Once upon a time – not long back – when I presented data with report to my editors I expected two thins from them. Who told you this? Can we attribute this to the source? If it is anonymous, give us the details so that we can call them and ask them whether they really spoke to you. It is another matter that I haven’t heard them speak to any of my sources. Second is whether I have verified my numbers officially and asked the other party about their reaction. If not, why? This why could be seen clearly in the final published report.

That was then. Reporters of this generation have no idea about this entire process. Their source is Google and competitive news sources. Print journalists have all the time in the world to make use of a developing story. All they do is to join dots (mostly what they feel is right) and at the most take a phone and make some boring calls. This is mostly because of the advent of round the clock television news. For breaking news all you need is a rumour. Without substantiating any fact, tickers start to flow. Even the protagonist in the story is not given enough opportunity to counter. To make matters worse, they just refuse to come and speak to the media mostly because the rumours are true.

In India media and politics are made for each other. They feed on each other’s corpse. If one side is in the dock today, it could be other one tomorrow. Our coverage have got centralized to capital region. What happens elsewhere is neither news nor newsworthy. If I had to be a so called field reporter today, it could be the coziest job in the world.