Are the media in sync with the ground realities?

The print media in general and the electronic media in particular are racing against time to break the news and sitting in judgement on every single incident and event in the national politics to keep the readers and viewers ‘well-informed’ and wide--awake.’The receivers of the news are, literally, as restless and hurried as the anchor-moderator-facilitator exclaiming ‘What next? Though India is a generation behind the Global powers in term of ‘on line revolution,’ campaigns by the Indian media for justice in various cases of murder and rape and crusades for good governance and restoration of fundamental rights have been successful and yielded results to the extent of creating an undercurrent of silent revolution and resistance against systemic failure ,apathy and inertia .Despite its skewed pronouncements on everything under the sun ,the media’s relentless campaigns for the murdered Jessica Lal and law student Priya Darshini in 2006 had hastened the investigative wings of the government to uncover the nefarious crimes and forced the courts of law to do justice to the victims.

The Right to Information Act too would not have been a reality if the media had not vigorously initiated discussions and debates for greater transparency and accountability in the functioning of the government. Would the governmental move for caste-based reservations to other backward castes have met with the intervention and advice of the president of India to the government of the day to ’rethink’ if the student communities had not mobilized support online? In spite of its penchant for jumping the gun and delivering instant judgement, the media have brought a paradigm shift in the way news is gathered and thrown open to public without delay in packaging content. True, it has also given the viewers a sense of empowerment .

However, the pertinent question, of late , is whether the anchor-moderator is conducting himself in a non partisan and unbiased way , interacting with the panelists without prejudices and arriving at a reasonable understanding of the issue under discussion. With more than 366 news and current affair channels in existence, are they mature enough to influence millions of viewers across the country and classes without diluting the content with their prejudices or is it a case of too much responsibility entrusted to people too’’ raw’ as in the case of certain English channels? A veteran facilitator like Rajdeep Sardesai says’For in-depth analysis, a sense of history, politics and context is important. But do our anchor –moderators stand up to these requirements? It is also said that news on TV is ‘young and restless.’ It is a world of hysterical PTCs of sound byte warriors of cacophonous debate.it takes high energy levels and single minded professionalism to cope with the rigours of TV reporting.It can be taxing on the not-so-young’. One also wonders whether the CEOS/moderators take a vicarious pleasure in seeing ‘the mighty and powerful shrivel and shiver by reducing them to mere’ dumb dolls too frightened to project their points of views, however, distasteful to the mighty moderator they are.

In one of his stimulating articles, Jayaprakash Narayan ,former civil servant and founder of LokSatta party says’ the 1990s saw the rapid spread of electronic media…(but) have this expansion and power of media been translated into greater public good ?Is media still a part of the solution as perceived for decades or has it become a part of the problem?….A potent instrument of freedom is increasingly becoming a private tool for profit or perverse pleasure….power games are analyzed endlessly. Endless space is devoted not to issues which affect people’s lives but to who is winning and who is losing…who is teaming up with whom and splitting from whom. Besides exhibiting political voyeurism…it has been sucked into the vortex of partisan politics. The media business is increasingly seen as any other profit-making business .Even when the intentions are honourable, there is decline in professionalism. The bulk of the correspondents are both uninformed and casual about their professions. Reckless hedonism and unchecked narcissism have become quite common in the name of giving the readers what they want .What is most noisy is regarded as news. Substance is ignored for style and image is given precedence over reality’.

Of late, whether they be Telugu channels or English channels ,polemics often disguised as discussions/debates are presented. The English channels in particular have been presenting outdated and irrelevant discussions on Sikh riots in 1982 and the Godhra riots in 2002 and exhuming the discredited past of India. The judges on these pogroms are neither the anchors nor the panelists but the voters whose verdict is just a matter of two weeks in May 2014.Further,the poll surveys conducted by certain channels smack of unscientific data least based on ground realities. The most inane and irrelevant programme presented , in the recent days, by an English channel simply centered on why the BJP’s Priministerial candidate Narendra Modi refused to wear the ‘skull cap’ offered to him by a Muslim cleric. While the Gandhi cap worn by the self-styled Congresswallahs has already lost its sanctity, one wonders how a skull cap if worn by Modi would have the magical powers of ushering in a society of amity and harmony between the Hindus and the Muslims.