*(Read out at seminar on Human Development and Good Governance: New Goals,
New Horizons the Goa International Centre, Dona Paula this week)*
**
*The Curious Case of Ashley do Rosario and Journalism in Goa
*
*By Mayabhushan Nagvenkar*
*Disclosure: *I have known Ashley do Rosario since 1999. We have been
colleagues since 2000 in the Herald for a period of three years and then
almost a decade later at the Gomantak Times, where I did freelance editing
work. We have also been friends since, who meet and interact regularly. The
purpose of this disclosure is to inform and make the reader this note aware
of the nature of association between the author and the subject.
First… there are three things I’d like to put on record at the outset.
I am not here to whine and complain.
I am not here to push a brief.
I am not here to beg.
So what am I doing here? I am here to put down on paper and before you,
what I believe, is a sorry chapter in the smallish canvas of journalism and
the media industry in Goa. Because, while journalists record the
contemporary histories of the lives and situations around them, the
travails of journalists and the infected inflammations of this profession
are rarely brought out formally in the public domain. This is one such
attempt and ‘The Curious Case of Ashley do Rosario and journalism in Goa’
is a vehicle to make a broader comment on the state of journalism in Goa
and the rapidly shrinking space for integrity and forthrightness.
Here’s what I know about Ashley. Ashley has been a journalist for about two
decades now. He has spent a decade each in the two conventional editorial
divisions of newspaper journalism; the news desk and reporting team.
Ashley was a deputy chief reporter at the Herald, back in 1999, when I
first came to know him. He later worked as a deputy news editor at the
Gomantak Times, where he virtually anchored the news production process.
>From what I have come to know from Ashley and subsequent corroborations
from sources in the media industry in Goa. There were three main
flashpoints over the last several years, which have severely affected his
career. They are however not in the order listed below and had very little
to do with journalistic inadequacies or mal-journalism.
In 2003, he became a founding member of a newspaper employees union (along
with me) seeking fair working conditions at the Herald. Later, he contested
the last civic elections after putting in a legit leave of absence. He lost
both. The elections with a not so pretty margin and the job. Third, his
be-friending of me.
The one oft repeated reason which editors and newspaper managements in Goa
give him for rejecting his job application, is his ‘voluble’ support and
perceived involvement in an anonymous media critiquing blog I ran by the
name of Penpricks. And he wasn’t even part of it.
Ashley has been virtually unemployed for the last four of the eight years.
There are four daily English newspapers in Goa. One monthly news magazine.
And several other news, feature and lifestyle magazines. But strangely
there are no jobs to be had for him. Over the last few years, all
publications which publish news content in the English language have issued
public advertisements inviting applicants. There have been recruitments by
the dozen. Ashley is still out in the cold.
Running concurrent to Ashley’s fortune is the shrinking of space for
integrity in the journalistic expanse of Goa.
No profession is exempt from inadequacies and imperfections, be it a
multi-national conglomerate which manufactures the brand of detergent you
use or even the corner tea shop, which you frequent everyday. But what is
special and significant about the industry of journalism is the impact it
creates on you and your minds when you unfold your newspaper of flick on
the television news channel.
It is journalism’s potential to inform and impress the minds of hundreds
and thousands, which makes it imperative that the people and professionals
who are a part of this industry, need to be up to scratch. And in the
contemporary climate here in Goa, we are far from even fair.
While the news industry in Goa has grown more than considerably in size
over the last decade, what with mushrooming television channels, prospects
of new newspapers across the English and vernacular genre and a slew of
magazines. What is also growing within the insides of this industry, is a
tumour of ‘integrity and credibility’ deficit.
I am not isolating myself, from the picture I am speaking of. If I, as a
part of the industry have been unable to speak of the ills within my
profession, in time enough to let them come to such a pass, I too have
leant a shoulder to the basket of shame, which a significant part of
journalism has been reduced to in Goa.
While I have named Ashley here, there is another case I wish to highlight.
For when one mentions one extreme pole of an issue, the mention of the
other extreme, often gives the listener and reader the expanse o
