The 'Paid News' story and the Goa Editors 'Guilt'

Hi update of the Goa Paid News Story

The Goa Editors Guild (GEG) issued a statement on November 1 (reproduced below).

It’s a nice thing that editors to have finally taken note of the Herald paid news story a ‘full’ six days after the story broke on this blog and a complaint was filed before the Press Council of India on October 25.

But there’s something shocking inadequate about the points raised by the GEG.

While all the points laid out in it are valid and true in a very academic manner, the absence to any reference to the express incident – the Herald paid news story -- robs the statement of every shred of sincerity. The refusal of the small editorial community in Goa to even acknowledge the ‘paid news’ story in the statement is also a telling thing.

Their silence speaks volumes of the editorial judgement of the captains of the media here. It also betrays a cynical talent, which makes you look away, while the very roots of journalism being hacked a short distance their thresholds. Or probably they have been deafened by the echoes of the advertorial axe.

Here’s a fact.

While some newspapers have reported the pressnote issued by the Goa Union of Journalists and the GEG, not a single newspaper ran the ‘paid news’ scandal as a news story, even as several independent Goa news websites and national dailies have run the story on their pages.

While I am in complete concurrence with the GEG statement that there is ‘growing concern’ over the phenomenon of paid news and that it must be encouraged, the GEG has made no mention of the procedures they have in place to tackle ‘paid news’, nor have they condemned Herald for indulging in paid news, nor have they even sought a probe into the revelations made in the story.

What they have done instead, is called on a person bleeding to death, expressed concern about his condition and then left him to die.

P.S. The Mail Today, a Delhi based tabloid ran the paid story yesterday. Here’s the link. Check out the last line. That clinches it.

Goa Editor's Guild statement

The concern growing over the phenomenon of  ‘paid news’ in the media is legitimate.

The media’s primary accountability is with the reader and viewer. With publication of articles and features or television broadcast of materials that are in reality advertisement and publicity for some individual as news without any clear mention of them being advertisements, the reader/viewer can be misled into believing that the publication/broadcast is truthful. It amounts to deception of readers and viewers.

The media owes its credibility to independence and objectivity in the gathering and ordering of the materials or TV footage to inform, educate and enlighten the reader/viewer. The editorial space is entirely reader/viewer’s space. There is a clear-cut allocation of space for advertisements in newspapers and TV channels. With the publication or broadcast of ‘paid news’ the dividing lines between news and advertisement are blurred, deceiving the reader/viewer.

The practice of ‘paid news’ must be discouraged by the media and mediapersons in the long-term interest of the credibility of the media. The lines drawn between the editorial and advertising space must remain clear. If the media allows these lines to blur it will lose credibility, endangering democracy.