How I named, shamed and jailed

Watch this video. It's a powerful reminder to all those in my fraternity selling their souls for a pocket full of pennies, there is a bloody good reason why you got into this business in the first place. Sure,  journalism doesn't pay as much monies as you think you deserve. And sure, it's bloody tough to practice journalism of the kind this man talks of. But as that African proverb goes: It is better to eat a mushroom in freedom than meat in slavery.

And while on all things from Africa, allow me sign off with a line from one of the continent's most incredible son. 


  

How to make hard choices

Discovered once again via the superbly curated Farnam Street Blog by Shane Parrish. Do subscribe to his blog and twitter feeds. Worth every minute spent. 

What makes a hard choice hard is the way alternatives relate.

In any easy choice, one alternative is better than the other. In a hard choice, one alternative is better in some ways, the other alternative is better in other ways, and neither is better than the other overall. You agonize over whether to stay in your current job in the city or uproot your life for more challenging work in the country because staying is better in some ways, moving is better in others, and neither is better than the other overall. We shouldn’t think that all hard choices are big. Let’s say you’re deciding what to have for breakfast. You could have high fiber bran cereal or a chocolate donut. Suppose what matters in the choice is tastiness and healthfulness. The cereal is better for you, the donut tastes way better, but neither is better than the other overall, a hard choice. Realizing that small choices can also be hard may make big hard choices seem less intractable. After all, we manage to figure out what to have for breakfast, so maybe we can figure out whether to stay in the city or uproot for the new job in the country.

In hard choices we tend to prefer the safest option.

… I can tell you that fear of the unknown, while a common motivational default in dealing with hard choices, rests on a misconception of them. It’s a mistake to think that in hard choices, one alternative really is better than the other, but we’re too stupid to know which, and since we don’t know which, we might as well take the least risky option. Even taking two alternatives side by side with full information, a choice can still be hard. Hard choices are hard not because of us or our ignorance; they’re hard because there is no best option.

Now, if there’s no best option, if the scales don’t tip in favor of one alternative over another, then surely the alternatives must be equally good, so maybe the right thing to say in hard choices is that they’re between equally good options. That can’t be right. If alternatives are equally good, you should just flip a coin between them, and it seems a mistake to think, here’s how you should decide between careers, places to live, people to marry: Flip a coin. There’s another reason for thinking that hard choices aren’t choices between equally good options.

Needed: Editors with balls

I've been meaning to write on this for a while. This whole balderdash about slapping defamation notices on media outlets that write a story which don't toe any company's given line. The latest to join the bandwagon is the "venerable" Infosys co-founded by the "man who can do no wrong" NR Narayana Murthy. Two odd weeks ago, Infosys issued legal notices to BCCL and Indian Express for "defaming the company". For the life of me, I couldn't quite figure out what was "defamatory". If anything, Infosys ought to have been hauled over coal for how the company has been run last couple of years. That it needed a new management is obvious and employee morale is at an all time low. 

But that aside, after having spent twenty odd years in journalism, most editors I know of quake each time a legal notice lands on their tables. Loaded with jargon, insinuations, and casting aspersions on an editor's character, it is inevitably the kind of stuff that ought to be shoved into the rubbish can. It can rot there for all you care and nothing is going to come of it.

But the way things are, most editors, bite the bait. They hurriedly call the "aggrieved party", a reconciliatory meeting is organized, much backslapping takes place, and at the next award function organized by the media entity, a trophy is handed to them for "Outstanding contribution to (put your choice of award here)". The next day, the publication puts out pictures of how their annual award function or whatever else is it, is the biggest and brightest corporate India has seen; and how everybody who matters was in attendance to applaud the "winners". Everybody goes home to live happily ever after.

The problem on hand is most corporate houses in India have figured this is a ruse that works.

What most editors in India haven't figured is when somebody indulges in chest thumping, give it back as good as it gets. I can count on the fingers of one hand in India who have the gumption to stick it up and tell the "aggrieved party" to go take a walk. If they did that often enough, I have seen from close quarters, the chest thumping subsides and people toe the line. 

Not just that. Contrary to popular perception among timid editors and their hare brained counterparts in marketing, whether or not a legal notice is in place, each time an "award function" is organized, all of these parties make it to the event. They go out of their way as well to figure out in surreptitious ways if their name figures on the list of winners. If their name is not on the list, they try to bully their way to tables on the front to prove how higher up they are on the hierarchy. That way, they stand a better chance of figuring in post event pictures the title will put out. If they don't, the poor public relations functionary handling the job gets the wrong end of the stick.

From a publication's perspective, what you're left with is a demoralized edit team that has the bark, but lacks the bite, because their editors don't have the balls. I suspect that is pretty much why a lot of young kids I know who get into the business with starry eyes and idealism get out of it or hit the bottle. 

An argument against censorship

Image sourced from deviantart.com. Labelled for non commercial use without modification

Image sourced from deviantart.com. Labelled for non commercial use without modification

I discovered this letter from Charles Bukowski on the Farnam Street Blog by Shane Parrish.

7-22-85
Dear Hans van den Broek:

Thank you for your letter telling me of the removal of one of my books from the Nijmegen library. And that it is accused of discrimination against black people, homosexuals and women. And that it is sadism because of the sadism.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women it is because of these who I met were that. There are many “bads”–bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even “bad” white males. Only when you write about “bad” white males they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are “good” blacks, “good” homosexuals and “good” women?

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see. If I write of “sadism” it is because it exists, I didn’t invent it, and if some terrible act occurs in my work it is because such things happen in our lives. I am not on the side of evil, if such a thing as evil abounds. In my writing I do not always agree with what occurs, nor do I linger in the mud for the sheer sake of it. Also, it is curious that the people who rail against my work seem to overlook the sections of it which entail joy and love and hope, and there are such sections. My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the “light” and never mentioned the other, then as an artist I would be a liar.

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.

I am not dismayed that one of my books has been hunted down and dislodged from the shelves of a local library. In a sense, I am honored that I have written something that has awakened these from their non-ponderous depths. But I am hurt, yes, when somebody else’s book is censored, for that book, usually is a great book and there are few of those, and throughout the ages that type of book has often generated into a classic, and what was once thought shocking and immoral is now required reading at many of our universities.

I am not saying that my book is one of those, but I am saying that in our time, at this moment when any moment may be the last for many of us, it’s damned galling and impossibly sad that we still have among us the small, bitter people, the witch-hunters and the declaimers against reality. Yet, these too belong with us, they are part of the whole, and if I haven’t written about them, I should, maybe have here, and that’s enough.

may we all get better together,
yrs,

I'm not sure if I've articulated this earlier on these pages. But I think Farnam Street one of the best reads online. And the weekly digest that originates from there is one of the rare ones I wait for to catch up on all I may have missed out on. The context in which the letter was written is here.

While on the blog, if you think the content worth your while, may I suggest you donate whatever you think appropriate in the tip jar? Creating good content is hard work and few people appreciate it. It isn't fair to whine on the dumbing down of good content and decline in the same breath to pay for what is good. That is hypocrisy.