First, some exhibits.

Today’s edition of the business newspaper Mint carries a small announcement on the front page:

Note to readers
Dear Reader,
The Media Marketing Initiatives on Pages 13 and 29 are the equivalent of paid-for advertisements, and no Mint journalists were involved in creating these. Readers would do well to treat them as advertisements.
R. Sukumar
Editor

The note is small, its import is not. It actually raises the bar for the whole media industry when it comes to (re)gaining the reader’s confidence. To see how Mr Sukumar has rewritten, in just 33 words, some recent rules of journalism, let us put things in perspective.

For example, here is the standard text of the announcement the Mint has carried once in a while:

Note to readers
Dear Reader,
From time to time, you will see a page or a feature in Mint that is clearly labelled as Media Marketing Initiative. Such sponsored content is entirely generated by an advertiser or the marketing department of Mint on behalf of an advertiser, and does not involve any Mint editorial staff.
Such pages/features also have a different font and style to help let you identify that they are not part of Mint's editorial content. As clearly stated in Mint's Journalistic Code of Conduct, which is available on our website www.livemint.com, there is an inviolable line between news and advertising at Mint.
We thought it would be useful for us to reiterate this to you. As always, feel free to contact us at [email protected]
R. Sukumar
Editor

And here is a typical fig leaf of a clarification we routinely see in print. This one by Outlook editor Vinod Mehta was part of his lead article in the cover story on paid news (December 21, 2010 issue):

“I am not unmindful of the difficult times the media industry is going through. The market is too crowded, the advertising cake is too small, the economy is too sluggish. We are all furiously engaged in finding new and innovative ways to augment our dwindling revenues. Outlook (like others) is neck-deep in this skirmish. As you may have noticed, the Outlook ‘Spotlight’ feature is sponsored, the client has almost full editorial control. The only redeeming aspect is that the reader can easily spot it, since it is clearly marked on the page. News for sale is not. The purpose here is to pass off sponsored news as professional news.”

I cannot reproduce the fourth exhibit, in which the guilty publications do not say anything at all to the reader. If they could, here’s what they would:

“Dear reader, The educationist-entrepreneur we have profiled on page one of our city supplement has also placed the advert of his institution on page four, but please don’t join the dots.”

“Dear reader, we happen to have an equity stake in the mega project on which we have been carrying a series of feel-good reports. Please feel free to draw your own conclusions.”

“Dear reader, Has the chief minister done anything worthwhile for our state? Your guess is as good as ours. Nevertheless, the elections are on, he is spending crores on publicity and when he asked us to carry some advertisements as news reports, we thought this would help us subsidise our news gathering and keep the price low for you. Hope you don’t mind.”

***

Thus, you can take the reader for granted (exhibit 4), or assume that s/he will “easily” spot the paid content (exhibit 3), or keep your reader informed with regular notes (exhibit 2). Exhibit 1 is something we had not seen so far. And there is no way to be more transparent than this, except by giving up ads altogether.

It was high time somebody called a spade a spade. It was necessary to win back the trust of readers.  Because many of us have stopped believing in all that we read in newspapers (or watch on TV channels). The marketing types seem to have forgotten David Ogilvy’s advice, which in this context can be paraphrased thus: The reader is not a moron, he is your husband.

The problem, once upon a time, was plain inefficiency in the profession. Then came ‘plants’, news stories ‘planted’ by vested interests. And now we have ‘paid news’. Remember those days when there used to be a line, in fine print, saying “this is an advertisement” just because the advert was displayed in the format of a news item? These days, some papers need to point out “This is not an advertisement” if they want to regain the reader’s trust. In other words, the paid-for news not only fools the readers, it also cast aspersions on the other, ‘unpaid’ news.

Thus, if I read a report in the Hindu or the Express or the Times praising unique initiatives or welfare measures of a political leader – it could be Sheila Dikshit or Mayawati or whoever, I am often not sure if this politician is genuinely doing something for people or there is more to the story than meets the eye. There could be a full-page advertisement coming the next day. The news item could be part of a package. If I read about the latest move by Mukesh Ambani or Anil Ambani in one of our business papers,  how can I be sure that this is a piece of genuine journalism and nothing else – especially after listening to all those Niira Radia tapes?

Equally important would be the case of the dog that does not bark – a sort of paid silence. A series of advertisements from a business house, with the condition that no adverse reports will see the light of the day.

In a democracy, which finally rests on an informed citizen, you can imagine the havoc paid news is wreacking. ‘Informed’ citizens seem to have already grasped the truth, because a survey (quoted around like some urban legend) says that press people, along with policemen and politicians, score the lowest among various professions when it comes to credibility.

Well done, Mint!

* * *

R Sukumar tells Governance Now:

"We have been carrying such a message regularly but in a general form. It is a practice that we started in 2007. This time it was very direct and we told the page numbers because these days we are doing too many media marketing initiatives. It is difficult for the readers to keep track. Space permitting, we will carry such notes more often. The (old) practice of carrying an elaborate note once or twice a month will continue."

Sanjiv Srivastava, a senior journalist, tells Governance Now

"It's a good development. At least they are coming up clean. It's a welcome step ... being honest and transparent. It's a trend that should be followed by others as well."