Thoughts On Mediocrity In Indian Journalism And How To Fix It
Lessons from Atul Gawande via Oslo, Honolulu and New York.
Dear reader,
This edition, #7 of the Indian Journalism Project, is late because I was travelling through a fact-checking conference in Oslo, a media conference in Honolulu and was felled by Covid-19 in between. (I know, what was I thinking!) But the conferences itself have been mind-expanding; more on that in future editions.
Imagine three scenarios.
1.
A TV reporter says breathlessly on the news, “the party spokesperson said their government has outperformed the previous one.”
Instead, she could have said, “the party spokesperson claimed their government has outperformed the previous one.”
Said vs. claimed. See the difference one word makes?
2.
Elsewhere, an editor on the desk at a website writes a headline to an article he publishes: Explained: All The Questions You Have About Monkeypox. Upon reading it, you find that the piece explains nothing satisfyingly. No questions are directly answered, and worse, the writer seems to have mixed up cause and effect. The headline promises answers but does not deliver.
Instead the editor could have been more accurate in his headlining. Better still, he could have commissioned an honest piece titled What We Know And Don’t Know About Monkeypox. You wouldn’t be half as confused, or annoyed.
3.
The next morning, an update on COVID-19 is published in the newspaper. There are several people quoted in it, but none of them is an epidemiologist or a virologist. Instead, prominent space has been given to a well-respected eye surgeon, who has inexplicably held forth on a topic he is not an expert on.
The reporter could have got quotes from the right people, but didn’t do so.
What’s going on?
When we write about the profession, we journalists tend to focus on the media’s corruption or ideological bias. We rightly talk about press censorship and the legal harassment of journalists. Given the fraught conditions under which we work, we don’t have the time to ask an equally important question: why do we settle for mediocrity when we could be so much better?
At least part of the reason we don’t do so is because we lack a framework to think along these lines. That’s why Atul Gawande’s book on medicine, Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance is so important. Gawande is a surgeon, researcher, and writer. It is this last job of his that has made him justly famous. Over the years, the doctor of Indian origin has given us, through his writing, ways to think about checklists and why they are important; and why it’s important to talk to our elders about death.
Better is one of his earlier books. In it, he attempts to ask the question: why aren’t we better at medicine? If failure is “so easy, so effortless”, he asks at the beginning, what then “does it take to be good at something”?
Gawande writes:
“In medicine, as in any profession, we must grapple with systems, resources, circumstances, people—and our own shortcomings, as well. We face obstacles of seemingly unending variety. Yet somehow we must advance, we must refine, we must improve. How we have and how we do in my subject here.”
In journalism too, there are systems, resources, circumstances, people and our own shortcomings to grapple with.
Some of these challenges are in fact low-hanging fruit (such as instructing reporters to use the word ‘claim’ instead of ‘say’).
Some of the challenges appear to be low-hanging fruit but are in fact, not: they are difficult to address, such as getting journalists to quote the right sources in their reports instead of the most convenient sources.
In his book, Gawande looks at three issues in detail.
First, he examines the issue of diligence by examining the epic struggle at hospitals to reduce infection rates during hospitalisation. It turns out that if all doctors did one thing well—wash their hands thoroughly—infections would come down by a huge percentage.
Gawande writes,
“more than one doctor told me that it was easier to get a new MRI machine than to maintain basic supplies and hygiene.” At one hospital unit, it takes an industrial engineer to make “dozens of simplifying changes that reduced the opportunities for spread of infection” to achieve success. He writes, “infection rates for MRSA—the hospital contagion responsible for more deaths than any other—fell almost 90 percent.”
At his own operating room, Gawande adds another nurse, a circulating nurse whose “central job is, essentially, to keep the team antiseptic.”
All this is achieved, not through robotic surgery or intricate medical techniques, but through plain old diligence. “People underestimate the importance of diligence as a virtue”, he writes and continues, “no doubt this has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is defined as “the constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken.” There is a flavour of simplistic relentlessness to it.”
What would happen if newsrooms embraced the value of diligence more earnestly? Wouldn’t it lead to a massive improvement in basic errors and poor standards? Almost certainly, it would.
There is one big challenge, however. In medicine, mistakes can cost lives. In journalism? Not so much. (There are exceptions, and in other cases, it’s a matter of teasing out linkages between journalistic error and disaster.)
Still, it’s a matter of incentives. Newsrooms can, for instance, be made aware of the power of simple fixes that require just a change in mindset.
Gawande identifies two more spheres other than diligence where medicine can be better: ethical values and ingenuity. The first of these, ethics, is again a matter of giving the right instruction at a small cost.
An example of this for newsrooms is the problem of plagiarism. Journalism in India is rife with reporters and editors copying other people’s work, yet there are many newspapers and websites that have solved the problem. The fix is: teach the journalist why plagiarism is bad, create a zero tolerance policy for it, and the issue mostly goes away.
As for the field of human ingenuity, there is another framework of Gawande’s that we can apply to newsrooms. The writes identifies what he calls ‘positive deviants’—individuals who create innovative solutions to problems—who lead the way.
Imagine an enterprising desk hand in a TV news station creating a new system for the flow of information, one that prizes accuracy. Or a reporter who makes a practice of sharing their rough drafts and documents on their Twitter feed, thereby increasing transparency.
The possibilities are dizzying.
Tellingly, for a project focused on Indian journalism, Atul Gawande’s experience in India shows how the miraculous is possible: despite a crunch of resources, an army of doctors, nurses and other support staff created near-zero levels of polio.
“True success in medicine is not easy. It requires will, attention to detail, and creativity. But the lesson I took from India was that it is possible anywhere and by anyone. I can imagine a few places with more difficult conditions. Yet astonishing success can be found. And each one began, I noticed, remarkably simply: with a readiness to recognise problems and a determination to remedy them.”
Similarly, in journalism too, better is possible. It’s not going to be done overnight as Gawande shows: “Arriving at meaningful solutions is an inevitably slow and difficult process. Nonetheless, what I saw was: better as possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.”
As part of the Indian Journalism Project, we are matching mentors and mentees in a structured mentorship program. If you are interested in mentoring a journalist, or if you are interested in being mentored, do fill up this short four-question survey.
The Indian Journalism Project is a 100-day effort by BOOM and Media Buddhi starting on World Press Freedom Day (3rd May) and ending on India’s Independence Day (15th August). Read the inaugural piece on the four challenges of Indian journalism.
Do subscribe and share with your friends!
Excellent piece. Thanks for introspecting the basic principles and practices that can lead to better journalism. Really interesting that you have looked at journalistic practice in India through the lens of Dr. Gawande's book. Thank you very much.