Untold Stories About Unsung Heroes

By any account, news and editorial contents flowing from organisations with hidden axe to grind constitute an anti-thesis of unalloyed presentation expected of a sector that society places in high pedestal. As the last checking point for reviewing media contents, editors at News Desk render a yeoman’s service. Far away from limelight and bylines, sub-editors and other peers supervising the final lap of gate-keeping are invisible to the public even if they are entrusted with a vital task. 

If the Desk sights “senseless sacrifice of young Russians” sent to the front fighting the war in Ukraine but overlooks another staggeringly senseless war in Iraq in 2003, when more than one million lives were lost, it betrays lack of professional balance. The discrepancy can be attributed to decision makers at the media houses or the “sovereign” editors themselves.

To err in not inhuman; to do so too often is sheer incompetence; and to deliberately “err” is nothing less than professional crime. Unfortunately, news outlets with wide reach in advanced economies have wilted under pressure from state machinery, ideological sponsors and big advertisers. The outcome: use of “sham election”, “farce”, “fake”, “rigged”, “dictator”, “rubber stamp parliament”, “pariah state” and “terrorism sponsor” are in the practising dictionaries of many a media. Intriguing is also how “gunmen” and not “terrorists” or vice-versa becomes the preferred word choice. For this, the news room or the media owners are at fault, which gradually suffers erosion in the organisation’s public standing. Those depending heavily on news agency reports have to exercise caution and be able to have a talk with the news supplying agencies.   

Cause of erosion

Even as the United Nations’ inspection teams did not find evidence of banned weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and various surveys showed that most Americans were against military intervention without the UN endorsement, the invasion of Iraq went ahead just the same. Indeed, no banned weapons were ever found, and one million Iraqis, mostly civilians, were killed. That should explain why less than 45 per cent of people trust the media in most Western countries, as indicated by annual surveys conducted by institutions they rely on.  Some news channels go at great length to attract attention and boost their readership, listenership and viewership. Calculations are that sensational stories sell fast far and wide. Were this to continue unabated, news audiences will thin drastically and migrate to other diversions.

At a time when media trust is declining worldwide, political slants and one-sided reports are pushing media credibility to the brink. The topping is even worse. Trust deficit is a dangerous sign that signals loss of channels for constant connectivity between people from the cross-section of society at the local, regional and global levels. The vacuum thus created portends ill for all concerned. If unquestioned, any individual or institution risks developing dangers that could burst open under unexpected circumstances for those having been hailed as unassailable, but only be found vulnerable. Deep distrust cuts through news recipients. News is expected to be reported, and not manufactured with alloyed ingredients that distort facts and mislead audiences. Independent journalism and journalistic integrity risk losing ground to corporate tentacles and partisan forces, whereby news seekers might turn indifferent to current affairs information channels that are less than professionally impartial. 

Having allowed things to sink in mess, editors and their organisational bosses should summon special courage and energy to stem the fast-falling image and impact of the once much hallowed news media. Commercial interests of corporate houses, particularly conglomerates with diagonal ownership structures, offer many instances across the globe of being engaged in corrupt practices that put at grave risk the integrity of journalism as a profession rendering a vital service to society. Ukraine war, Russo-Chinese alliance, Saudi-Iranian patch-up brokered by communist China, and African leaders’ new-found desire to voice their concerns have not received the kind of reportage and analyses in the mainstream international media that would have been covered with enthusiasm if the development fitted their agenda. 

Partisan News Desk hands might engage in self-congratulations and back patting as mere in-house heroes collecting pay packet of bias. But their conscience gives them no solace. The public might fear them, jeer them or ignore them, but does not hail them as heroes. Their value is in their villainy. Some 10,000 Ukrainians have been killed in 27 months since the Russian military intervention. But the blow-by-blow report on Ukrainians killed is missing when it comes to coverage of 33,000 persons killed in Gaza in less than seven months. The international media reporting on Russian strengths and Ukraine’s setbacks, much to the cost of their public standing. Russian losses and reverses are reported in minute detail. Graphic narratives about similar situations suffered by Ukraine go either missing or are under-reported. In this regard, alternative media are accorded a sort of walkover by the mainstream media. 

Onerous task

If the business of defining journalism and its qualities is confined to academic discussion but breached at every turn of motivated interest, the exercise would be far from walking the tall talk. It never gains public respect. Newsroom heroes, who meritoriously render Herculean service through thick and thin, scale the eternal height of recognition in history. As the final gate-keeping point before a news item is released for public consumption, Desk editors are responsible for not only language editing but content quality, including fact checking, restructuring and, at times, writing a whole story based on the facts narrated by reporters in a rush exerted by deadlines, with little time to script a proper story. 

News editors do not get the bylines whereas reporters do. Theirs is a laborious task of finalising neat copies with facts verified. A competent and fair news channel is the outcome of staff members working with keen eyes and ears, and displaying ability to edit and rewrite copies at short notice. The final content has to be on the same page of widely accepted code of ethics. That’s why not all achieve what a Forth Estate is supposed to represent. Those who do can chew the cud of professional satisfaction at work place as well as in retirement.

(Professor P. Kharel specialises in political communication.)