The Insider Reports: News of the World scandal and why the media should consider getting corporatized

First it was the Niira Radia tapes where journalists did more than seek news. Then came the phone tapping scandal where News of the World reporters aimed at bettering the quality of their scoops by illegally tapping into the voice mail systems of a quite a few people - celebrities and otherwise. Is there no other way journalists can improve their craft?

My latest article in the Hoot outlines why it is time for the media to look at adapting some aspects of corporate culture inorder to gain the public's respect and evolve as professionals.

The story can be read at

http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=5405&mod=1&pg=1&sectionId=5&valid=true

In case the link above does not open, please see the gist of the story below:

Early this month, the News of the World, a British tabloid famed for exposing celebrity scandals closed down, ironically after being involved in a scandal. The Rupert Murdoch owned entity and some key journalists were charged with illicitly hacking into the voicemail messages of prominfent people in a quest to find exclusive stories. (Updates on the case can be read at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11195407 )

The episode bears resemblance to the Niira Radia tapes controversy that led to the 2G spectrum scam. The only critical difference being that none of the journalists associated with the Radia tapes were convicted, nor did they step down from their positions. The Indian courts chose not to scrutinize any stories reported by these journalists during the time period that these tapes were recorded, thus saving them from any charges.

The Radia tapes and the News of the World incidents saw questions raised on ethics in journalism, the nexus between politicians and journalists, and possible repercussions on the business of news. Sadly, no discussion focused on how these concerns could be practically addressed. Predictably, there has been little or no “repercussions”. Few media organizations issued apologies, even fewer journalists defended themselves. And business went on as usual.

To prevent such incidents becoming common place, it is essential that news (and views) organizations consider imbibing certain elements of corporate culture in their operations. The following are my suggestions to help build trust in our news.

1) Institutionalize an induction program – In my five years of exposure to leading English language print and television organizations, none have a formal induction program that takes recruits (freshers and experienced candidates alike) through topics such as the culture of the organization, best practices to be followed during news gathering, ways to collaborate with colleagues on stories, recommended sources for news gathering, ethics and media laws that can impact their careers. This should be followed with a test of their knowledge and understanding. Candidates failing to pass should not be allowed to work on any stories.

Currently, the onus of educating candidates is left to educational institutions, where some of these topics are dealt with to purely satisfy academic requirements. This ensures that future journalism professionals are not fully aware of the liabilities they can face. In one instance, my friend’s opinion piece published in a leading business daily was plagiarized by a 21-year old journalist (incidentally working for another leading daily) who changed a few words and published the piece under his name with no reference whatsoever to the original piece. When confronted, the piece was removed without any formal apology to the original author.

In comparison, organizations such as Infosys, Wipro and Accenture have induction programs lasting between 2 days to 15 days. Organizations working in high risk sectors or highly regulated industries such as financial services or healthcare usually conclude their induction programs with a series of tests so as to assess the readiness of the candidates to be put on the job. The widely publicized Infosys induction programme for freshers lasts between 2 months and 6 months and candidates are routinely assessed and eliminated based on their performance in these evaluations.

2) Considering ethics as part of the performance appraisal process – Performance appraisal remains a fairly unstructured process in many media organizations, with the final decision making in the hands of few senior journalists. While the number and quality of stories done by a journalist is a reasonable estimate of his/her capabilities, it is important to also include an element of ethics in the analysis. What are the sources considered by the journalist? Are any of these sources copyrighted? Has the journalist been open and honest with an individual he is intending to use as a source? Has the journalist sought permission from such individuals to quote them? Is he/she comfortable involving a colleague to add value to the story?

Although this seems like a tedious task, editors and chiefs of bureaux can make a start by randomly picking one story per journalist and analyzing such details. Any discrepancies can be noted and mentioned in the appraisal report.

The objective of such an exercise would be to demonstrate zero tolerance to unethical practices. Many news organizations, perhaps unknowingly, follow a similar process when it comes to investigative stories. Developing a robust approach to analyse all stories is therefore not undoable. Consequently, journalists would start seeking and saving tangible proof (emails, paperwork, recorded conversations etc) to back their stories.

Leading global firms operating in countries where the risk of corruption is high, have a stringent policy on ethics. Consulting firms are at the forefront of such activity. Recently, the global conglomerate Siemens started a programme whereby they would share ethical practices and warn other firms (including competitors) about the perils of doing business the wrong way (such as prosecution and loss of reputation). Additionally, all Siemens employees are periodically briefed about the program. Those facing the highest risk of being involved in unethical practices such as those in sales, procurement and other external facing roles are specifically evaluated based on their conduct.

3) Develop guidelines for seeking news - The only piece of advice I received to improve my reporting was a blog post shared by my boss. Written by John Heylar, then senior writer for ESPN, it was titled “Six Rules for the business writer’s craft” and listed some guidelines to source news so as to make your copy more interesting. Over the years I have honed my writing (and reporting) skills by reading many such gems of wisdom from blogs. Regrettably, none of the organizations I worked for had any such information in their archives.

For cub reporters the lack of such guidelines means going about the job in a haphazard manner and at best copying the way in which the boss writes/ reports. For seasoned journalists, this means limiting the scope of the story to familiar territory. In either case, the journalist’s evolution is stymied and eventually the quality of the organisation’s content is affected.

How can organizations develop such guidelines? Unfortunately there is no equivalent of a stylebook/ style guide to adopt. Organisations need to develop their own guidelines by talking to employees, fellow journalists and doing research. It can start as a series of short notes on topics such as what sources to avoid contacting, tips for better recording of interviews, how to use the internet for research and how to ask probing questions. Over time, these notes can be consolidated and compiled.

In stark contrast, many corporate firms in India have a knowledge management portal (part of the Intranet) that details aspects such as how to approach a client (database of client relationships), best practices in report writing, customised templates to make presentations and data sharing avenues (internal blogs focused on a problem area or a new solution, white papers, virtual discussions etc).

4) Rotation of journalists – The current industry norm is to align journalists to a beat. At best, most areas covered by the journalist would fall into one or two broad categories. For example, a journalist covering Financial Services would cover banking, insurance, NBFCs, personal finance, investment banks, mutual funds, etc. He would very rarely cover an area such as healthcare. Similarly another covering the municipality would rarely volunteer to cover a political rally or report on crime. This results in a journalist getting extremely comfortable with one beat, cultivating and using the same set of contacts for each story and eventually unwilling to collaborate with colleagues on larger stories. This comfort zone can make journalists extremely territorial and unwilling to question their modus operandi.

This can be avoided if a journalist is assigned two or more very different beats. This means for every beat there would be more than one person with varying levels of experience. When two or more people work on a similar beat, it becomes difficult to follow unethical practices to seek and close a story.

If assigning multiple beats per person is not feasible, then journalists must be rotated every 2-3 years to take on a different beat and transition the existing beat to their colleagues. This way the journalist remains keen to learn about new areas and puts in efforts to seek synergies/ linkages between various areas. (Eg: A former political beat reporter now reporting on economic issues can draw linkages say between inflation and political agenda, to make the story relatively more comprehensive).

The Tata Group follows this approach by rotating employees at least every 2 years to other divisions or sister companies. IBM does this every 18 months, while GE and the Mahindra Group have leadership development programmes where good performers are made to work in every major function for 6 months before deciding on where they would like to settle. Little wonder then that the rate of attrition at these companies is relatively low.

5) Acting on reader comments –  Corporations are built to make profits. To do this, they constantly engage with clients and seek feedback. The learning from every project/ client is captured internally (in a de-briefing report) and applied to other projects wherever relevant and useful. The global consulting industry and the Indian IT industry have been able to build efficiencies solely through this model. Private banks use this principle to figure out which customers are more likely to buy new services.

There is no reason why media firms cannot adapt this model, especially when revenues are dropping. Newspapers and TV news organizations not only filter reader/ viewer comments for publishing, they also seldom choose to act on any of them. Organisations mostly defend their stand, some publish corrigendum, few issue apology notes. Beyond that there is no process to incorporate reader suggestions into improving the quality of content.

For starters, journalists must be informed of the comments to their story. Any adverse comments questioning the veracity of the story should be discussed between the reporter and the Chief of Bureau to understand why such a question was raised and what can the reporter do to prevent such a scenario in future. (In many cases it is lack of clarity in the language used by the reporter that gives rise to such a comment.).

The number of times a story has been talked about by readers/ viewers (through their blog, tweets, visits to the story’s page etc) can be used as another input to a journalist’s appraisal process.

As social media gains prominence, journalists have begun quoting views (in some cases generating entire stories) for their stories from the public at large. While media firms are discouraging this trend, journalists can make use of these public posts/ comments in another way – to gauge response to a particular topic and picking leads for developing/ investigating into stories.

Will following these guidelines see a new and improved world of Indian media? Perhaps not immediately. But it will certainly help organisations differentiate from competition, attract superior talent, build a positive reputation and prevent unethical practices.