Govt shouldn't insult journalists with junkets: Gopalkrishna Gandhi

"No government should insult a newspaper journalist by offering him a junket, even if it is on a presidential flight." This message from former West Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi was crisp and clear.

Speaking at a function organised to confer the Business Standard-Seema Nazareth Award for Excellence in Print Journalism 2013, Gandhi drew attention to a journalist's tightrope walk day in and day out. A Padma Bhushan should not be a journalist's aim and not every award was meant to be embraced, he said hinting at the many temptations that lie in the path of a reporter today.

Through his witty address, Gandhi, who is chairman of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, made some telling points. A journalist, he said, was constantly dealing with views and opinions. "But while comment is free, facts are sacred." A journalist did not simply have to be found to be correct on the next day of writing a report, but even five to 10 years later, he said.

Earlier in the evening, Gandhi presented the Business Standard-Seema Nazareth Award to Ranjita Ganesan, senior feature writer with Business Standard.

The citation for the award, read out by jury member Malvika Singh, recognised Ganesan's "evolved writing skills that she brings to bear evocatively in her well-researched feature articles". The citation added that Ganesan's "astute and finely tuned observation of people and the shifting trends that surround us adds a substantive richness to her work".

The award, given every year to a journalist under 30 years, also carries a cash prize of Rs 50,000 and a silver pen. Ganesan, who is based in Mumbai, is the 15th recipient of the award, instituted by Business Standard and the Nazareth family in memory of Seema Nazareth, a young Business Standard journalist who died on March 18, 1999. Seema Nazareth's father, P A Nazareth, recalled how the first award was conferred in the Rashtrapati Bhavan on his daughter's 21st birthday and the role that Gandhi, who was then secretary to the president, played in making it possible.