Column Casting & Culling

Like Q & A (Question & Answer) interviews, the allocation of columns is an opportunity which, in principle, should not be treated as a favour or patronage. Free speech should not make a scribe beholden to anyone for the space. At the ground level, however, much is involved in column casting. Professional calling is the expected line of operation. Close scrutiny, at times, tells a different story.

Whereas a column gives a scribe the liberty to comment on a variety of issues, the status of interviews limits the answers to the scope offered by questions confronted with. Other forms of interview include news and profile interviews. Broadcast interviews differ slightly with their printed versions but the basic outlines are more or less similar. If interviews with individuals have their own moments of interest, columnists come about daily, weekly, biweekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or yearly, as per predetermined allocation of space and time. But they have to be regular and on a specific time period.

Just because an opinion piece appears in a print media does not automatically make it a column. Granted that it occupies some column space in different patterns and sizes. The remunerative space thus given is a matter of privilege and recognition — something not be misused. Some media societies go for syndicated columnists with proven credentials. This way, both the scribes and the subscribers benefit. While the syndicated writer earns more than what a single media house pays for exclusive articles, s/he has a draws higher remunerations from the combination of subscribers sharing an article. 

Public uproar

Recently, Britain’s top selling tabloid daily newspaper, The Sun, apologised for one of its columnists, Jeremy Clarkson, on account of the comments made on King Charles’ younger daughter-in-law Meghan Markle. The publisher despaired over columnist Jeremy Clarkson’s line that he “hated” the Duchess of Sussex. His vitriolic view mentioned how he was “dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”. 

That Clarkson should have disgraced himself to that level is outrageously baffling. The editors who went through the shit the columnist scribed should own responsibility for the incident. What are editors for? If they cannot sight a crap like that the word abdominal should be thrown out from every English dictionary. In his statement of apology, Clarkson regretted: “Usually, I read what I’ve written to someone else before filing, but I was home alone on that fateful day, and in a hurry. So when I’d finished, I just pressed send.”

Owned by the top-notch media mogul Rupert Murdoch, The Sun is a repository for British tabloid journalism at its severest. Its staple includes sensationalism and atrocious speculation circulated on rickety stilts. Even by its own standards, the publication this time created such quick and deep revulsion that the publishers were compelled to come forward with an appropriate apology.

The publishers issued an apology in deference to more than 17,000 people complaining to the paper against the Clarkson’s column content within 24 hours of its publication. The avalanche of criticisms stabilised at a little more than 25,000 notes of anger. More than 60 members of parliament and numerous prominent personalities representing the cross-section of British society joined the chorus of criticism against what they concluded was a hate speech.

 Among the critics was Clarkson’s daughter Emily, who chose to distance herself from her father’s offensive comments: “I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything my dad wrote about Meghan Markle.” Would the thousands of critics have reacted as proactively and fiercely if the victim of the hate speech had been someone from a “third” world country?

Lesson in regret

The outpouring was too powerful for the media management to ignore. However, the columnist himself, too, had requested for the article’s withdrawal. The opinion piece was quickly pulled out of the paper’s website.  A weekly columnist for also The Times, it is not yet clear whether Clarkson will escape with a reprimand and be allowed to continue with his column or something worse awaits him at the end of the tunnel of investigation. Also a TV host, he has already lost a number of well-paying popular programmes. 

In a statement released four days after the infamous opinion piece appeared, the publishers apologised: “Columnists’ opinions are their own, but as a publisher, we realise that with free expression comes responsibility. We at the Sun regret the publication of this article and we are sincerely sorry. The article has been removed from our website and archives.” 

In the process, it was also acknowledged that free speech does not denote making toxic comments. Opinions are not to be stifled. Maximum latitude is the norm accorded scribes for airing their views but not free style abuse of individuals and institutions. But professional decency should cover even columnists, too. The Sun has had periodic brush with the law when some of its victims moved the court against character assassination. A number of times it has had to shell out hundreds of thousands of sterling pounds to the victims of its false claims and barbs. Often such cases concluded with out-of-court settlement to avoid delays, embarrassments and uncertainty of the precise nature of legal verdict.   

The United Kingdom’s Independent Press Standards Organisation confirmed that the protest notes against Clarkson’s column were a record for any newspaper article. In response to complaints filed by two prominent civic groups, the press watchdog decided to investigate the entire episode. Prejudice gate-crashes in many guises. 

During an ongoing five-decade scribing career, my columns have been victimised by cancel culture five times. The interruptions were not for column contents but for my public stands on national issues taken at various forums that proved to be a bad breath for the management people concerned. That most of the publications retracted, rewarded and asked for column resumption is a tale to be told in detail on some other occasions by this survivor of more than 3,500 print and broadcast articles this past half century. 

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)