Hurtling into a bottomless pit

Indian media is compromised, cannot be trusted by people to keep check on unbridled powers of executive, legislature.

As resident editor of an English news daily, one was admonished by the editor-in-chief for recruiting reporters with questionable knowledge of English. “Why can’t you get in people who know English”, he said, irritated like all of us with a badly written copy. “The choice today is between reporters who know their English and those who know their news, the two now come in different packages. So, it’s best to get re-writers on the desk to edit copy, than compromise on the news factor”, was my response. Today, reporters with a news sense in Delhi belong to the vernacular field, while those locked away in English-medium public schools lose touch with reality and while their grammar might not bring one on the verge of tears, they certainly have little idea of the reality of India.

This was so very evident in the past week when the so-called national English television channels and even sections of the print media refused to move away from the top billing they had given to the IPL spot-fixing news, despite the major Maoist attack on a Congress convoy in which three top leaders were killed while others are struggling for their lives. The Hindi channels and the newspapers moved to make this the top story, while the English media reduced the violence to a second lead, lest it interfere with the advertisements and the TRP ratings. Commitment to news became secondary to the commercial exploitation of news with the IPL dominating prime time, as clearly the electronic media had taken a decision to go with the glitz and the sleaze and keep out the dampening images of poverty-ridden, desperate, depressed India. The poor tribals, struggling to eke out a living in the midst of violence from both sides, would not attract the chattering classes, and hence, keep out the advertisers as well.

This cynical peddling of news as commerce is not just worrying, but extremely dangerous in a democracy. News is as it is, not as the media wants it to be. Regrettably, television anchors, most of whom are also the editors, have become accustomed to the power that comes with “making” news rather than “reporting” news. The all powerful 24/7 news channels thus, bombard the viewers with stories that reflect the drawing rooms and the lifestyles of the rich and keep out or play down the news that the majority of Indians are living with. The attack by the Maoists would have normally — several years ago — resulted in a series of stories on the different aspects of the unrest, in the print media at least. This time around, except for keeping abreast of the news and that, too, just about, the English newspapers, too, have not demonstrated news gathering skills on this front at all. In fact, the vernacular media, usually damned for being a little more sensational than required, has done a far better job with reporters being sent to the affected areas to report on the conditions there. In fact, more information about the violence is coming through the regional newspapers than the elite English media that remains fixated on the IPL scam.

The result is that the watchdog of Indian democracy has lost its bite. And a powerful section of it is in the process of losing its teeth. It is compromised and cannot be trusted by the people to keep a check on the unbridled powers of the executive, legislature and the other institutions of democracy. Certainly not, as a media that actually believes that the dismissal of a cricket board chief is more important than the violence affected people of Chhatisgarh is clearly suffering from a deep malaise that needs an immediate cure. Unfortunately, there is no unanimity in the media about what can and should be done and the result is that those who have made themselves unaccountable to basic journalistic ethics and responsibilities are having a field day. There is clearly a need for a self-imposed and regulated code of ethics but the major opposition to this vague floating proposal comes from the electronic media.

India is a proud democracy. And like every other country, it has an executive and a legislature and a judiciary that need to be watched and checked from time to time. The Indian media had set an example in South Asia by performing its “watchdog” duties with amazing competence and diligence at one point in time. Unfortunately, a slide down seems to have begun and the dangerous aspect of this is that those hurtling down the slide seem to have no idea that they are rushing into a bottomless pit and certainly not ascending towards new horizons as they like to make themselves and their viewers believe.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 1^st, 2013.                                                                                          

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