The Independent's Goof-up

It's quite hilarious that The Independent, a UK daily newspaper, that carried a political critic on India's prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on its website, could only able to settle the final headline “Manmohan Singh - India's saviour or just 'the underachiever'?” after faltering twice. The other two headlines were “Manmohan Singh: Saviour or Sonia's Poodle?” and “Manmohan Singh: Saviour or Sonia's Puppet?” Such a glaring editorial blunder though not uncommon in media, the pith of the problem here is internationally media houses have lost their editorial intellect. Rather a newspaper or a news channel is more like a consumer product with the shortest shelf life. You can have many versions of a story throughout the day with changes here and there. No wonder then a small-time daily like The Independent having a circulation well below two-hundred thousand deliberately modified the headline twice before taking a cue from Time magazine's cover story. And Andrew Buncombe, the Asia correspondent for The Independent and the author of this story, might not feel embarrassed at all, for “the err is human.” Journalists can commit mistakes, blunders, report misguided stories, and in the next moment come out with a rejoinder, admitting to the fact that it's “an inadvertent error.” But the politicians don't have that journalistic privilege. Any wrong decision taken by them are unforgivable.

The story may have many merits while blaming or accusing Dr Manmohan Singh given the current state of governance, but do these journalists ever question their own intellectual paucity? Whatever reported in the story has nothing new in it. It's rather a patchwork of scores of news stories published in Indian media over last few years. By the way, what's the score of Mr Andrew Buncombe, as a correspondent – ethically should be a seeker of truth? Hasn't he been stifled under pressure to overshadow the ethics of a journalist and behave “poodle” or “puppet” of management? Hasn't he ever made disservice to the profession by planting stories or blowing a story out of proportion in his life time? He might have done many times, but those are unreported, censored from the public eye. Because the mistakes of a journalist, even if reported, can't generate hullabaloo or public outcry. That hardly impacts our society. People are list interested what journalists do, how they do, and why they do. The only interest they keep in the actions of hero or villain of the story. In this case, Andrew Buncombe might have portrayed a hero as a villain and that short-lived contrast is the essential doping that many journalists have overused to give a new soprano to readers' imagination.