The Old Man and the Media

Money for news – it isn’t a one-off incident that this journalist came across, that’s the media’s image across Punjab

Prabhjit Singh

A 101-year-old man, still walking straight, shelled out a bundle of 100-rupee notes asking- “Sewa?” (How much to offer you?). I was taken aback and felt like crying. The venue was my own house, and he was accompanying his grandson for a story related to his exploitation at the hands of lawyers in pursuing a case for seeking information under
the RTI Act.
“No Sir, I get proper salary to take up the issues like the one you narrated,” I explained, with a bit of embarrassment for his impression about the media. His grandson, an engineer, told him that the scenario in Chandigarh is not as the one back in his village or in small towns.
Now the old man was taken aback, to know that journalists are paid salaries! “I thought your work is based on the commission,” the elderly man clarified his position, still holding the money with a question mark on his face.
The man who had been behind the bars during the freedom struggle was exploited by a lawyer in moving the State Information Commission Punjab after the information was denied to him. I assured him the story.
Blessing my four-year-old daughter, both left, leaving behind a remorse thought in my mind – “this gentle old man was not bribing, but genuinely paying the media, just as he had paid to the lawyer who cheated him!”
His visit was a bit painful, without any of his fault. And that took my memory back to my innings in Muktsar, a small town where the media representatives of the language newspapers were either a goldsmith, or a clerk earning bread and butter by drafting affidavits in the district court complex. Both of them were intelligent, but not paid a salary for even the good stories (spots they never missed) that they sent to their respective newspapers based in Jalandhar.
They were, of course, paid a commission by their newspaper offices for collecting advertisement, a mandatory job for them along with sending the news for which they were paid as per centimetre column. No salary.
Both used to give me good clues and tip-offs for the stories that they themselves never did! Spending six months, I came to know the reason for their disinterest. They were part of the system. The system where they were members of a club that never paid the excise duty, their wards studying in a school of the man who was a friend of the owner of a paper mill emitting hazardous smoke and chemicals constantly. And the mill owner, the school management and the local leaders of major political parties were all source of income for the local scribes in that small town. The income they got in the form of commission for advertisements of the paper mill, the school, and, of course, the statements of those politicians in ad-form. But no salaries from their newspaper offices. The scenario is across Punjab.
Once in UNI (my earlier organisation), a colleague urged me to become a member of the Chandigarh-Punjab Union of Journalists. “You draft a memorandum for the owners of newspapers with a commanding circulation in the state to give salaries based on the Wage Board to at least a single journalist in each district of the state, and then I will become the member of your organisation,” I told her, setting the pre-condition. She was all quiet. We all are quiet indeed. And the system works for that paper mill to spread pollution with the scribes vying for its ad.


Prabhjit Singh is Chandigarh based senior journalist and working with Hindustan Times. He is known for his people centric stories on Punjab.