When it is the question of dignity of labour, as regards investment of intellect is concerned, the news channels in Odisha, to be specific, have a reason to update themselves. Mainly when it is about the debates  on several  issues, where besides the regular lot of guests from the political parties, journalists and others do play a key-roll as panelists. 

When a panel is good, better is the quality of the debate only when objectivity is allowed to get incorporated into the discourses. That is where comes the role  of a neutral voice and the scribes are viewed to be the ones to fit in.

Anyway, the recent jitters on whether the journalists, as panelists, reflect objectivity is something that cannot be wished away and that we may discuss in the following parts of the article.

Why Charity!

In Odisha en number of scribes and experts on several topics can be seen taking part in debates and are never paid any honorarium at all. They obviously toil hard preparing themselves with a homework and then wading through the verbal violence with a wealth of evidence often.

The entire exercise of about an hour or 30 minutes is always free of cost. Neither the channels offer any remuneration nor the panelists demand. Does modesty forbids a deal or there is something more lucrative than that.   

After the debates the journos/ experts stoically walk out of the premises, at best after a cup of coffee or tea, like a gentleman’s race against the time and tradition of a meaningless charity for the channels who sell the 24 to 26 minutes airtime netting a revenue worth hundred times than what they spend on the hospitalities and logistics for the guests .

A Collective Boycott

If it is a question of demand and supply, then the scribes etc have a room for bargain. In all national channels, each journalist or expert are paid a sum of Rs.4k to Rs.5k per debate then why not here? Giving away something for the channels’ discretion the journos now must stop playing moral tootsie and   make the channel owners realize it through a collective show of boycott. This  should not sound like a provocative insinuation but they must make it something authoritative and a mutual one as well.

The Moral Side Of Objectivity

It cannot be generalized yet what plays out itself into the viewers’ domain is the compulsive realms a journo, in the garb of a  neutral panelist, is not able to have their fingers on the right pulse of the topic or the political dispensation they are tacitly loyal to.

It is not in Odisha alone, but this has become an epidemic sorts of things almost everywhere. Each scribe, it can be said with little doubt that, occupies a place of a supporter for certain political party and a time has come when not only journalists, but even experts play the role of an advocate for political parties!

It then becomes bit painful for the viewer when a neutral face or journalist earns the tag of a loyalist for some dispensation. That is a tag or a sobriquet, it is left to the people but, some scribes have reaped rich harvest out of such political allegiance, gaining in one or the other way and that too far from the intellectual honesty they are supposed to adhere to. When such scribes show the tendencies of relishing being treated simultaneously as saint of secularity, seer, yardsticks of conscience and neutral arbiters of political good sense, is now under severe doubts.

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