Let’s start answering the question with a question. Will you find any well-known journalist click selfies with their (interview) subjects and put it up on their Facebook pages? No, na?
Why wouldn’t they do that? Because when you are interviewing somebody, he is your subject and you cannot be in awe of your subject or let yourself get charmed. If you are in awe of your subject, then it will show in your work too.
Do this experiment, seek out those Facebook posts where a journalist has posted a selfie with a Bollywood star during an interview. Now read or watch the interview. More often than not, you will see the journalist gushing about the star in the interview. You will notice that the news piece is eventually looking like an extended PR piece for the star.
Of course, this doesn’t apply when you are meeting a star socially or in a party it and decide to blog about the experience. A blog is your opinion but when you are interviewing somebody for your newspaper or channel, it cannot be dictated by your personal judgement or preferences.
Is it me who’s giving out all this gyaan? No! I have made these mistakes in the past and I am deeply sorry for that. I spoke to at least four top journalists (editors) before writing this piece.
They all agreed that the professional ethics of a Bollywood reporter should be no different from that of a crime reporter or a political reporter.
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