by CLINT HENDLER
The leading English-language newspapers and magazines—the publications that have the most influence on India’s power centers—have reported widely on the RTI law itself, but have not embraced it as an investigative tool. Reporters and editors say they simply don’t trust the information released by government officials. Narendar Pani, a former senior editor for The Economic Times and now dean of interdisciplinary studies at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, suggested other, less noble explanations for the “patchy” use of the law. English dailies compete for upscale urban audiences that prefer feel-good, India-rising stories to articles about government corruption. Pani said another factor is that Indian reporters are culturally attuned to work through networks of informal sources, which would dry up with “a blunt-instrument approach, which is the RTI.”
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(Submitted by Robin Khundkar)