The terror attacks have spawned a cottage industry of editors and columnists writing about their favorite five-star hotels in almost all papers. They are falling over each other to tell the world how they have liked to wine and dine at these expensive hotels.

Suddenly, the socialist pretensions are off and editors are telling the world that they do enjoy the good life. It is like putting little stickers saying “press” on their cars so that policemen will not challan them if they break the traffic rules.

Shekhar Gupta devoted a whole column in Indian Express saying that the Taj was “just like home” and how he waited impatiently for it to reopen. Writing in the same paper, columnist Tavleen Singh mentions that she is “in and out” of the Oberoi. That’s something.

At least one journalist – an editor with The Times of India – lost her life in the recent attacks and the paper has been running tributes to her. So much for enjoying the good life. This is not to forget Vir Sanghvi of Hindustan Times who can claim to be legitimately involved in luxurious hotels because he writes a column on food. The list of journalists who have given their “personal” experiences on their life at five star hotels is now legion.

Indian editors and columnists truly love the good life. But I wonder who pays for it? I mean, most newspapers are not in the pink of health, if one takes a look at the IRS data. Editors are also not high profile corporate managers. So where do they get the money? If one estimates that a modest room in a five star hotel in Mumbai would be close to Rs 25,000 for a single day, a person who treats these hotels as “home” would be spending maybe Rs 5 lakhs per month on them. Do editors and columnists earn that kind of money? All I get for writing an article in a newspaper is Rs 500 or Rs 1000, which is not even enough for a meal there!

Even assuming that these editors get paid highly for their job, their package must be around Rs 20 lakhs per month, at least, to afford a Rs 5 lakh monthly hotel bill. Since newspaper organizations are not that generous in terms of compensation, it is obvious that someone else is paying for the bills. Then how do these editors maintain their independence and integrity while dishing out the daily paper? Maybe that is the reason why we see so much PR articles and trash that is published in newspapers these days? Does “journalism of courage” and other similar epithets end with a visit to the friendly neighborhood five star hotel?

But that probably explains why media organizations are being run by pappus, or amateur journalists. The editors and senior columnists are away frolicking at the hotels, leaving pappus to run their newspapers and TV channels. It is hardly a wonder that media organizations have faced a lot of flak for their coverage of the recent terror attacks. Pappu journalists became partners in crime to terrorists by providing them live footage of police operations; they just could not figure out what constitutes news.

What we see in newspapers are reports written by people wearing rose-tinted glasses, sitting in five star hotels, the rest of the country be damned. I fail to find common cause with these fellows – “why us?” bleated pappu journalist Farzana Contractor in Outlook. This sentiment has been echoed by other papers as well. By implication, these fellows say that attacks on the poor were OK, but not on them!

It is time that the editors do what they get paid to do. Since they are braying that the system must change, why not change yourself first?

As a start, senior editors need to guide their juniors as to what journalism is, and what ethics mean. They need to tell their staff what constitutes news and what doesn’t. They need take control of their newspaper or TV channel. Recent events show that editors are doing nothing of the sort and are instead eating/staying at five star hotels. No wonder the newspaper is becoming elitist.

It is sad when an editor of The Times of India dies in a terror attack on a luxury hotel. But is equally sad when the editor of Indian Express says that a five star hotel is like his home, not a second class railway compartment. Journalism of courage does not mean braving bullets in a five star hotel, but living the way that an ordinary man does.

Every morning a bunch of newspapers are thrown in my balcony as accurately aimed missiles. Sometimes they break a window-pane as well, but it useless to talk to the vendors.

Increasingly I find we don’t open the missiles. If it is a day when I want to waste time, I sit with them, otherwise just a glance is enough to show me that there is nothing to read in them.

For many newspapers the only news that is fit to print is about cricket or disasters. Every abuse that our players mouth on the pitch is reported, dissected, commented upon, analyzed with utmost sincerity. The terrorist attacks are being flogged no end by Pappu journalists. Ministers’ pronouncements are also faithfully reported and analyzed. I wonder who really reads all this nonsense they print everyday.

There is also an obsession with the frivolous. Sania Mirza does not want to play in India because of controversies, so the media brings out its knives blaming her for being a spoilt brat. Even a celebrated journalist like Barkha Dutt thinks it fit to write a full article on what is a personal decision of the player.

Likewise Priyanka Gandhi meets her father’s killer, in what is again a deeply personal visit, and The Times of India makes a hoo-haa about it, devoting 70% of the front page for the news. Clearly, the journalists at Times of India do want to respect Priyanka’s feelings, and it is no wonder that readers have stopped respecting The Times of India.

Sometimes newspapers do a lot of harm as well. If anyone has been to Chandigarh, one cannot miss how the city was sought to be beautified by Le Corbusier. The wide open roads have flowering plants and traffic roundabouts resemble mini gardens. Some of these are under threat, because silly bureaucrats want to make traffic smoother than it is.

Some journalist finds that going round in circles is not good. So next day the Chandigarh Tribune headlines “Rotaries are a nuisance.” It is not said nuisance to whom or why. So the voices go up in the city that traffic rotaries should be removed and roads made instead. In the same breath, the newspapers talk of being green!

Such suggestions no doubt come from trainee, or pappu journalists. But once such reports are published the damage done is truly great. Newspapers do not realize that there are more things that are a nuisance, for instance how Chandigarh has turned into a drinker’s paradise, with drinking joints opening at every nook and corner of the city.

One girl said that she had stopped going to college because a tavern was near her bus stop and drunk men leered at her while she was waiting for a bus, and often troubled her. But the press does not bring up the issue of foolish bureaucrats of the city who have thought of this scheme and issued licenses to all and sundry to open drinking places at every corner of the city.

Chandigarh also has a unique advantage of celebrities passing through its airport. Every day newspapers faithfully print pictures of Amitabh Bachchan or Sachin Tendulkar coming out of the airport. They are greeted by journalists anxious to take their interviews, whether one wants to be interviewed after a long flight is not a concern. One report in The Hindustan Times thus calls Preeti Zinta as “haughty.” Such adjectives are thrown about as if it is nobody’s business.

Of course I am leaving out the favorite of journalists: murders and violent crimes. One day I see that there are 7 stories on the front page of The Tribune, and all the stories are negative! I wonder who would waste time to read the details of murders and crimes and accidents that had occurred that day.

Philip Meyer, in his book “The Vanishing Newspaper”, predicts that the final copy of the final newspaper will appear on somebody’s doorstep one day in 2043. My opinion is that it might be earlier. The Internet helps it end: every person has the means to read what he wants to read and every person has the power to become a publisher. So why depend on callow journalists to write for us?