Aheli Moitra
The recent ‘Panama Papers’ expose has shown a dream to the news media in Naga society—that collaboration in research has far reaching impact on how professionals can hold accountable the misdeeds of the rich and powerful that enables the latter to create an unequal and oppressive society.
In the biggest global expose of its kind on the widespread system of global tax evasion, more than 370 journalists (working in 25 languages) from 100 news/media organisations in about 80 countries collaborated through a non-profit network, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Across borders, these journalists came together to unearth 11.5 million records of offshore entities and trusts belonging to individuals and companies in more than 170 places, including the Indian Union. They have produced data worth more than 2.6 terabytes.
The individuals and companies exposed include the mega rich and tax offenders, politicians and celebrities, athletes and business executives, who have invested in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands, Samoa and other offshore hideaways. The data has prompted authorities across the globe to open investigations of the world’s rich and powerful.
Senior members at the ICIJ admitted that the success of the leaks have been the ability of the news organisations and journalists to share information; to work in the spirit of collaboration. Journalists maintained the ethics of team work and patience amidst sharing sources and detailed records since 2013 till all the organisations could compile the stories and publish them simultaneously on Sunday, April 3.
Given the pitfalls of an increasingly profit-driven industry, this must have been a herculean task. Added to this are the risks of investigative journalism. It requires thorough research, attribution and fact checking, following subjects, etc. With a long period invested in investigations, such stories need to encompass all possible facts and angles. That journalists and news organisations which produced the Panama Papers could manage all this through collaborative journalism (with the help of the internet) seems, from here, like shrinking the moon and pursing it too.
Nagaland’s readers often complain of the lack of investigative journalism in the State. It is hard to say if this is hunger for juicy news or the want for information to initiate change in society—given the detailed, and probably tip-of-the-iceberg, revelations made by the Comptroller & Auditor General of India and the public reaction therein, one is moved to believe the former.
Nonetheless, the Panama Papers reveal a strategy that the news organisations can follow to break the cycle of corrupt impunity, injustice and oppression in Nagaland. Newspapers in Nagaland are in a good place to collaborate on big tip offs when they come by, putting their journalists together in an operation that could unearth the massive amounts—both cash and kind—that have currently been going through the black hole. It could later be extended to larger works. This collaboration could mean beyond just exposing information, but provide the much needed united front that could ward off expected violence—physical, mental, tribal—that make the media deter from publishing such stories in the first place. This opportunity should not be lost for want of political will, cooption, fear, maintaining power balance or ego that tramples on the ability to share.
Ideas to this effect can be shared at moitramail@yahoo.com
