Note: I have desisted from naming any individual or organisation in this post, not because I respect them or want their identity to be protected, but because as a freelancer I am a talentless coward with little options but to go back to those very people and organisations whom I’ve criticized in this post.
I quit my first job with a media organisation last year in October. I published my first article as a freelancer in December, and more than 10 since. My profile is quite diverse, both in terms of the topics I’ve written on and the outlets that have run my stories. My experiences below are based on only those outlets that I’ve published with as a freelancer.
Lay readers who suspect Indian media’s standards to be low are wrong - the standards are non-existent. As a freelancer, one can fabricate data, claims, and even quotes (this is most likely true for journalists employed by those organisations as well, but I can only speculate). In the most shocking incidence so far, a piece of mine carried several quotes which can easily be termed sensational, none of which was on record. I was worried about getting the piece past editors at any outlet because I did not have recordings to back up those quotes. To my utter disbelief, the outlet which finally published it did not bother to raise a single query about any of the quotes. “Jesus fuck” - the response of a senior journalist friend when I informed him about this - tells the tale succinctly. This essentially means that one can get away with concocting fake quotes attributed to fake identities. The only problem with that would be when an alert reader decides to do a background check on the fake identity. But you and I know that’s unlikely to happen. In any case, the media outlet won’t bother to play the role of the alert reader.
The problem with Indian media is not restricted to hopeless editorial standards. They’re downright unprofessional in the way they treat freelancers. Big outlets don’t ever bother to respond unless the author’s reputed, or has contacts high up. The smaller, new media ones do so with disdain. Repeated requests might just elicit a response if one’s lucky. If they agree to publish, they will almost always do it at times when the readership is at its lowest ebb - sunday afternoon, and 10 PM on a weekday. Some outlets have horrible social media strategy, they can’t even compose one proper tweet or Facebook update and post it at the right time. Some editors are so callous that they won’t even post a readymade tweet mailed to them by the author.
