I was prompted to write this piece after seeing bombarding
of trolls against Kerala Sports Minister E P Jayarajan’s comment on boxer
Mohammed Ali. How come the Minister didn’t know about Mohammed Ali? Or what was
the need for Manorama News to elicit the views of our sports minister on
Mohammed Ali? Wouldn’t it have been easier to find a person knowledgeable in
boxing, a boxer or someone who has observed Mohammed Ali’s career to comment?
How many of us are eager to hear what Sports Minister E P Jayarajan has to say
on Mohammed Ali unless he is a boxer himself or known to be knowledgeable about
boxing?
I think there should be a serious rethink in channels on how
to identify experts in various field to talk on a news break or development. I
remember Narottam Puri, the ace cricket commentator of 1970’s and 1980’s who
was a friendly figure in both Doordarshan and AIR. He had statistics at the tip
of his tongue and knew the game well. He was not a cricketer but a practicing
ENT Surgeon who found spare time to indulge in his favourite hobby. His father
was also a commentator, Devraj Puri and his father was his role model in commentary.
What distinguished him from an average commentator was his passion for the game
and his job.
In my childhood,when there was no TV or cable, we were glued to our radios to hear cricket updates . For a complete story of what happened we had to rely on the likes of R Mohan of The Hindu, Rajan Bala of the Indian Express whose writing was interspersed with quotes from literature and most often they so graphic in their writing that we used to read and re-read it. They were not mere reporters but had a passion for the game and its rules.
Similarly I have found lot of people who closely follow global football and cricket and whose knowledge of the game has astounded me. Manorama News or other leading channels will never take the pains to identify them or project them. It is always better to go behind popular names and titles- who is going to question them.
By the same yardstick, if something happens to Bill Gates our news anchors will ring up our Industry Minister and ask his views which I am sure would be another big disaster unless he is an IT expert himself. This is not journalism. As a former journo, I am pained to see the depths to which our journos are falling. Journos are also not infallible. Sometimes they learn through trial and error. I was once stumped when a senior businessmen in travel industry asked me who are the people who have done something for Kerala’s Tourism? I didn’t have a clear answer and the names I gave were all wrong. Then he talked about Late Minister PS Srinivasan, Jose Dominic (CGH), E Chandrasekharan Nair and so on. Later on, I interviewed Jose Dominic for a story on Commodity Tourism thanks to K C Chandrahasan of Kerala Travels who opened my eyes.
Later doing agri- commodity stories, I understood that the most knowledgeable people were farmers and not scientists and researchers in our universities who drew fat salaries. There was no one who knew cardamom and pepper in India as much as Sebastian Joseph, who developed the high yielding njallani variety that revolutionized cardamom cultivation in Idukki. I had the good fortune to meet him and was instrumental in getting him a Life Time Achievement Award from Spices Board. How many channels or newspapers have gone to him for his views on spices cultivation in his life time? He was not a PhD holder but stopped studies in 4th standard.
This is the age of specialization. If you ask an IT specialist any topic related to IT he may not be able to answer. It’s not their fault. Also if you ask a physician or a surgeon a query, he may not be able to help unless it is his field of specialization. A cardiologist is not likely to know the latest advances in ortho surgery or opthamology.
The duty of a journalist is not to just expose some wrong doing or go behind gossip but do something that creates value to society. A journo is not a specialist but most often a generalist but that doesn’t prevent them from finding experts in an area and do stories with them. That is the minimum they can do to minimize their own lack of knowledge being transferred to hapless readers.
The E P Jayarajan incident or Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan incidents are all eye openers to not only journos but to the public as well- don’t laugh over the ignorance of someone but search for experts who can enlighten you!
In my childhood,when there was no TV or cable, we were glued to our radios to hear cricket updates . For a complete story of what happened we had to rely on the likes of R Mohan of The Hindu, Rajan Bala of the Indian Express whose writing was interspersed with quotes from literature and most often they so graphic in their writing that we used to read and re-read it. They were not mere reporters but had a passion for the game and its rules.
Similarly I have found lot of people who closely follow global football and cricket and whose knowledge of the game has astounded me. Manorama News or other leading channels will never take the pains to identify them or project them. It is always better to go behind popular names and titles- who is going to question them.
By the same yardstick, if something happens to Bill Gates our news anchors will ring up our Industry Minister and ask his views which I am sure would be another big disaster unless he is an IT expert himself. This is not journalism. As a former journo, I am pained to see the depths to which our journos are falling. Journos are also not infallible. Sometimes they learn through trial and error. I was once stumped when a senior businessmen in travel industry asked me who are the people who have done something for Kerala’s Tourism? I didn’t have a clear answer and the names I gave were all wrong. Then he talked about Late Minister PS Srinivasan, Jose Dominic (CGH), E Chandrasekharan Nair and so on. Later on, I interviewed Jose Dominic for a story on Commodity Tourism thanks to K C Chandrahasan of Kerala Travels who opened my eyes.
Later doing agri- commodity stories, I understood that the most knowledgeable people were farmers and not scientists and researchers in our universities who drew fat salaries. There was no one who knew cardamom and pepper in India as much as Sebastian Joseph, who developed the high yielding njallani variety that revolutionized cardamom cultivation in Idukki. I had the good fortune to meet him and was instrumental in getting him a Life Time Achievement Award from Spices Board. How many channels or newspapers have gone to him for his views on spices cultivation in his life time? He was not a PhD holder but stopped studies in 4th standard.
This is the age of specialization. If you ask an IT specialist any topic related to IT he may not be able to answer. It’s not their fault. Also if you ask a physician or a surgeon a query, he may not be able to help unless it is his field of specialization. A cardiologist is not likely to know the latest advances in ortho surgery or opthamology.
The duty of a journalist is not to just expose some wrong doing or go behind gossip but do something that creates value to society. A journo is not a specialist but most often a generalist but that doesn’t prevent them from finding experts in an area and do stories with them. That is the minimum they can do to minimize their own lack of knowledge being transferred to hapless readers.
The E P Jayarajan incident or Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan incidents are all eye openers to not only journos but to the public as well- don’t laugh over the ignorance of someone but search for experts who can enlighten you!
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