there was not a word in most newspapers. Purie’s tabloid, Mail Today, which would lustily cover the Radia tapes scandal two months later, too, ducked it. Instead of an unequivocal apology, Purie tried a feeble online excuse about jetlag and sleep deprivation causing the mistake.
“Jet lag is clearly injurious to the health of journalism. I was in America, and still a bit bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived when we took an unusual decision: to split the cover. This is jargon for changing the cover for some editions; so while the content of the magazine remained the same worldwide, the cover that went to our readers in south India had displayed the phenomenal Rajinikanth, while our other readers saw Omar Abdullah on the cover. This meant writing two versions of ‘Letter from the Editor’. Not being an acknowledged expert on the delightful southern superstar, I asked Delhi for some inputs. Unfortunately, a couple of sentences lifted from another article were sent to me. An excuse is not an explanation. So, without any reservations, mea culpa. Apologies.”
That only led the author of the original Slate article, Grady Hendrix, to lampoon Purie. “Any man can apologise, but only the millionaire CEO of a multiplatform media company who is also editor-in-chief of a major news magazine can write an apology that is defiantly non-apologetic….But the jetlag apology wasn’t meant to be taken as a serious statement, it was more of an old school attempt to make the problem go away with a silly, “Whoops, I’m tired!” shrug. Only with the new media, problems like this don’t go away. While print journalists in India are said to be unlikely to report on the infractions of their colleagues, the Internet knows no loyalty, and all over India online writers are still (weeks after the controversy) tweeting and blogging for a better explanation.”
That better explanation was never to be. In fact, millions of India Today’s readers in India and abroad did not even get to see the half-apology in India Today because it was printed only in its southern editions where the violation happened. A narrow technical view of a grave breach of trust issue. The violation may have happened locally but the fallout was global. The trust of all of Purie’s readers was shaken. Not that any of them would believe that Purie could ever steal another person’s work or words, but they needed to be explained what went so horribly wrong. That never happened.
The real problem was that Purie could not get himself up to admit openly that, at least occasionally, what readers think are his words are not his. They are written by his senior editors and he signs it, but not without adding value, from what I know. As it turned out, the ghost-writer, a very senior editor, lost his job at India Today and Purie’s “letter from the editor” lost its “must-read” status.
