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Why Google is the armchair journalist's 'beat'

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Sanghamitra Baruah
Sanghamitra BaruahJun 20, 2018 | 20:23

Why Google is the armchair journalist's 'beat'

Breaking News...

TV reporter to editor: The new Rs 2,000 note is Artificial Intelligence-powered.

Editor: That's not possible. It's fake news. Already busted.

A few days later...

Reporter: You didn't believe me when I told you about the AI-powered note, but others did.

Editor: What?

Reporter: Yes, a few thieves stole lakhs of rupees from a bank only in coins to avoid getting tracked.

Reporter (sulking): Look at the brighter side, I averted a bigger robbery.

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                                                               ***

Journalists working in Indian newsrooms know it well that the above story, although funny, is not just another anecdote taken from "Overheard in the Newsroom".

Sadly, for many journalists like me, the joke has been on us every time false news has been "broken" by one among us, someone from our own fraternity.

On Wednesday, as I woke up to the news of Google India announcing it would provide training to 8,000 journalists in the next one year to "guard journalists from falling prey to false news stories", the armchair journalist in me started wondering — How would someone else guard me from myself?

And this is not a philosophical question to get journalists thinking about their work life, but a practical problem.

Jokes aside, how do journalists avoid falling "prey" to fake news?

The Google News Initiative India Training Network is planning to help by training "select 200 journalists from cities across India who will hone their skills in verification and training during five-day train-the-trainer boot camps that will be organised for English and six other Indian languages". The network of "certified trainers" will then train more journalists at two-day, one-day and half-day workshops organised by the Network. The focus of the training will be fact-checking, online verification and digital hygiene for journalists, using a curriculum built by experts.

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While the much-needed initiative is deserving of praise, it is still not enough to "sanitise" newsrooms.

Firstly, is it fair to pin all the blame on a "select few" journalists "notorious for their fake news stories" for this problem?

And most importantly, is it fair to assume journalists are falling prey to fake news? (Since when did we become so gullible? That's news to me!) 

It's true no matter how much we want to ignore the elephant in the room, most news sources peddling false news are — let's admit it — doing it not because they don't know they are giving out unverified information to the audience. After all, journalism is based on the core principles of an obligation to the truth (not just an assumption), a verification of facts and looking into both sides of a story. (Let's not even go to personal conscience.)

How do you then not verify a source and later play the victim — of falling prey? 

While the spread of false news is a genuine problem and needs to be arrested at the soonest, news organisations also do need to look within for an answer. We don't need a Google to make us do that. Often journalists — reporters, copy editors, anchors, news producers etc —  are under tremendous pressure to meet deadlines, and are left with little time and luxury to do basic fact-checking. When your editor is breathing down your neck to go live on TV or a website with a "story" because someone else will do it before you, where is the time to even think? You just shoot — and scoot. The day's work done, you go home and hit the sack. All those outraging on social media on the "issue" you have raised — or trolling you over your "fake news" — can go to hell. Any publicity, after all, is good publicity.

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It's not just the present crop of journalists/commentators/opinionators/think piece writers who are to be blamed for the spread of such "fake news". The lazy, armchair journalist has always existed and thrived among us for as long as the history of Indian journalism. The iconic figure here has always been a darling of politicians and corporates. Everybody loves him, but most importantly everybody knows him.

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Some groundbreaking work. [Credit: Reuters photo for representational purpose]

That some of us are called “armchair journalists” is for a reason — because we like to sit in comfort and reproduce, sometimes verbatim, press releases by politicians and business houses, by film actors and NGOs. To the credit of the copy editors, Indian newsrooms have come up with an array of clever one-liners or puns (read clichés) to make our jobs easier. The often-bland "no-news" days are suitably spiced up with the help of a smart headline and a few quotes, mostly not from the proverbial "other side" and, there you are, your exclusive/breaking news is ready.

Precisely why on-the-ground reporting lost meaning and purpose for most news organisations. Most media outlets don't feel the need to deploy reporters on the ground and have almost done away with regional bureaux and even news desks in the name of integrated newsrooms. At most, a one-person army steers an entire state, sometimes an entire region (like the Northeast with eight states to cover). While doing so, organisations know it well what they are asking from that journalist in return — "stories based on secondary/unverified sources". But it suits everybody's business model.

The Google initiative, which wants to train "select 200 journalists from cities across India" to help them train a total of 8,000 journalists, reeks of the same superficiality of "journalism of comfort". The plan to "recruit" the select 200 from cities points towards the similar practice of parachute journalism — when journalists from the head offices with presumably more knowledge about reporting are parachuted into "ground zero" to report on a story about which they actually have little knowledge or experience.

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The parachuted reporter looking for news and his much-ignored junior colleague? [Credit: Reuters photo for representational purpose]

As always, the local reporter gathers all the information for him/her besides looking after/arranging for the senior's "bed and breakfast". This is exactly when the parachuted senior reporters sometimes fail to see what the much-ignored junior colleague has fed them as news. (Yes, false news needn't necessarily spread through social media always either.)

Editors these days frequently encourage such armchair journalism. 

The huge volume of work done by armchair journalists (now also known as "Google journalists") has now assumed unprecedented proportions in recent times in India. Almost everybody is an expert on almost everything. Who cares about beat reporting or subject area? I'm saving the company its money by cutting that extra flab (of journalists). Most importantly, I don't need a source or verification as long as the internet (read Google) is there. Google ensures that I can churn out information and chill in my centralised AC (often on full blast) office, happily falling in line to generate content within the allotted deadline. 

The purpose of this confession is not to troll any one journalist or organisation, or to take the moral high ground that "look my journalism is more accurate than yours!", because mine is not. I'm not even sure it falls under the category any longer. This is a genuine problem. Let's admit it. This in itself will be the biggest "news break" of the moment.

Last updated: June 20, 2018 | 21:50
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