EDITOR - INSIDER VS OUTSIDER Tarun Tejpals fall has added to the ongoing debate over the role of editors and their responsibilities, though in a diffenent shade. Following his removal from The Hindu, Varadarajan spoke to Tehelka, wherein he suggested his removal was the outcome of a long tussle in the family of the papers founders. He had almost lamented that he was removed when the conservative paper was signalling a revolution in Indian journalism under his stewardship. N Ram presents the other side in this interview to Tehelkas Shaugat Dasgupta, that throws light on the functioning of one of the countrys oldest and trusted newspapers. Read on..^ * Varadarajan denied he was informed that his performance was under review or that he violated The Hindu‘s editorial values. Can you describe the process that led to the decision that he should be replaced as Editor? ** All the key issues were raised with him directly, over a period of more than six months. I spoke to him several times. So did other directors. Once I told him where he and the editorial team were going wrong and how they were deviating from our values. There are confidential email exchanges also. * What were these issues? ** 1. Editorialising in news reports, editorialising in the guise of news. This is strictly prohibited by the Code of Editorial Values of our company. 2. He was away from Chennai far too often and far too long. That too for events in India and abroad that were unrelated to the his work. 3. Weakening local coverage. 4. Undertaking campaign journalism. 5. Going for a surfeit of personalised columns at the expense of news coverage. 6. Lack of attention to detail. 7. Failure to put in place an orderly system of editorial decision-making. 8. Letting personal opinions and prejudices affect news coverage. 9. Going for chaotic, loud, garish soft design, doing away with the pure design that Mario Garcia had put in place. 10. Making a number of inappropriate or maladroit editorial appointments, which culminated in the appointment of a totally unsuitable Executive Editor in Delhi. 11. Resentment grew between long-timers familiar with our core values and some of the higher-paid new- comers. 12. The Editor was expected to send regular reports on editorial performance to the Board of Directors, which meets once in two months. He did not take his seriously. It seemed to communicate an attitude, a state of mind. I spoke to him about this more than once. At the 20 August 2013 meeting of the Board, Directors raised these issues. I briefed the Editor in detail after the meeting. When I mentioned that a clear message was to be communicated to him and other senior editorial staff, he pleaded with me not to allow this to happen. * Why was it necessary to replace Varadarajan? ** The very character of The Hindu, including its core editorial values, was being changed and that the process had gone too far for ‘reform’ to be attempted. * There have been rumours, circulated allegedly by Mr Varadarajan’s successor, that part of the reason he was replaced was the editorialising of news. That Narendra Modi was persona non grata on Page 1. Is this accurate? ** They are not rumours but on-the-record responses to specific media questions. Letting personal opinions or prejudices interfere with news coverage and presentation is unacceptable. * When appointing Varadarajan, much was made of the ‘professionalising’ of The Hindu. By removing him have you abandoned the ‘experiment’ and reverted to appointing family members in key editorial positions? ** We realized that we had taken the wrong turn. When you take a wrong turn and go on for a while, you don’t do course correction, you do course reversal. Conceptually too we had made a serious mistake. We assumed that ‘professionalisation’ meant keeping all Directors away from top editorial positions. These ‘family’ Directors are also professionally qualified and experienced. * Varadarajan told us about an important investigative story he was editing, “a blockbuster story involving RIL, Mukesh Ambani and a private media company”. He worried about the fate of that story. Has the story been killed? ** There was no blockbuster story. The journalist who was working on the story herself is now of the same view. If there was a blockbuster story, why did Varadarajan not publish it? If we don’t see a story in it, why not give it to TEHELKA and let readers decide on merits? Actually, a well-investigated and document-backed story concerning Robert Vadra’s land deals was held up for a pretty long time before it made it to print. That was when Varadarajan was in charge. Why the delay? * Could Varadarajan have run the story? Did he have the final say or did the board discuss editorial decisions with him? ** I don’t know, you should ask him. It wasn’t published when he was Editor. It wasn’t as though he was about to publish it and suddenly found himself without a job! And yes, he as the Editor had the final say in all stories. Directors did not discuss any specific story with the Editor. * Varadarajan described The Hindu‘s institutional culture as “sycophantic”. How would you react? ** There is sycophancy in most organisations. We don’t encourage sycophancy, or yes-people. Sometimes I feel there is too much deference, in form, too much of ‘sir-ing’, although not in content. But I am pleased to say that many of our people stand up for what they believe to be professional and right. When an editorial writer doesn’t agree with a position the Editor wants him or her to take, he or she can opt out of the writing assignment. This rule set in stone by a ‘family’ Editor eighty years ago is exemplary. How many newspapers practise this? * Would you acknowledge that The Hindu became a better, sharper newspaper in Varadarajan’s time as Editor? ** No. Neither better nor sharper. The character of the paper began to change in a direction that neither we nor the majority of our readers appreciated. * What was the difference between The Hindu as run by an ‘outside’ editor and The Hindu as run by the family editor? ** It is not an issue of ‘outside’ versus ‘family’ Editor. The difference between then and now is not one of degree, it is qualitative. As a former Editor-in- Chief, I notice that the ‘NGO-isation’, the lack of focus and character, of the opinion pages has been replaced by hard-nosed, incisive, and focused articles on subjects that matter. It’s no longer ‘Pro-Con’ on every conceivable issue, big or small; that’s the intellectual trap of ‘false balance’. The Editor-in-Chief has gone on record to say that The Hindu is editorially opposed to Hindutva but is committed to maintaining a professional distance in covering and presenting news. There are plenty of insightful and hard-hitting editorials. The Code is being honoured scrupulously. In design, pastiche and mishmash are out, the Garcia pure design is back. * With another recent high profile editor’s departure, there has been much discussion about owners’ interference in the editorial content of magazines and newspapers. Should owners have influence on editorial content? ** The Board of Directors can appoint and remove Editors, it is entitled to periodic reports from them on editorial performance, but it cannot interfere in editorial functioning or determine editorial content. That’s our binding Code. * Does it matter if editorial content affects an owner’s interests or makes him political enemies? ** It obviously matters, if the owners can be cowed down by a government or by powerful political players, including those who send toughs to newspaper offices. But when a politician puts pressure on an owner, he or she has the option of standing up to the pressure. We have done that before. * Finally, do you think The Hindu might appoint an editor from outside the family in the near future? ** We have an Editor-in-Chief and an Editor who are professionally qualified, experienced, and schooled in our values. Our journalists are happy, our readers appreciate the change in the pages. ^ Text edited for length. Issues not numbered in original interview.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:05:48 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015