News of the World - Or How Paywalls Can't Stop Me Getting the News

These days the New York Times has gone behind a paywall. I stop by every morning, with my nose pressed against the cyberglass, gazing at the tempting treats in the form of headlines and first lines. Surprisingly, I don't ache for the days when I could read the content for free. Or, perhaps, not so surprisingly, since the same news is available everywhere else and not just on American websites.

In fact, what has changed thoroughly is the automatic association of certain organizations with news. There was a time when news meant the BBC, and later CNN, for electronic news and the New York Times and the Washington Post for printed news. In India, it meant such creaky oldtimers such as The Times of India and The Statesman and The Hindustan Times. My first few years in the U.S. there were no other options and if I wanted news about India, I had to rely on snippets here and there. There were of course the now defunct soc.culture groups in the days before the Internet became the World Wide Web. My biggest grouse against the western media in those days was that I hungered for news from India and couldn't find any, except silly pieces here and there. And certainly none in an Indian voice. Even further back in the day, way, way way back in the day, I had an opposite grouse with the Indian news media. There was no coverage of the world outside. My connection to world news was BBC World Service on shortwave frequencies. The BBC may or may not have been objective. I realize now, that it was then and remains now the British Broadcasting Corporation, so yes, it was the broadcast arm of the British government. But it was also often the only radio act in town, the behemoth with a presence worldwide, with reporters and cameramen on the ground. So if I wanted to know what was going on in the Middle East, South Africa, Australia and Europe, I would tune in to the fuzzy, scratchy reception of the BBC World Service and listen to what was going on in the rest of the world. When we finally acquired a television in the late 1980s, it was CNN that brought home the vicarious experience of war via its 24-hour coverage of and reporting from Iraq in 1991. Even when the World Wide Web made news more available, I would go to the Indian websites such as rediff, for news about India only, rarely for foreign news.

How the times have changed! For the recent developments in the Middle East, I don't even miss the New York Times. In fact I turn not even to the standard chatter of the talking heads on CNN or MSNBC. Both their reporting and their analyis is at least 24 hours late and often just surface impressions. I find more timely reporting and more accurate analysis on Indian websites and television stations such as NDTV , Headlines Today, and on international news websites like Al-Jazeera English. Thanks to the Internet, they all stream live. I also found interesting and relevant analysis by Indian bloggers, one of whom is a defence journalist working for the TV channel Headlines Today. Shiv Aroor recently spent time in eastern Libya, in Ben-Ghazi, and both tweeted and blogged about the situation on the ground there.

When I stepped back to consider, I found this amazing: for perhaps the first time in my life, I was reading an Indian correspondent's reporting on a foreign war. This would have been unthinkable in the 1980s not because Indian reporters were not good enough but because back then, most Indian news organizations simply did not have the resources to send out reporters to cover foreign wars. So we had no other sources of information except the BBC and CNN. Now there is a variety of sources from which to get news, and in comparison with the competition, western news organizations are coming up short, both in quality and in terms of boots on the ground (or microphones on the ground).

This is because first, there is the undeniable fact that western news organizations are unable to staff bureaus worldwide. Funds are tight, western journalists represent a burden on expenditures, they have to be housed and fed expensively, unlike resourceful Indian and Qatari reporters who are willing to live more modestly in exchange for the excitement of reporting live from international troublespots. In light of this, western news organizations are simply cutting back operations and there are fewer reporters on the ground (with the notable exception of NPR).

However, there also still remains the problem of voice. Caught up in trying to keep in place the shredded lens of a world order that is irrefutably over, western news organizations simply cannot comprehend the sheer mindboggling changes that have taken place in the world. I find it embarrassing to read or watch western analysts struggle to make sense of the situation in Libya, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. They try to fit it into a narrative that is fast unravelling - that of western political and economic dominance. As a result, many western journalists are perceived to be tied to western foreign policy, so much so that their stated objectiveness no longer carries weight, and they are often treated as agents of their countries' governments. It's particularly sad that really good journalists like Anthony Shadid have to bear the consequences of the deteriorating analytical standards of their colleagues. The recent brutal treatment of the four New York Times journalists who were roughed-up and molested by their captors before being, thankfully, released into safety, would not have happened in the heyday of Christiane Amanpour when western journalists were treated as protected celebrities covering important world affairs for the only news channels then available.

In my opinion, the far greater problem is that western foreign journalists are just too...foreign. So they neither seek out nor are they given access to places and people whose sights and voices need to be seen and heard in order for a truer picture to emerge (again with the notable exception of the exceptional Anthony Shadid of the New York Times). Often, it's locally-hired minions who do the bulk of the hard work and the actual reporting. And so the interesting perspectives these days are mostly non-western. Also, the non-western perspective does not, yet, present itself to the world as the voice of power and/or domination. Even though India is rising, it has not yet risen to the point where its journalists can head out into the world with the self-assurance of power, either military, economic or political. Their voices come through, therefore, as the voices of genuine observers and reporters, not as interlocutors or players in international politics. It's a new and very interesting development in the history of foreign correspondence.

And that's why I can live without access to the New York Times on the Internet.Sorry, NYT, whether or not you like it, content can no longer be hoarded or guarded. I suggest you hike your advertising rates to compensate for the free content and to pay your reporters and cover operational costs.