Papyruses and engraving instruments slightly enlarged the audience, but writing and reading remained within a close circle until the development of paper and ink. However, Gutenberg revolutionized the literary scene. Thousands of readers became able to read the same text in different places. Publications became a tool of propaganda. The radio and the television, despite their legibility and reach, have failed to push print off the pedestal. The electronic media is more influential, but it’s transitory. The print still has the halo of permanency and sacredness attached to it.
It is being claimed that cyber publishing—the so-called soft-copy mass distribution—would succeed where the radio and the television failed and finally sound the death knell of the print medium. That will probably take a while. Every cyber tsar has recorded his achievements for posterity in print. Steve Jobs had hired a hack. Bill Gates relied upon a writer-partner. Their books were hardbound.
Floating images of Cyberia, however, has made vanity publishing easy. The cost of entry is so low—a web-enabled phone, simple literacy, a bit of time to spare—that almost anyone can be a producer of texts. Unlike literary creators of the past, fabricators of sentences are now merely posters: A category that blends the roles of a writer, an editor, a publisher and a distributor into one person. Megalomania is merely a by-product of being a performer of multiple roles all at the same time.
Media stratagem
The news media has long been considered a political institution. The axiom about power of the pen, its characterization as the Fourth Estate, and the legend about journalists being defenders of democracy are all born out of a belief that the media is more than just a chronicler; it’s an important player with the ability to change the outcome of a game. All players have their signature tactics. Speculative reporting, imaginative interpretations and slanderous aspersions are some of the techniques that were honed in the days of the penny press in the West. Cyberian posters worldwide have refined these methods.
There is little place for nuances in hard news. However, it is possible for a skilful reporter to put meanings even in a news story. A Setopati reporter can emphasize, with perfectly legitimate attributions to renowned experts, that caste calculations would be the decisive factor in the forthcoming elections in Tarai-Madhesh. The Ratopati, on the other hand, can argue with equal fervor and feigned detachment that the top rung leaders of Nepali Congress face a bleak future.
Not to be left out of the speculation race, the Onlinekhabar can argue that rebel candidates are capable of undermining UCPN (Maoist) candidates in the fray. On the face of it, all these assertions are equally credible. It would be difficult to find fault with any of these claims on grounds of professionalism. However, when the distinction between news and views is narrowed beyond a point, the ABC of journalism begin to stand for agenda reporting, bias circulation and confidence trick rather than accuracy, balance and credibility.
In general, political opinions published on op-ed pages are expected to be polemical. Whether a writer is pushing a new economic theory, fresh findings of a social survey or new interpretations of old religious beliefs, opinion pieces have to have a voice—convictions of the author masquerading as rational conclusions—in order to be credible. The “expert opinion” is almost by definition meant to reinforce mainstream views. “In our ‘age of the expert’, the expert has his constituency — those who have a vested interest in commonly held opinions; elaborating and defining the consensus at a high level has, after all, made him an expert,” observes Henry Kissinger, a much sought after expert of geopolitics.
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Regular columnists often have the freedom to challenge conventional viewpoints so that possible alternatives would not be thrown out of the window without being properly examined. That could be the reason columnists often enjoy relative freedom from editorial control. They also have the luxury of delving into trends rather than being bound by compulsions of events. In Cyberia, however, every reporter is essentially an opinion writer with pretensions of being a columnist. Thus, the boundary between events, agenda and issues of contention become blurred even when they do not disappear altogether.
Defining a good essay—that is what most columns are expected to be—someone has said that it is “more nuanced than news, less shrill than a polemic” and is not hampered by the certitude of ignorance. A good essay allows the writer and the reader alike to hesitantly explore an untrodden path and find surprises on the way. Most Cyberian writers, however, have little patience for reflection. The illusion of a new revelation every minute or so—the time taken to punch out 140 characters—is perhaps extremely pressing. The auto-correct of thought, however, is much slower than spell-check apps on electronic devices. When the same mindset flows on to the pages of a newspaper, raves and rants replace considered comments.
Info obesity
With instant access to previously unimagined amount of information on the web—several library-full of books can be accessed for free from palm-top devices that weigh less than a weekly magazine—lack of resources to gain knowledge is least of the problem. The curse of plenitude, however, has proved to be no less debilitating. Most seekers search, and are able to find, ample material online to reaffirm their biases. Four topics of discussion in the contemporary press should suffice to expose the repetition of prejudices that goes in the name of open deliberation.
Supremacy of laws is the supreme idea of democratic politics. However, it does not need too much effort to recognize that for any law to be supreme, it has to have international legitimacy, domestic acceptability, and has to be constantly strengthened with the politics of competition, cooperation, consent and even occasional coercion. It requires even less reflection to understand the difference between exemption, immunity and impunity in a post-conflict situation.
The uproar over federalism and inclusion is even more depressing. Federalism is not a demand but a politically established claim to maintain the viability of a union of multiple nationalities. Howsoever risky—roads bring risks of traffic accidents—federalism now cannot be wished away and its replacement with modes of decentralization is a self-defeating exercise.
The idea of inclusion is to widen the base of meritocracy and break the monopoly of afno manche mediocrity ruling the roost in the public life of Nepal. “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him,” said Leo Tolstoy.
The press has thus become a creator of confusion rather than producer of clarity. Perhaps all the more reason for readers to be vigilant and discerning. Mercifully, a great deal of rubbish is also a sign of free and vibrant media. Since it cannot be sanitized, the audience would probably develop auto immunity. Meanwhile, readers beware.
Lal contributes to The Week with his biweekly column Reflection. He is one of the widely read poliitical
analysts in Nepal.
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