Every year, BG Verghese would unfailingly call me up, seeking names of women journalists who I felt should get the Chameli Devi Jain award for excellence in journalism: ‘give me some new names, especially from the regional media,’ was his plea. And every year, I would respond. It was difficult not to. Verghese ‘sir’ commanded respect unlike today’s star journalists who evoke a mix of awe and fear, but little respect. He was an old school editor, who believed in ethics above all else. He served as information adviser to Indira Gandhi but that did not stop him from criticising the Emergency. That was the period when, as LK Advani famously remarked, journalists crawled when asked to bend. Mr Verghese believed in editorial integrity, was wedded to the idea that a newspaper and journalism must always act in the public interest, not for private gain. His biography of Ramnath Goenka, the doughty proprietor of the Indian Express, reflects the spirit of an age where being anti-establishment was considered the hallmark of a good newspaper. We now live in an era where journalists are co-opted all too easily, when asking questions to authority is sometimes considered ‘anti-national’, when embracing netas is preferred to challenging them, when editors jostle to click selfies with VIPs. Mr Verghese, or George as his peers referred to him, lived in the world of ideas, writing columns, preparing lengthy reports, authoring books. Firm, but soft spoken and gentle, the noise of news was not for him. He wrote with passion on the North-east and water related issues: In a TRP driven age of hype and hysteria, how many editors would even step into these areas today of genuine ‘development’ journalism? At Editors Guild meetings, he would raise issues of conscience: be it paid news or the thinning of lines between editorial and marketing. For many of us, he provided a moral compass at a time when morality appears to have diminishing value in journalism and society, when we prefer compromise to conviction. We will miss him. And I will miss my phone call from him next month. RIP.
