Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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Data on the various themes dealt with in this column
Since the release of Akira Kurosawa’s iconic film, Rashomon , in 1950, the term Rashomon effect has come to denote a range of ideas in politics, economics, psychology and the arts. The broad consensus about the meaning of this term is that it is possible for different people to describe an event in different ways without any one of them consciously lying. Is there a term to suggest that different people can arrive at the same inference, but for different reasons? Drawing from my six years of experience, I am increasingly convinced that the Readers’ Editor (RE) may be an inversion of the Rashomon effect.For the sake of transparency, I decided to run a fine toothcomb over my 313 columns since September 2012. I broadly divided the columns into six categories. I decided to rely on data journalism because it challenges rhetoric with hard empirical evidence. I have consciously left out the data relating to the Corrections and Clarifications space, which had about 3,780 entries during my tenure alone. Some have accused me of only addressing issues relating to media regulation and larger media ecology issues. In reality, only 58 columns dealt with the media ecology. Some friends on the desk, after I wrote a sharp column on headlines, felt that I prefer reporters to the desk. While 47 of my columns dealt with editing norms, the reporting team has been pulled up in 126 columns. Some readers think that I have become an “Editors’ Editor”, but only 33 columns have pointed out unfair criticisms levelled against the newspaper. Twenty-one columns can be classified as ‘interaction with readers’. The numbers suggest that the inverse of the Rashomon effect is a newspaper ombudsman.
Source : https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/the-re-is-an-inversion-of-the-rashomon-effect/article25471384.ece
