Economic & Political Weekly (EPW) editor Paranjoy Guha Thakurta stepped down after the celebrated and well-regarded Economic and Political weekly (EPW) refused to back him for his story against the political-corporate nexus published in the June 19 issue of the prestigious weekly. “As of today, i have resigned,” he told Sabrangindia late last night. This move signals an all time low in Indian journalism: EPW has enjoyed a long and illustrious history in publication and prided itself, at least on being indepedent of such pressures.

Paranjoy, as he is well known and regarded has become one of the most recent –though not possibly the only — top-level editorial casualty of corporate India’s bullying of investigative journalism.
The well established academic journal Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) has been served a defamation notice by the Adani Group on July 13. The notice was served over a story EPW ran on how the government allegdly altered rules for special economic zones (SEZs), which led to the Adani Group reaping a profit of Rs 500 crore. The EPW’s article titled “Modi Government’s ₹500 Crore Bonanza to Adani Group Company”. It claimed: “By frequently changing the rules relating to power projects located in special economic zones, the department of commerce in the ministry of industry and commerce has allowed Adani Power claims for refunds of customs duties to the tune of ₹500 crore. Curiously, the duties were never paid.”

The story was run by EPW in Vol. 52, Issue No. 24, June 17, 2017. In response to the article, EPW received a legal notice from a lawyer representing Adani Power, which is headed by Gautam Adani. The legal notice accused EPW and the writers of the article of defamation and threatened legal action unless the piece was retracted, an unconditional apology was issued, and any defamatory material on Adani not be published by the magazine “in any manner whatsoever”.

EPW, had then, just a week ago stood by its story and in his reply to Adani Power’s lawyer, EPW’s advocate reaffirmed that each and every word in the article was truthful and backed by documentary evidence. In the reply to the notice by Adani, they have stated among other things,

“8.            That on the issue of misuse of the export promotion scheme, even the Hon’ble Supreme Court has used very harsh language against your client as to how your client has misused the scheme and fraudulently inflated export turnover, and how your client has even without making actual exports, played around with the provisions of the scheme and tried to take undue advantage thereof. This finding of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India has also been quoted by my client’s in the said article. Thus, the reporting done by my client’s is not only back and supported by documentary evidence, but also by judicial pronouncement.

“9.            That in view of the above it is re-iterated that there is not an iota of substance in your client’s bald claims. Your client will be well advised to withdraw your legal notice dated 24.06.2017, failing which my client shall be constrained to invoke the majesty of law to the hilt, should your client choose to trigger the first ill conceived/advised shot. Your client may kindly note the adage “be you ever so high, law is above you”. Your client may further be informed that truth can never be suppressed and it is the constitutional obligation of an independent journalist to surface the truth at any cost. I do sincerely hope, you would be gracious enough to suitably advise your client appropriately.”

Known as SLAPP, this well-oiled tendency of corporates and the powerful has been used the world over. In this case, the multi-crore defamation case has been again filed as a means of countering critical reporting.

Thakurta resigned after the directors of the trust which runs the storied journal ordered him to take down two articles on the Adani group.Last month, Adani Power Ltd. sent a letter via its lawyers to EPW, the article’s four authors (which included Thakurta) and Sameeksha Trust, which owns and runs the journal. The lawyer’s letter demanded that immediate steps be taken to “remove/delete and unconditionally retract” two articles – ‘Did the Adani Group Evade Rs 1,000 Crore in Taxes?’ (January 14, 2017) and ‘Modi Government’s Rs 500-Crore Bonanza to the Adani Group’ (June 24, 2017) – that they said were defamatory and harmful to the reputation of their client.

The letter said that unless this was done, “our clients shall be constrained to take such action as they may be advised”.

The Sameeksha Trust board, met in Delhi on Tuesday, ordered the editorial department to take the two articles down (alongside which Thakurta had also posted a copy of the Adani letter and a legal response by EPW). Thakurta resigned soon after the meeting. He told Sabrangindia that this was the cost that investigative journalism would be increasingly asked to pay.

Founded in 1949 as the Economic Weekly, EPW took on its current name in 1966 and is one of India’s most respected publications, straddling scholarship and political commentary. Thakurta, a highly regarded business journalist and political commentator, took over the editorship in January 2017 from C. Rammanohar Reddy, who ran the journal for over a decade.

The Adani letter is the latest in an example of what media analysts and lawyers call ‘strategic lawsuits against public participation’ – or SLAPPs. In a 2015 editorial calling for the United States to emulate California and enact a federal law protecting free speech against encroachment by powerful interests, the Los Angeles Times pithily described what SLAPPs are all about: “A deep-pocketed corporation, developer or government official files a lawsuit whose real purpose is to silence a critic, punish a whistleblower or win a commercial dispute.”

The action of the Sameeksha Trust to, literally, back out of the story when a simple legal notice or letter had been written and a case not even been filed, has raised eye-brows. Legal notices threatening very expensive and time-consuming litigation are increasingly being used by large corporations to intimidate editors, proprietors, journalists and writers and prevent them from shining a light on allegations of wrongdoing. In this case this is a corporation that is also very close to the political leadership in New Delhi.

Thakurta, a senior journalist, author and political commentator, took over as Editor of EPW  in 2016. Rammanohar Reddy, who was its Editor since 2004, quit over differences with the board of trustees on the publication’s 50th anniversary celebrations.

The fact that the Sameeksha Trust, with a powerful and prestigious Trust Board felt compelled to take this decision is a tragedy. Apart from Deepak Nayyar its chairman, The Trust Board has the poowerful corporate figure, Deepak Parikh and historian Romila Thapar on it. It has had a long and illustrious history of reletaively un-tainted journalism. That will stand seriously questioned today.

Thakurta’s books Gas Wars (crony Capitalism and the Ambanis) was self-published. It investigates and reveals how India’s and the country’s natural resources of natural gas and oil have been controlled and manipulated by this industrial house, aided and abetted by those in power of different political hues.

His other critical work, Media Ethics is a must read for journalists. He says here, ” Media Ethics is a comprehensive textbook designed for under- and post-graduate students of mass communication and journalism courses. It discusses key ethical issues in the light of the new face of journalism and the dynamic changes that are taking place in media today. The book gives an introduction to readers about ethics, the history of media ethics and journalism in India. The book delves into key issues like truth, objectivity, sensitivity, and privacy. It explores in detail issues related to fairness in reporting and codes of conduct of the Press Council of India. It then discusses the ‘media market’ with issues like social responsibility, industrial journalism, advertorials, etc. The chapter on media law in India discusses democratic principles, Areopagitica, free speech vs the law, concerns like libel, privacy, copyright, obscenity, contempt of court, and right to free information…”

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Gavin MacFadyen founded and ran the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ), helping to train thousands of journalists in the pursuit of factual inquiry and in defence of the public interest. In tribute, we republish this MacFadyen piece, first published as “In-depth Charger” by the Frontline Club on June 27, 2006.

Serious, in-depth journalism may be unwell but it is still alive in Britain despite an almost complete lack of institutional support in television, and limited resources in print and radio. 

The definitions are many – but most would agree that investigative journalism is ‘normal’ journalism plus money and more importantly, plus time. Getting complicated, difficult or even dangerous stories through the commissioning process, struggling for sufficient time (and funds) for research, getting past the lawyers and on the air or in print requires intense and focused work.

It needs not just more resources than simply phone-bashing or recasting an NGO’s research, but time to think, to read, to make careful preparation, and to read some more. Care, precision, scepticism and accuracy are the guiding principles here. Tenacity and a healthy paranoia are also essentials. It’s from these qualities that major investigative stories are born. 

Tenacity is essential because doors are frequently slammed in your face, unforeseen factual obstacles appear, there are legal problems, threats, less-than-heroic editors a shortage of money and frightened witnesses. Paranoia is needed because most investigative journalists have seen the resources a multi-national corporation, the state or the powerful can bring to bear against a journalist, the editor and, very often, against the witness or whistleblower themselves. Editors and publishers rarely rise to the challenge, particularly if the object of the reporter’s attention has deep pockets.

Gavin MacFadyen (Centre for Investigative Journalism)

Investigative stories don’t, thankfully, require the inspiration of publishers or editors — most have little or none of that quality — but instead demand a reporter’s moral outrage at injustice, incompetence, brutality and misery. These qualities are the fuel of investigative engines around the world. Such interests and passions often make regular hacks uncomfortable. There is a longterm conflict between ‘campaigning’ journalism and ‘dispassionate’ and ‘objective’ reporting.

To the investigative journalist, ‘objective’ is all too frequently shorthand for a stenographic account of information provided by the authorities. Witness the thousands of uncritical embedded reports during the Iraq war. Many of the most accomplished investigative reporters, such as John Pilger and the late Paul Foot, disliked the term investigative. They argued that all good journalism ought to be investigative.

But for many journalists, work is simply a job. Their interest is in lapdog confidences and dining with the powerful. Those who passionately want to provide a voice for those without one, and who fight hypocrisy and exploitation are sadly rare. Between 1966 and the early 1990s British television produced some of the more extraordinary investigations in world television. It forced the resignation of senior government officials, exposed major pharmaceutical scandals, uncovered government corruption, corporate and financial crimes and brought images of slavery, child labour and torture into millions of home for the first time.

Panorama and World in Action were the target of frequent government attacks and outrage but attracted whistleblowers, disgruntled witnesses, public complainants and a number of deranged obsessives.

Filtering stories from these sources required sensitivity and time. Many of the journalists involved received their training in print and later in-house in television.  BBC, Granada and other ITV companies brought younger journalists through a system of research apprenticeships in an environment where there were serious intellectual resources. 

After navigating a decade of legal and political storms, editors and producers learnt the skills of investigative programme-making and, probably even most importantly, ways to defend those skills inside and outside the organisation. With audiences often over 12 million, programmes like World in Action and This Week, were not seen as unprofitable. In contrast to current affairs programmes today, World in Action had in-house research facilities, libraries, in some cases private planes. It also had the confidence that if the company, or their programme, was in difficulty, their journalism would not be abandoned.

Editors, cameramen, sound-recordists, electricians, researchers and travel offices all worked in-house.  A significant feature of in-house production was the implicit understanding that with high standards of evidence, some stories wouldn’t make it, despite months of work. The 20 percent of programmes that didn’t make it were compensated for by the successful programmes that did.
  
None of these conditions apply today – almost all have been destroyed during the last 20 years. The result is an absence of institutional production and protection of investigative stories. Budgets have been reduced. The responsibility for lengthy, high-quality research and production values has been off-loaded by large profitable organizations to individuals journalists, small production companies and to resources like NGOs.

In fact without the major research tools provided by the internet, which have shortened some research tasks from weeks to hours, there would probably be almost no investigative journalism on television and in the press. Without a long-term commitment from the BBC and the independent sector, the public will continue to be deprived of an in-depth understanding of current affairs, investigation of the abuse of the public trust by governments, scrutiny of corporations, corrupt practices, and the continuing failures to protect integrity in the public sector.

A number of organizations have sprung up across Europe and the US to try and reverse these trends.  In Britain, the non-profit Centre for Investigative Journalism has paired experienced investigative journalists with young reporters to encourage the raising of professional standards and the acquisition of skills. This has taken place in Britain and, perhaps more importantly, in countries where enquiry is often a dangerous, even deadly, pursuit. The Frontline Confidential series, co-produced with CIJ, has brought landmark investigations and leading investigative journalists into open discussion for the first time in London.

CIJ runs annual international summer schools – last year at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. On July 21-23 [2006] at City University in London, Anna Politkovskaya, an independent Russian journalist, and Chuck Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington will speak with 20 other trainers and technical experts.

Participants from 25 countries are expected and fees are subsidised by the Lorana Sullivan Foundation. The emphasis will be on the practical.  Details are available from www.investigativereporting.org.uk.
 

The next #CIJSummer Conference, training journalists, editors and researchers in investigative skills, will take place in London in July 2017.

(This article was first published on Opendemocracy.net.)

Also read: WikiLeaks Director Gavin MacFadyen dies at 76

The post Gavin MacFadyen (1940-2016): Why investigative Journalism matters appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: Exaro

Renowned investigative journalist and director of WikiLeaks Gavin MacFadyen passed away, as per the tweet posted from the WikiLeaks official Twitter account on October 22. The cause of the death of the 76-year-old, who was known as the founder of Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) and as a mentor of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remains ambiguous. However, CIJ on its website claims that the MacFadyen lost his life to lung cancer.

MacFadyen, who was also a filmmaker, has made more than 50 documentaries since the 1970s, focusing on wide array of subjects like industrial accidents, history of CIA, Watergate, neo-Nazi violence of the UK, nuclear proliferation etc. He founded CJI in 2003 to advance training in the field of investigative journalism for in-depth, sceptical and adversarial reporting. Over the next 13 years he helped train thousands of reporters from over 35 countries, many of which are places where free media is under attack.  He trained several students through CIJ.

In the recent years, his focussed on facilitating and protecting whistleblowing activities. He was closely linked to Assange, and was also responsible for Julian Assange Defence Committee, which raises funds to manage the legal expenses of Assange and other WikiLeaks staff.

He reportedly breathed his last in London on October 22. 
 

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