Why I Can’t Stand Outlook

Is journalism a mission, a profession or a mere business? At a time when much of politics has become crass commerce, and when money-making rackets have smeared the image of other noble professions like law, medicine and education, some mediapersons are bound to question: Why is journalism expected to be different? 

Journalism has to be different because journalism is different.

And Outlook has certainly struggled to be different. This is no mean achievement, considering that even leading media brands in India have openly declared that theirs is just another business like any other business. Hence, as the magazine enters its twentieth year, it deserves bouquets.

However, some criticism is also in order. I have often disliked Outlook’s penchant, in its attempt to be anti-establishment, for negativism, cynicism and anti-Hindu bias. I was aghast when, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, it ran a cover feature that called the great patriotic monk a ‘Hindu Supremacist’. “Vivekananda’s respect for pluralism was largely a façade,” the author wrote in what was clearly a hatchet job. I admired Outlook for its courage in doing an investigative cover on the chilling accounts of Muslim rape survivors in the communal riots that rocked Muzaffarnagar in UP last year. The question by one of them—“Why were we raped if a boy eve-teased a girl?—must make Hindus introspect about the evil that has infected their community, in the same way that Muslims must introspect on the evil of extremism that has infected theirs. But I have also wondered, with dismay and disgust, why Outlook has regularly promoted a particular author who called the 2001 terror attack on Indian Parliament a conspiracy hatched by the then NDA government and who openly campaigns for India’s disintegration. Similarly, Outlook’s recent cover story on Swachh Bharat was littered with negativism.

Indian journalism must retain the power to Speak Truth to Power. But it must also do soul-searching on how it uses its own power, Outlook being no exception.

(An irregular contributor to Outlook, Kulkarni was aide to Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani)

Outlook invites readers to take part in its 20th anniversary celebrations. Send us your bouquets and, more importantly, your brickbats. E-mail your entry to editor [AT] outlookindia [DOT] com