Smt.  Saroj Goenka, Mr.  Palkhiwala, Members of the Jury, Mr.  Cho Ramaswamy, Mr.  Shyamlal, distinguished friends,

This is for me a formidable occasion.  You have given me the double honour of handing over the awards for journalism to two of our most distinguished and reputed journalists and you have also asked me to inaugurate the First Asian College of Journalism in Bangalore.  May I, first of all, say how happy I am to have handed over the awards to my two distinguished friends, two of the greatest journalists in our country.  The citations have briefly but very eloquently told us about them.  About Mr.  Cho, I should only like to say that he is the most balanced journalist in India!  I used the word 'balanced' because he has succeeded in annoying every political party and every public figure in our country in equal measure!  I think he has provoked us into thinking.  At the same time his 'Tughlak'has become almost a mass institution.  I want to congratulate him for the honour conferred upon him by the B.D.  Goenka Foundation.
 
 Shri Shyamlal is an old, dear friend.  I have learnt a lot through his writings.  While Shri Cho is a journalist, a balanced journalist, Mr. Shyamlal is a journalist, to fine excess.  The citation has described him as a thinking journalist.  I think he has made all of us think in this country.  He has enlightened us on political issues, on social issues, on literary issues and brought to us through his columns the streams of thought in the world as a whole.  He is a fine stylist; I can say that every time I read a piece by him I not only enjoyed it, but I learnt something new.  May I congratulate Shri Shyamlal on this Award.  I should, of course, congratulate the B.D.  Goenka Foundation for choosing them and for the wonderful contribution the Foundation has been making to Indian Journalism.  Shri Ramnath Goenka has been freedom of the press personified.  His spirit of freedom and his fearlessness contributed a great deal to Indian journalism.
 
Today, we are inaugurating also a new and important institution, the Asian College of Journalism.  Mr.  T.  J.  S.  George who established the 'Asia Week' in Hongkong, now considers Bangalore as the centre of Asia.  In the old days may be even today, we think of India as the centre of Asia.  But it is for us a little amusing when we go to Japan or China or Australia or anywhere else in South East Asia.  Now‑a‑days people tend to think of India as something outside or on the fringe of Asia. 

People there call themselves Asian, very legitimately, but they look upon India as a remote part of Asia as it were.  I hope that the setting up of the Asian College of Journalism in Bangalore would bring India into the mainstream of Asian journalism.  It is a difficult thing for newspapers in India today to influence the thinking of the Asian people.  There are great newspapers in other parts of Asia.  Hongkong and Singapore are major centres of journalism today.  So is Japan.  In several South East Asian countries great newspapers have come up.  But I hope that the establishment of this Institute here will re‑capture for us some of the leadership, which we have the right to expect in the realm of Asian journalism.
 
Indian journalism, like Indian democracy, has had a very glorious heritage.  Journalism in India began with the British.  I do not wish to discard the entire British heritage in this matter.  Though we fought against the British and asserted our civil liberties and right of freedom of speech and expression, we admit that certain standards of journalism were introduced during the British period.  Our Nationalist movement stood for freedom of speech, freedom of assocation and freedom of action.  Mahatma Gandhi, as early as 1922, said "restoration of free speech, free association and free press is almost the whole of Swaraj".  So that was our approach to freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. 

At another place in 1925, he said something that is very relevant today:‑ "A journalist's peculiar function is to read the mind of the country and give definite and fearless expression to that mind". As you know, Gandhiji himself was a journalist, a great communicator who through his"Harijan" influenced the minds of millions of our people.  Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was also a journalist and a staunch believer in the freedom of press.I wish to quote something he said at the Conference of Indian Newspaper Editors in 195l.  He said:‑ "I have no doubt that even if the Government dislikes the liberties taken by the Press and considers them dangerous, it is wrong to interfere with the freedom of the Press.  By imposing restrictions you do not change anything.  You merely suppress the manifestation of certain things, thereby causing the ideas and thoughts underlying them to step further.  Therefore, I would have a completely free press with all the dangers involved in the wrong use of that freedom than a suppressed or regulated press".
 
This is the heritage of Indian journalism, a heritage which was asserted powerfully by Ramnath Goenka.  May be I should qualify that a little. The great American writer and the humorist Mark Twain once said that America has three unspeakably precious things ‑ freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and the prudence to practise neither!!  But sometimes I feel that we in India have practised freedom of speech and freedom of conscience including, of course, freedom of press with imprudent exuberance in spite of the reasonable restrictions imposed on them by the Constitution.  This should lead us to give some thought as to what should be the role of journalism in our country.
 
The press, the media has become an all powerful instrument.  We have now all the technological devices by which information can be disseminated, ideas can be spread, propaganda can be conducted, indoctrination can be carried out.  It is awesome and powerful apparatus that is in the hands of television, the press and other media.  What are we going to serve with these powerful instruments?  Sometimes, I feel that this vast technological apparatus is searching for some cause to expound.  If one sees television, now 24 hours you can see television, it is very clear that there is hardly any message that they have to convey to the audience.  There is incessant repetition, banalities, trivialities, anything but thought, anything but an attempt to inculcate values or culture in the minds of people.  It seems this wonderful, miraculous technological apparatus, is looking for some message to be spread among the people. 

I don't mean a didactic message.  Gandhiji once said, the peculiar function of the journalist is to read the mind of the people and give definite and fearless expression to that mind.  Now, reading the mind of the people is not an easy thing, especially of the Indian people. A few months ago, former Chief Justice of India, Shri Ranganath Mishra in a judicial colloquium said that the judiciary is at a loss because they find it difficult to read the mind of the Indian public; they do not know what the public is thinking and to some extent it hinders them from functioning with knowledge and wisdom. 

I think that difficulty is not only with regard to the Indian public.  There has been a certain fragmentation, certain multi‑sided narrowing of the vision of people in the world as a whole and in every country.  One very peculiar consequence of the all embracing nature of technology is that, while it enables to send messages far and wide, it also truckle to groups which are smaller and smaller and narrower and narrower. All our great newspapers, for example, national newspapers have editions in several parts of India.I read something in Delhi, then I go to Bombay and read the same paper, I find something different. 

Mr.  K.M.  Mathew from Kerala is sitting here.  His paper 'Manorama' has editions as almost from every district and in each edition the emphasis naturally is on local deveopments.  So while you may get the spread of the newspapers very extensively in the country as a whole and there is a minimum of news that is national and international, much of what people read in a particular place is local or regional news. 

That is why I said that in the world as a whole and in our own country, the media is directing itself to smaller and narrower audiences, resulting unintendedly, in the fragmentation of the thinking of the people.  So how do we know the mind of India?  Journalists and newspapers have the duty to hold the mirror upto society.  When society is so much fragmented, often one sees only partial and distorted images in that mirror.  Therefore, I think it is incumbent on newspapers and television and other media, deliberately to try to focus attention on larger national issues.  Some of these larger national issues are actually issues of local interest also, and therefore it is not impossible to project the national image even while giving prominence to the local and regional events. 

If one takes the question of environment, or of poverty and backwardness, they are local in their impact on the people but are national in their essential characterstics.  But I am afraid that such over‑arching and basic issues do not unfortunately make news.  What makes news has become the dominant consideration in journalism.  I do not myself believe that the reading public is uninterested in constructive developments and in constructive news.  If they cannot get anything else they will read and perhaps enjoy what is given to them.  But they would like to read in the newspapers not only things which are sensational atrocities, crimes, the misdeeds of politicians, and spicy scandals, but also some healthy, elevating, inspiring developments happening in the country.  This is a challenge to journalism.
 
Recently there was the issue of this bill that Mr.  V.N.  Gadgil wanted to introduce in Parliament on the right of reply in the Press.  It was fortunately withdrawn by the proposer himself but I feel that there is a case for right of reply.  Some of us cannot reply.  I remember that some years ago when I was not in this position I went to a city in India and made a speech. It was on a rather innocuous subject concerning science and technology.  The next morning I found an editorial in the local paper saying that the Minister of State, Mr.  Narayanan was reported to have said this and that if he had said this and then followed a whole paragraph of criticism of what I was supposed to have said.  It was really amazing for me.  I was in that city and probably that editor or the reporter of his paper was sitting at the meeting at which I talked.  The editorial writer himself had doubt if I had said what was attributed to me. 

 Yet he wrote a whole editorial on it criticising me. The disinclination of pressmen to check facts before publishing is a problem today.  It may be due to just laziness or due to a feeling that whatever is printed will not be challenged.  To my mind this is one of the problems journalism has to confront as reporting without checking has become such a common phenomenon.  I have great respect for reporters.  I have been a reporter myself once.  I think they are really the vanguard of journalism. But sometimes one does not know whether it is the reporter or the sub‑editor who does the mischief.  I read the other day something about the art of advertisement.  The pharmaceutical industry in the world is spending two times in advertising their products than on the research and development.  This may be true of many products including intellectual products.  It was said about advertisements that they are "truth, half truth and anything like the truth".
 
I feel that there is need for a College of Asian journalism in India, a College where our reporters, sub‑editors and future editors can be trained. The first step in good journalism is truthfulness.  Of course truth has so many facets.  I do not say that there are not very spicy aspects to truth, which ought to be reported.  What is required is basic attachment to truth.  I should here like to quote from one of the members of the jury of the B.D. Goenka Award sitting, one who was passionately opposed to the Draft Bill on right of reply in the press.  Mr.  Nikhil Chakravarthy, who after expressing his joy in having this bill withdrawn, wrote:‑ "The onus has now fallen squarely on the shoulders of the fourth estate to ensure adequately and unequivocally what the bill itself sought to achieve; namely right of an individual citizen to contradict any press report which is incorrect or misleading and to see that such a contradiction is prominently published to neutralise the negative impact of th[e offending report.  Naturally, to have it done through legislation and through the power of the Government is a different thing.  But to do it through discipline and attachment to truth by the journalist is a gloriously different thing".  One has to remember this responsibility of the press to individuals and to the public.  Unfortunately, everyone does not have the privilege of getting things printed in the newspapers.  The printed word is a powerful thing.  That power must be exercised with some modesty, some moderation.
 
One of the problems faced by print media is the challenge of television and video.  They are here with us and we have to accept as a fact. But I am one of those who is of the opinion that what is in print and is read have greater influence than what we see and hear on the electronic screen.  I cannot, for example, remember during the last several years any word or phrase or idea which has moved me deeply looking at television.  I am not running down TV.  I think that the coordination of the eye, the mind and the whole being which is involved in the reading process enables you to absorb things much more deeply.  I think the press need not be afraid of television and video.  But what I am afraid is that language itself might be affected fundamentally by the phenomenon of the television.  They speak so fast on TV because every second is money that you cannot often follow some of the words.

There is hardly any finesse of language, beauty of language, turn of phrase. Eventually if this process goes on one wonders if language itself would become attenuated and it may be through a few words or symbols by which communication is achieved.  I am one who enjoys language.  I would like to get the flavour of words, I would like to chew and enjoy them, rather than somebody in rapid motion spouting them from the television screen.  I am not under rating the power and the charm of television.  I must not annoy television journalists because I get publicity more on television than in the press.  One problem is that television does not permit you to think, it is almost pre‑digested food that is thrust upon you.  It is a method of forced feeding, sometimes like intravenous feeding.  It may be very healthy for you.  Even while looking at the most fascinating programmes your thought process is not involved.  It is often suppressed.  On the other hand while you read your mind is engaged, there is an unconscious interaction between the printed word and your mind. So, one of the dangers is that the thinking power of the viewers might well suffer unless it is balanced by the printed word, newspapers, books etc.
 
Another problem which the newspapers and the media are facing is trivialisation, the obsession with the small colourful, snappy, gossipy things of life in which process you forget some of the deeper things.  I suppose this is also something for which training is required for journalism.  Another little, technical matter that I have noticed is that in our newspapers reporting of events is often very long .  You get columns and columns of a single story.  One tries hard to find out where it was said and when, on which occasion and in which context.  One has to read to the very end to find the head of the story as most of the write up is around the tail of it.  It is a simple thing.  When I first joined a newspaper I was taught that writing briefly to the point was important in news reporting.  When I see a story which could be written in two or three paragraphs, told in three columns I think of this first lesson.
 
We know that newspaper production is a coordinated effort.  Reporters, sub‑editors, editors, managing editors, proprietor editors, are all involved in it.  I read the other day, I think it was in the book by Mr.  T.J.S. George what Mr.  Pothan Joseph once said viz., there are managing editors who are neither managers nor editors but who have managed somehow to be editors. We have now another category, proprietor editors who are in fact managing the editors!  There are besides the demands made on newspapers by advertisers and advertisements.
 
One of our distinguished journalists observed recently that a newspaper is no longer journalism but an industry.  It produces newspapers just as a factory produces steel or cloth or some other commodity.  With commercialisation having become so universal to‑day this is perhaps unavoidable.  But still everything must have a certain balance and proportion. A paper may have to truckle to some extent to the demands of the reading public and those of the advertisers, but that need not prevent it from focussing on positive aspects and on issues.  I am not saying that. 

A newspaper should be a crusading agency, but it has an educational function, particularly in a developing society, like that of ours.To‑day, the newspapers have a social responsibility as well as a national responsibility.  To‑day when our society is fragmenting in different directions both in thought and action, a newspaper has the duty and the power to play a unifying role.  It is a great weapon.  The big guns of journalism present here, the great builders of newspapers and moulders of public opinion, have the power to stem the tide of commercialisation and trivialization of journalism and to promote positive aspects of developments and values of life and to enable the disparate elements of society to cohere together as one nation. 

Thank you