Desirable and approved: Selfie adulation

New Delhi: Such selfie-frenzy has almost become an annual ritual. But this time, it came less than 24 hours after an editor succinctly apprised the Prime Minister of the age of "selfie journalism" and how a compliment from someone in power should make a journalist nervous.

The speech came at a time a perception is gaining ground that vast sections of the Indian media are refusing to ask uncomfortable questions to those in power.

On Wednesday, The Indian Express chief editor Raj Kamal Jha told Modi, who was the chief guest at the newspaper group's journalism awards event: "Your being here is a very strong message. We hope that good journalism is defined, it should be defined by the work we celebrate this evening, done by reporters who report and editors who edit. Not by the selfie journalists we see a lot of these days, who are always obsessed by what they think, by their face, by their views, who keep the camera turned towards them.

The only thing that matters to them is their voice and their face. All the rest is backdrop, a silly background noise. In this selfie journalism, if you don't have the facts, it doesn't matter. You just put a flag in the frame and you hide behind it."

Jha's polite speech and decision to engage with the Prime Minister stood out especially because another journalist had declined to accept an award from Modi because he felt journalism was under siege.

Jha reminded the Prime Minister: "You also said a few wonderful things about journalists that makes us a little nervous. You may not find it in Wikipedia, but Shri Ramnath Goenka, and it's a fact and I can say that as the editor of The Indian Express, he did sack a journalist when... the chief minister of a state told him that, 'Aapka reporter bahut achchha kaam kar raha hai (your reporter is doing a very good job)'.

That's very, very important, especially in an age... when we have a generation of journalists who are growing up in an age of retweets and likes. And they do not know that criticism from a government is a badge of honour."