PressEthic

When the Hindustan Times (HT), New Delhi's Number 1 newspaper launched its Mumbai edition in July, it did so with a bang. It had a scoop -- and one that implicated Bollywood actor, Salman Khan, in a scandal involving underworld goons and "the most beautiful woman in the world", Aishwarya Rai. Needless to say, this was front page stuff!

The Hindustan Times published the transcripts of alleged phone conversations between Mr. Khan and Ms. Rai, in the course of which he admitted to having links to Mumbai's mafia and tried to coerce her into dancing at an event for one of these underworld chiefs. The reporter who wrote the stories claimed that the tapes were obtained from the Mumbai police. News channels jumped on the story and began to play parts of the tape on air.

However, according to this piece in The Hindu, the Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory has recently stated that the voices on the tape are not those of Mr. Khan or Ms. Rai. This has got to be pretty embarrassing for the HT as well as for the news channels that piggy-backed on the newspaper's apparently successful scoop. This brings two issues to my mind:

Why didn't the newspaper bother to check the validity of the tapes before jumping all over the story? Was it just so that they had a sensational story to launch themselves in Mumbai with? And if so, it makes me wonder why a newspaper that has been successful in another major market (Delhi) feels that it needs to be sensational to make an impact in a new city. Isn't good journalism enough?

And the second thing that bothers me is the herd mentality amongst news agencies. Even if HT had decided that using the story was worth the risk that it might not be authentic, how could TV news channels start playing the tape without doing their own background checks?

An editorial in the Asian Age addressed this particular instance of injudicious sensationalism:

Sensationalism is a necessary ingredient in today's world of cut-throat competition. As they say, dog biting man is not news as man biting dog is. But sensationalism must be balanced with facts. Devoid of this judicious mix, sensationalism degenerates into yellow journalism.

While I disagree that sensationalism is necessary, I do think it's acceptable -- but only as long as the facts check out. Otherwise it's just lies. And that's not journalism.