'Journalistic ethics are to society what morals are to a person' so intones C K Lal in his State of the State column ('Coping with court jesters', #286). He is right. Let Lal show how he maintains a no-conflict-of-interest policy by informing all his readers that his full-time day-job consists of serving his beloved His Majesty's Government as a civil servant. Such disclosure is necessary if Lal himself is to maintain journalistic ethics. Where else would you get a salary-drawing civil servant in active duty enjoying a simultaneous second full-time career as an independent journalist who blasts his own day-time employer for lack of freedom and has the hypocrisy to preach the virtues of journalistic ethics to his readers? The credibility of Lal's messages are damaged by the same sort of hypocrisy that he imagines his opponents are espousing.
Pooja Belbase,
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