Tehelka was not an 'idea', it was a sting operator

Since the Tehelka sex scandal broke out, there have been a few spirited efforts to indirectly defend Tarun Tejpal with an interesting proxy argument that eulogised the publication as an “idea”. The lofty proposition of “Tehelka as an idea” that fought corruption and injustice in society and provided a platform for progressive, secular and liberal thoughts attempted to temper the voices that slammed Tejpal, the fallen guy. Whether it was an accidental spin off, or a calculated spin, the effort was to evoke sympathy for this man who is now in deep trouble. The message appeared to be this: after all, he gave India this brave, new “idea” and let’s be kind to him. Perhaps some men supporting him would have even wanted his empty word-trickery to work and let him atone, lacerate and have a good six months break. [caption id=“attachment_1250757” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Tarun Tejpal. AFP image[/caption] First they iconised the man; when the icon failed, they are iconising his mirror image. Was Tehelka such a great idea as many claim it to be? Personally, I feel had it been in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu or Malaylam, it would been on the cusp of yellow journalism because many publications in these languages do daring exposes using unconventional means. Some have even have lost staff, properties and have also been sent to jail by angry politicians. Wasn’t interviewing forest brigand Veerappan in his hideout, when the governments of three states couldn’t get anywhere close to his trail, a great brave expose? If one takes a macro view of Tehelka’s body of work, notwithstanding the present state of affairs, what stands out is not investigative journalism, but STING - a series of grainy videos, transcripts and sensational tales that the magazine presented before us. Not that it hasn’t done anything else, but the dominant body of work that captured public imagination and generated some real churning was the sting. Look at the most sensational stuff that Tehelka is known for - the defence deal, Bangaru Lakshman, match-fixing, Gujarat violence, Pramod Muthalik and so on. Their essays were mostly self-righteous posturing, as we have the privilege of learning now. Although the sting on the defence deal - in which army officers, bureaucrats and politicians were caught compromising on the country’s security - was a sensational expose, Tehelka’s methodology was cheap and simple - get a rash, young Braveheart, plant a camera on him and set him on unsuspecting targets. Since nobody else had done the camera-thing before, it was reasonably safe (cheeky Chinese stealth cameras were just entering the market). The defence sting worked big time and so did every subsequent sting, until many copycats -most of them shady ventures -started doing the same thing. The sting is the easiest form of journalism - there is no need for real investigation looking for evidence, following paper trails, checking facts, corroborating versions and even undertaking a little bit of espionage. Instead, all that is required is a daring man/woman who can meet the targets with a wearable camera and entice them with money, sex and what have you. That’s precisely why one could easily expose film and TV actors’ predatory sexual appetite and small town cricketers’ vulnerability to some extra cash. It’s no different from a predator’s scandal video - it’s easy and exploitative. In the absence of the candid camera and the enticer - both men and women - these exposes are impossible. Tehelka’s sting on the match-fixing scandal in fact did nothing other than letting us pruriently watch a lot of gossip and loose-talk by top cricketers and cricket administrators of the time. It was indeed eye-popping reality TV, when the term was nowhere in the Indian broadcasting space; but beyond that it served no purpose. Even after ten years, it’s still funny reality TV and nothing else. The breakthrough was not the investigation because it involved no investigation, but that Tehelka could get a cricketer (Manoj Prabhakar) to wear the spy camera. Since we don’t know what was the deal between Tehelka and Prabhakar was, we cannot give much credit to him.  Clearly he had an axe to grind. On the defence deal, the real hero is a guy called Mathew Samuel, who later disclosed how he was used and then dropped by the publication. He was not a journalist, but was daring, knew a few useful people (mostly people from his home state Kerala) and needed a job and career. Tehelka put a camera on him and sent him out with whatever foolish things he was willing to say. The men he met didn’t suspect a thing because their eyes were set on the money, booze and other inducements on offer. Same with Bangaru Lakshman - accepting a few wads of cash by a politician was no great story. But when it happened in front of the camera, it evoked our sense of indignation. Although Tehelka discredited him and his party, and sent him to jail, it said nothing new. Perhaps the story should have been was how petty a politician Lakshman was because the money he took was meagre by India’s corruption standards. Same with every other story - it was all hidden camera work and no journalism. The problem with the sting is its lack of journalistic rigour and the spin that the sting operators can pull off. We don’t know the context, what is right and what is wrong. What we see is what they want us to see. And we believe what they want us to believe. In cinema, there is a “montage theory” that’s mostly attributed to Soviet film makers. In simple terms, it is about communicating an idea through edited visuals - an “idea that arises out of a collision of shots”. For instance, the close-up of a man’s emotionless face juxtaposed separately with a bowl of soup and a hearse evoke two contrasting emotions in the viewer. In fact the viewer see the same face expressing two completely different emotions, because of the art of editing. The great Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein had said that each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other. In the context of montage theory, we were spectators to what Tehelka showed us in the edited form. Were there montage techniques? Who knows. Working backwards from what we know of Tarun and Shoma today, we just cannot rule out anything as much as we cannot rule out the montaging done by another sting operator against the Aam Aadmi Party. And calling Tehelka, which mostly employed this suspect methodology for their journalism, an “idea” in India which has remarkable examples of investigative journalism, is either poor judgment or proxy talk. With the benefit of information on the true nature of Tejpal and Shoma today, perhaps Tehelka was an idea that inspired a new breed of sting-entrepreneurs.