Bravo Assange

Wikileaks heralds a new era in journalism

It is being hailed as ‘data journalism’, may be because of the enormous volume of secret files unearthed by Wikileaks, the whistle-blower website started by a maverick messiah of the wronged from Australia named Julian Assange (in picture). Little lights of hope when we thought we are heading for a cul-de-sac.

The 92,000 military documents detail the criminal misadventures of an occupation army led by the US, shamelessly called coalition forces. A coalition of murderers fit to be tried in an international court of law.

“Journalism should be more like science,” Assange told The Guardian. “As far as possible, facts should be verifiable.” This ex-hacker says what he is practicing is “scientific journalism,” comparing it to biology researchers publishing their data sets along with their papers.

What was striking about the whole thing is that Wikileaks’ exciting co-operation with three media houses, viz. London-based Guardian, New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel. While Wikileaks unearthed large volumes of raw data, the job of sifting through the entire documents and bringing out the relevant and explosive materials was left to these newspapers and the magazine. They set a common deadline for publishing the stories.

The symbiosis between Wikileaks and these mainstream media houses is praiseworthy and heralds a new era in investigative journalism. A true novel experiment in journalism that needs nourishment and support, for, what this collaboration aims to target is corrupt regimes, war-mongering maniacs and the like.

Is this thinkable in India?

“I would love to start an operation from India as well!” Assange told Nupur Basu from UC Berkeley when she met him during a seminar on investigative journalism. He seemed to be excited when Basu told him about sting operations in India.

But will a similar kind of operation possible in India? Imagine Wikileaks unearths such an explosive materials and try to a similar kind of operation: distributing them among the top media houses in India. `A' will be wary of whether `B' will come out with the exclusive story first. So in its haste to break the story before the competitor does, chances are that A or B or C will go for the jugular by coming out with the story without waiting for the others.

India is a country where even naming a competitor in a newspaper’s pages is considered sacrilegious, let alone co-operating. What could be the reasons? Petty ego, parochialism, fears of giving undue advantage to the competitor, wrong notions of public interest journalism...

In India's crazy dog-eat-dog media world, when we can see our media houses shedding inhibitions and working together for the common good of the society, untethered by those obnoxious notions of competition, petty ego, etc? Hundred year? May be.

Let’s forget about collaboration or co-operation. Remember the criminal silence of the Indian mainstream media when Tehelka was mowed down ruthlessly by the India's right-wing BJP government after it exposed the stinking corruption in the corridors of Indian military.

It was one of the rare and sad instances in the history of media freedom when the Kafkaesque weight of the government was used to unleash a witchhunt on Tehelka; raiding its offices, falsely implicating its journalists and annihilating the brave venture. It’s another matter that Tejpal bounced back like a phoenix in a new format and added power. But the Indian media didn’t extend its support when it was needed most, during the moments of crisis faced by one of its peers.