Not a questioning sort

At the celebration of UPA II’s four years in office, the Prime Minister spoke to the media.It was a short, cryptic affair. After the speeches were over, the Prime Minister walked a few steps from where he’d sat with his colleagues and Rahul and Sonia Gandhi just half-an-hour before and came to the waiting media. This was clearly not impromptu. Top editors of media organisations were present shoulder-to-shoulder with their beat reporters. The expectation was naturally high. After all, these are the people who raise the big questions of the day, set the clarion call every night from issues of accountability to moral courage to transparency and dialogue.

The media narrative all through this year and before has been about the “UPA’s communication deficit”, its “image crisis borne out of its inability to connect” and the “virtual silence from the top leadership of the government”. So when the opportunity came to put some questions to the Prime Minister, one would have hoped that the media would come back with something – at least the basics, if not the tough questions would be asked.

This is a sample of questions that the almost 50-strong media contingent came up with (not necessarily in that order).

Q. Describe your mood at the end of nine years in office.

A. Dr Manmohan Singh replied to that question with a couplet by Iqbal. “Sitaaron se aage jahan aur bhi hain”.

Another one was an often-repeated television gem.

Q. “Rate the performance of your government on a scale of one to ten”.

(If someone had simply gone back to the archives, chances are they would have found the Prime Minister responded in the exact same words after UPA I’s four years in power.)

1. A.   “It is for the people to rate our performance”.

Let’s for a moment give the devil its due, that this was a short, snappy interaction, completely last-minute. Yet, since the media has obsessed about this one particular event one would have hoped that some more pertinent questions would be top of mind.

How are these as possible questions?

Q. Mr PM, were you aware that one of your Joint Secretaries was at a meeting where the CBI’s draft status report on coal was reconsidered?

Q. So, your Joint Secretary acted on his own, Mr PM?

Q. Mr PM, do you believe your Law Minister was in the wrong when he called this meeting?

Q. Mr PM, is it true you were under pressure from your colleagues to get the Railway and Law Minister to resign?

Q. Mr PM, three of your ministers had to step down on allegations of impropriety or corruption, two of your allies left your government calling you high-handed, surely this isn’t a time to be upbeat?

Q. Mr PM, what would you like to say to the new CAG of this country?

Answered in Yes or No or even with silence they would have given the media their much-needed headlines and real points to debate a few hours later.

Of course this is all hypothetical, in the real journalistic world things are tougher, not just for the often maligned “breaking news reporters” but even for the ones who break the news the next morning or the next week. Which is why one is surprised that no print/magazine reporters who otherwise purport to bring seriousness to political reportage asked the PM anything of substance (unless the next issue of some magazine is publishing an interview with the PM).

Sensing this was a rare moment, the PMO’s official Twitter account that normally posts staccato and joyless bureaucratic platitudes, this time surprised us with a picture of the Prime Minister listening intently to questions from journalists. The tweet came soon after the interaction got over. If you look keenly between the empty chairs, the red carpet and the Prime Minister you’ll catch a glimpse of Rahul Gandhi and Defence Minister AK Antony in deep conversation.

Now, atmospherics we all know are a big part of reportage. Body language, tone, tenor, length of speech, imagery, pauses, even a harmless “theek hai” are brutally torn apart by journalists, experts, politicians masked as journalists or journalists who would rather be politicians. It’s when atmospherics and sources become the mainstay, that its time to worry.

In a recent article, Open Magazine spoke of a nexus between media and Congresspersons that had created a generation of Congress politicians who owe their career primarily to their ability to manipulate the media. The piece went on to elaborate how much of the time there was no news to break, and in this hurry to get information out, it was “sources” as opposed to journalists who were driving TV coverage and putting a spin on events.

Leaving aside some of the innuendos of the piece, there is something to agree with here. Reportage of the Congress works as a clique. Any journalist who has attended any of Arun Jaitley’s post-press conference conferences, would have heard the comments about how the media bubble wraps the few editors who interview Sonia Gandhi, and how the media’s body language with the top brass of the Congress is almost “subservient”.

This is certainly not to imply or tarnish the image of journalists who attended the Prime Minister’s media interaction. Yet, there is much to be said of the media (as equally for Rahul Gandhi) if the Congress Vice President can get away with a banal comment such as, “I will work for the party”, interaction after interaction.

Yes, we know the young Gandhi barely speaks, we know nothing about his views on foreign policy to FDI and it’s a rare occasion when Sonia Gandhi speaks. So it’s all the more imperative for journalists to be sharp and ready when the opportunity arises.

One of my editors often remarked about going into a newsroom and being able to tell who got the best stories or the loveliest tidbits.

“It’s usually the reporters with the blander personality”, he said.

They’re not the life of the party. You’ll hear plain, neutral, simple questions. Colourless questions usually provide colorful answers. Journalists get into trouble when they try to do both, showcase their personalities and try and elicit information.

I do believe Sonia Gandhi was asked a fair question on who would lead the UPA in 2014.

She replied saying, “it would be collective leadership”.

Perhaps if they were treated with a little less gratitude, the reporter would have thrown the next question at the Congress President with a bland, curious face.

“But Madam Gandhi, even the BJP is saying that currently.”

The silver lining for the media as equally for the PMO was that this was a short, cryptic affair designed by the Prime Minister’s Office to give a few nuggets to blunt the media attack on a PMO that is virtually silent. We are often told that because of the nature of the beast, because of its omnipresence, the media registers absences more than presence. In the case of the UPA II’s 4^th anniversary the media should well mark itself absent.

(The author, who moonlights as a journalist, has never interviewed the Prime Minister and with good reason.)

Image from PIB website.