Niira Radia Tapes and the Question of Journalistic Ethics

“The sole aim of journalism should be service. The newspaper is a great power, but just as an unchained torrent of water submerges whole countryside and devastates crops, even so an uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy. If the control is from without, it proves more poisonous than want of control. It can be profitable only when exercised from within.”                Mahatma Gandhi,  An Autobiography of My Experiments With Truth.

The issue of control from without and within lies at the root of the recent Niira Radia tapes controversy in India.