Tyranny Of Distance From West Bengal: Five Reasons Why Editors Guild Of India Needs To Be Disbanded

As voting for Panchayat elections in West Bengal started today, reports started pouring in of unprecedented and gruesome violence perpetrated by the cadre and activists of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) against opposition candidates, journalists, and law enforcement forces.

This outbreak of violence though was not unexpected. Even on 10 May, according to this report, the Supreme Court of India had directed the Bengal State Election Commission to not publish ‘results of 34 per cent seats where there was no contest, till the court permits.’

Today, while covering the elections, the Twitter handle of Asian News International (ANI), tweeted images and news updates from West Bengal. Given below is one of the many tweets that the handle put out as part of its coverage of the Panchayat elections in the state.

According to ANI’s Twitter feed, it was not just political opponents who were targeted today. Media itself was victim, too.

In response to the above and other reports, the official handle of the TMC, quoted its Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien and tweeted this:

The kindest way to describe the above would be that a party whose members are alleged to be indulging in large scale and gruesome violence is wanting to prevent the media from reporting on their acts.

In face of this, one institution that is conspicuous by its absence is the Editors Guild of India. Ideally, one would expect the Guild to come out in support of their colleagues on the ground in Bengal and call out the TMC for attacking the press and for trying to suppress its freedom of expression. However, till the time of publication, no note or statement had been released from the Guild.

This begs the question, what is the Guild there for?

However, this is not the first time in recent memory that the working of the Editors Guild of India has come under question. In fact, keeping the events of today, and that of the recent past in mind, it is hard to beat the conclusion that Guild is now an archaic institution adding no value to the media or to the national discourse.

And hence, here are five reasons why the Editors Guild of India needs to be disbanded.

First, the Guild is not a representative body of journalists today. It represents the old media establishment, the old Lutyens insiders, not the huge expansion into the digital and other domains. The future of journalism is going to be in the convergent digital space, but the Guild has almost no representatives from this field.

Second, its composition is that of a fossilised, old-school elite, as can be seen from the names associated with it. Starting from the bottom of the list provided by the Guild, as of early 2017 we had “special invitees” like Kuldip Nayar and Mrinal Pande. The former is a 94-year-old journo whose best days ended in the 1970s during the Emergency. The latter is now a formal member of the Congress ecosystem, having recently been appointed group editor to National Herald, a party mouthpiece. As for the rest, the less said the better: the list is heavily Delhi- and print-biased, and includes some old incumbents, who can no longer be called journalists, having moved close to political parties.

The 2015 executive committee list, for example, included Harish Khare, who was part of Manmohan Singh’s PMO as media adviser. The rest came from the big newspapers and TV channels, from publications like Deccan Herald, Amar Ujala, PTI, Siasat, ABP TV, Ananda Bazar Patrika, Malayala Manorama, Indian Express and even Sakal, a newspaper associated with Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar. The Guild is currently headed by Raj Chengappa of the India Today Group, who carries some credibility, but there is no getting away from the reality that the Guild’s membership is largely old media, old establishment. It would be hard to find anyone under the age 60 in this group, when the real growth areas of the media are increasingly being run by much younger people, especially in the digital spaces.

Three, the Guild does not even meet the basic requirements of an institution: it has no website, no formal address or office, no schedule of meetings, not even a sensible structure with a virtual secretariat. According to one former insider, the Guild hardly ever meets, as most of its members have other things as priority. Some of the statements put out by it are the result of someone drafting them and passing them around for comments over email.

Four, the Guild has very little to show by way of commitment to being a non-partisan institution. Old members allege that when the Guild sends out fact-finding missions, sometimes they have accepted hospitality from state governments or governors, thus compromising their neutrality. As for the formal defence of journalists and writers facing state oppression, the Guild is often tongue-tied. Even as it worked up a lather over Irani’s fake news guidelines, it stayed mum when the Jammu and Kashmir judiciary issued a non-bailable warrant against Madhu Kishwar for a few negative tweets against a Kashmiri journo. The Guild did not cover itself with glory in defending free speech in this case. Nor has it stood up for the scores of regional journalists, who regularly risk life and limb to take on vested interests in their states.

Five, if the Guild has a code of ethics, it has kept them well hidden from public view. So we have no yardstick to judge its actions by.