Most of you would love to see your names in the papers, or be interviewed by a reporter. I have been through those processes. It is very hard for someone with no media exposure to realise how dangerous dealing with the media can be.

A lot of middle-class people who read --- and believe --- newspapers regularly somehow believe that the media is an instrument to reveal truths, disseminate facts, and provide an objective view. They find it hard to believe that media is just a business. They'll do whatever it takes to maximise profits.

The press is not earning its income by painting rosy pictures about you, Merce, or anyone else. They are there to show how smart their journalism is, and how sensational their news is. They need negative stories. That's the nature of their business. They will take inputs from you and combine them with other facts (which you would never have given) to make a story sensational. If it harms your interests or Merce Technologies, they do not care.

Example 1

This example is loosely based on an incident I have witnessed.

• The reporter asks you: "How do you find Linux for corporate use?"

• You say "I think Linux is great technology. It is super stable and free from viruses. I don't know why anyone would want to use Microsoft software."

• Next day, you read the following story in the press:

  We asked a bright young engineer, Pratap Singh Bhasin of small, little-known technology company, Merce Technologies, about his take on Linux. With the arrogance so common among geeks, he said "Linux is great technology. It is super stable and free from viruses. I don't know why anyone would want to use Microsoft software."

  This is typical of the kind of opinion we get from small-time techie firms everywhere. Unfortunately, the industry has seen time and again that the so-called "new wave" of technology rarely delivers what mature industry needs. The solid reputation, easy availability of trained manpower, and high performance of Microsoft's products have given them greater market share every year. We asked the CIO of one of India's biggest banks about his perception: (... followed by the CIO's comments.)

  Note how the reporter has not misquoted even one word. But he has trashed you (arrogant), your company (small, little-known), your community (geeks and techies) and your technology choices (so-called "new wave" rarely delivers... ). And note that he never asked you "Don't you feel Microsoft technology is more suited than Linux for large companies?" He asked you about "Linux" and then printed your quote to highlight a competing technology.

Example 2

Sometime in 2000, I was interviewed by a journalist, who was an old acquaintance, for a business magazine he used to work for. He later quoted my comments and then trashed my perspective in print; he did it to show how smart he is and how shallow others are.

Example 3

A system-admin of one of our clients (a very large company) was once interviewed in 1999 by a stranger who called on the phone, gave some references, and introduced himself as "from the IT Dept of the Times of India". He asked some questions about Linux, saying that they are thinking about using Linux in their company. The system-admin gave his responses in good faith, informally. This caller was actually a journalist from ToI. He later wrote about our client's usage of Linux in a front-page article in ToI, adding his own masala. Our client was in deep trouble because the article caused problems in their corporate relationships. The sysadmin who spoke to the ToI caller was hauled up by the top management and blacklisted --- his career in the company hit a roadblock after that day.

Example 4

A leading Indian business magazine carried a long article about the upcoming and promising dot-com companies, sometime in 1999, during the dot-com boom. For that article, they interviewed a few CEOs -- IIRC, Ajit Balakrishnan of Rediff was one of them. They wrote a long article with lots of nice, optimistic quotes from these CEOs and entrepreneurs, talking about the bright future they saw.

At the end of the article, the reporter added just two paragraphs of his own. In those two paragraphs, he questioned practically every claim the interviewed people had made, cast doubts about their business maturity, raised questions about the viability of most of the business ideas, and made the reader feel very uneasy about whether the businesses would last six more months. It trashed the entire dot-com industry sector.

I am sure that when the entrepreneurs and CEOs were interviewed by the reporter, none of them had any inkling that this article would end up trashing the entire dot-com industry so thoroughly.

How other companies tackle this

Almost all large companies and MNCs have what is called a "press gag" policy --- employees are not allowed to speak with any member of the press.

IBM, we know, has a special one-day training programme, followed by a written exam, to train selected senior managers to interact with the press. If a manager is interviewed by a reporter without this press clearance, he may be fired. Not all managers are put through this training programme --- only if the manager's job demands press interaction will he get this clearance, and that too after the exam.

Whither the honest journalist?

Does this species exist?

IMHO, it most certainly does. But you and I do not have the ability to distinguish the honest from the mainstream. Most "successful" journalists, working for successful (read: large) mainstream news media are not honest. If you are "nice to them", they'll write what you want them to.

I have a few very close journalist friends who are completely honest.

Most media houses are aligned with big business in most parts of the world. If an FMCG company has five hundred crores of ad budget per year and a large part of it goes to a few newspapers, those newspapers won't ever write any negative story about this FMCG company. It's just good business sense.

People like Ramnath Goenka of the Indian Express are invisible today, even if they exist. They are not "successful" or "influential".

The more important issue is not one of honesty but ethics, however. The issue is about the journalist's accountability to his sources of information. Most sharp journalists will get information from you and then present them in a way very different to the final message you intended to convey. They exploit your quote and do not feel it's unethical to do so.

Be very careful

If you find yourself in a party with friends, and you realise halfway through the evening that the party includes a reporter or journalist, then

• don't touch alcohol at that party, and

• don't start chatting with that journalist, or even with your friends when that journalist is within earshot.

Inexperienced people cannot believe how easily last night's idle chitchat becomes the next day's news analysis. They also cannot believe how a positive comment can be twisted to make it negative.

The sad thing about this policy is that Merce (and many other companies like ours) is an extremely clean and transparent company. There is really nothing to hide. But we cannot afford to engage with the media in a careless manner. Most companies which have a lot of dirt under the carpet, a lot of scams and fudging of facts, are in fact the darlings of the media --- they know exactly how to control the media coverage and exploit it for maximum publicity. Such media exploitation usually involves large "media budgets".

Rule

Merce has no option but to tighten complete media relations into the hands of top management.

The rule about dealing with members of the media has been specified in the page on public communication.