I just finished watching a programme on News 24 which made me feel that there is another dimension to the problem that we have with the Fourth Estate.

The programme was 50 Ansuni Kahaniyan. I had not watched this programme before, but am told that the format is to identify a personality and expound on some very relevant but not properly appreciated facets of his or her life which may give us a better understanding of the person.

I was appalled. Today’s designated personality was Indira Gandhi and the objectivity that I craved for was conspicuously absent. There were so many factual inaccuracies with inclusion of facts which were totally out of context. The most striking was the assertion by the anchor that Indira succeeded in the 1971 elections despite a malicious campaign by Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) who had launched a slogan – Indira Hatao. Apart from other aspects, as someone who has been a witness to that era, I know that JP was never involved in active politics until after the death of his wife, Prabhavati in 1973. He had never launched the slogan, Indira Hatao. His slogan in 1974 was Corruption Hatao, as those from The Indian Express who had launched the paper, Everyman, would attest. There were also some glaring omissions like her unsavoury conduct during the Emergency and with the Shah Commission.

As an Oxford alumnus, I was also dismayed that Indira’s record at Oxford was glossed over making it appear that she had voluntarily given up her pursuance of studies at the institution. I have had occasion to examine the records at Somerville myself – and can confirm that she was asked to leave as her grades were unsatisfactory. This did not come out in the review at all. Surely it was an important piece of information eminently newsworthy and, if the channel was concerned about the negative impression it was likely to engender, a balance could have been struck by stating that Oxford did honour her with an honorary doctorate later.

Indira was a controversial personality and I feel the journalistic code obligated the channel to present her as such. Even her fiercest critics would not deny her the credit for some of her innovations. In the same vein we do not serve her legacy at all nor do we bring any credit to the profession of journalism by redacting information which could prove detrimental to her ‘iconisation’ or even deification as some of the politicos would want.

I am tempted to quote Voltaire – “To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.”

No one would begrudge the attempt to present a political leader in a favourable light. But the manner in which she was being presented on a channel which professes journalistic objectivity – unlike the channels owned by Jayalalitha and the DMK – an attempt like this which lacks balance is to be deprecated. Only later was I informed that the channel is owned by the wife of a very prominent Congress (I) MP although she does have a sibling who is a senior member of the Opposition.

While compromised journalists have been identified and pilloried, I think there should be a code for channels to declare their conflict of interest whenever possible – either business as in the case of CNN-IBN, or political.

We, while publishing a scientific article have to declare every possible interest – source of funding etc. I wonder if journalists have debated a code for this problem as I can foresee difficulties for all of us if the channels get hopelessly compromised.

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