A significant section of mediapersons, largely those who describe themselves as belonging to the “old school of journalism”, have been experiencing a serious degree of heartburn and gut churn following the recent media exposés on Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi, and the NDTV discussion where a collegial panel of scribes put Dutt under the microscope. Such exposés, by their lights, imperil an axiom that they have held dear and tenaciously clung to all their professional life. “Dog does not eat dog.”

This is, of course, not a “journalistic principle” – not the “Facts-are-sacred-comment-is-free” kind of ground rule that was dinned into us in journalism school and later piloted us in the practice of journalism. Rather, it is the kind of unexamined idée fixe that commonly holds many professional coteries, not just journalists, in its grip, and which, in a coon’s age, gets itself elevated to the formidable status of a truism. When you get down to it, the axiom derives from the sentiment (and it is nothing more than a sentiment, really) that one does not “attack one’s own”.  It’s not good form, not the one done thing. The barest sniff of a misdemeanour in the media is therefore inevitably met by a swift closing of the ranks (of those steeped in this credo) in a kind of knee-jerk reaction. Not backed by any rationale.

I belong, myself, to the old school of journalism. But this particular maxim has always appeared to me to stand in need of serious dissection under a powerful microscope. If we scrutinize it at the rational level rather than merely acquiescing in it at the gut level, it will be found to possess neither the lucidity of logic nor the merit of propriety. In fact, a blind adherence to this tenet, which would entail keeping the media lid firmly on the media’s transgressions, has had the inevitable outcome of making a mockery of journalistic responsibility. As journalists, we assume a role akin to that of bloodhounds, sniffing out facts and wrongdoing and presenting them for scrutiny by our readers; but if, in the course of our sniffing, we come across a smelly bone in our own backyard, should we frantically dig a hole and bury it? This, no less, is what the zealous adherents to the dog-does-not-eat-dog precept would have us do.

But, I suspect, a lot of their heartburn derives not so much from an exposé of professional misconduct itself as from the naming of the principals. Suddenly, there they are, the Emperor and the Empress, metaphorically without their clothes, identifiably out in the open and up for public censure. If Outlook and Open had carried the taped conversations, cloaking Dutt and Sanghvi’s identities within the comforting sobriquets of “a senior TV editor” or “a veteran newspaper journalist”, there would not have been this seismic upheaval in the fraternity. The story, having stirred up a few mild ripples, would probably have quietly vanished from the collective consciousness like breath off a razor blade.

And a fat lot of good that would have done. When Janet Cooke’s Pulitzer prize-winning story about an 8-year-old heroin addict was exposed as a hoax, it was the media that broke the story, the first doubts being cast by the findings of Associated Press reporters, followed by an investigation by her own newspaper (The Washington Post), the results of which were revealed by the Post. It was this public unraveling of the story-that-never-was that led not only to Cooke’s mea culpa and her resignation from the paper, but also to her shame-impelled avowal that she would never again work in journalism. When names are not named, it’s a de facto cover-up, and soon enough, it’s business as usual.

The rot that everybody agrees has set in on Indian journalism may owe much of its nurturance to this tendency to coyness in keeping journalistic infractions under wraps. Stories of professional misconduct and worse abound in the gossip-mongering ranks of the news-makers; the air at the Press Clubs is thick with their telling. But how many of them get investigated and written about? In maintaining a rigid professional silence, we become accessories after the fact. We blabber so much and so officiously about “free and fair reporting”. How fair is it to hastily switch off the spotlight whenever it happens to fall on one of our own? Isn’t there something aberrant, even arrogant, about reserving the right to be the purveyors and trumpeters of scams and misdeeds featuring other Indians while demanding immunity from inspection for ourselves?

If we as journalists do not take it upon ourselves to – freely and fairly – report on the media’s deviations, then who will? We are in a unique – in fact, in the best – position to carry out this role and function. It is we who have the skills and training for information-gathering, the experience- honed noses for sleuthing, access to across-the-board sources, an available platform for reportage and commentary. Can lay citizens, no matter how zealous they are in their analysis and opinions, do as thorough and balanced a job as a journalist of integrity can? We have a telling example – from the NDTV files, no less – of what can happen when a lay citizen, Chyetanya Kunte -- unbacked by the infrastructure and might of a behemoth like NDTV -- expressed some trenchant criticism about Barkha  Dutt’s reportage and news presentation during the 26/11 terrorist attack and during the Kargil crisis.  NDTV’s sledge-hammer descended on him with such viciousness that, presumably under threat of legal action, he posted an abject apology, retracted every word he’d written on his blog, wrote to other bloggers asking them to take down their links from his post, and miserably promised to be a good boy ever after. The kind of commentary he had posted should have come from the editorial pens of our news publications: as professional journalists we would not have been so easily bullied as a hapless individual blogger was.

Even in the latest controversy, many journalists who might have been inclined to express their  views in the media and other public fora have been held back by the apprehension that they would be  accused (by fellow-journalists, above all) of professional jealousy – a handy if unfair stick with which  to beat those who dare. How do you prove you’re not jealous or envious – or, most terrible of all – that  you’re not deriving a sadistic thrill from the squirming discomfort of iconic journalists? The more you deny it, the more you sound like you’re protesting too much.  However, in the way that the Dutt-Sanghvi dust-up has played itself out, one can also discern the  glimmerings of a move towards discarding the older reticence over speaking up about the misdoings  of “one’s own”. Unmindful of possible charges of self-righteousness or professional jealousy, a decidedly small but slowly growing number of journalists has shown a readiness to put the iniquities of their fellow journalists under the scanner. And their opinions have been informed by the perceived facts, not by the persona of Dutt that has irritated and influenced the commentaries of all too many bloggers. Rather than assailing them as blots on the escutcheon of a proud and privileged profession, we should instead hail them as trail-blazers of a new groundswell of professional courage that challenges the hoary convention of silence, governed by blind obeisance to a catch-phrase featuring canine consumption.

By raising pertinent, if uncomfortable, questions, this un-silent minority has also impelled an inward-looking search for new direction, new boundaries, an upfront examination of the contemporary face of journalistic ethics itself. Even Barkha Dutt confessed she’d learnt her lesson (even as she kept kicking against the strictures in her report card.)

“Dog-does-not….” is not just passé, it has a decidedly counteracting effect on clean, robust journalism. Dutt herself junked the concept when, in that TV debate, she queried the sidelining of the ground rules of journalism by the editors of Outlook and Open, and when she chastised the senior panelists, whom she sniffily described as “stalwarts”, for what she saw as their culpable silence.

Let’s have more of this kind of open airing, I’d say, and less of a turning of our collective backs on the dust and cobwebs that cloud the profession. It is late, but hopefully not too late, to pick up a sturdy broom and let its sweeping strokes fall where they may.