175+ Years of Media in Assam & Beyond
NANDINI PARIKH
The Indian Media is becoming a menace for Indian Sub-Continent – Here know why?
Media is the fourth pillar of democracy. The primary role of media is keeping the public informed about issues and events happening in the country and all over the world. It has the power to question the powerful and fight for the weak. It has potential to bring truth in front of people.
Indian electronic media has a huge responsibility for nation-building. It directs the largest democracy in the world to make better choices for them. And TV news media has made it possible for people to see all happenings in form of real visuals. It is a source of information for both literates and illiterates. The mere responsibility of it is to put facts forward regarding any issues.
But what if the same media forgets its responsibility? What if it starts playing with your minds? What if it doesn’t ask the truth from the strong and suppress the weak?
Here are five reasons why Indian media is becoming harmful to the nation.
It’s all about numbers!
Today there are more than 350 news channels including local, state, and national. This has increased competition among the news channels. And there’s nothing wrong with it! But what’s alarming is the degradation in news coverage for the race of TRP (Television Rating Points).
It is coming at the cost of losing the basic ethics of news media. Instead of factual reporting with objectivity, Indian media has turned down to sensationalism and exaggeration of stories. In name of creative presentation, the levels have gone down to some crap on screens. Because the more news is fashioned, the more viewership is credited.
A court on screens – Media trials
“Media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” – Malcolm X
Over the years a new trend has been seen in Indian media of giving a verdict of guilty or not guilty of accused on mere screen by reporters and editors of respective channels. Journalists have become judges of the court named as news channels. Media trials are run against an individual or group of people. But these media trials break the very common rule of democracy –‘innocent until proven guilty’. They control the minds of audience with constant reinforcement of their agenda.
One of the popular examples of the dark side of this is the ‘Rohtak sisters’ case – where media trials were run against the boys who were later proven innocent by the Supreme Court. But it destroyed their lives as no one now wants to believe that they were right because of the constant defamation run against them by media.
Political Influence in every news story
Political interference in the news industry is no new thing. Every subject is covered according to political preferences. Indian media which should be known for the objectivity in coverage are rather known for which political party they represent. And it becomes conspicuous from the sort of coverage they do. Even the ace reporters have confined themselves into the box of LEFT or RIGHT wings they prefer.
Every individual has a side which it stands for, even journalist. But the individual opinion should not be displayed on screens because it affects the audience’s mind. Two groups have been formed in the Indian media industry which either criticizes the government or appreciate it without looking for what’s right or wrong. To keep in short, Indian media is moving towards selective journalism.
Fatuous debates and discussions
Debates and discussions were introduced by private news channels so that people of the country get two perspectives of issues. It focused on rising rational thinking and bringing solutions. Mostly they are run from evening till night on different topics with respected panelists. But nowadays debates have become a reality show where the objective is to provide entertainment (sarcasm alert).
The panelists as well as anchors are only shouting with no factual or rational argument. What even more worst is that it never ends up with any logical conclusion. The prime time-spaces have also become biased and opinionated.
The sway of social media
It’s very much evident that social media has become an integral part of everyone’s life from a 14-year-old kid to senior citizens of any country. Now news breaks faster on social media, way before it is telecasted on TV channels. The issues that are raised on TV screens have now become dependent on what the public wants, which is an absolute threat to the country.
The news which is shown is selected from twitter and Instagram trends. This news is then structured in a way that it creates hype on social media. And in all these chaos what goes wrong is that real issues are buried under the carpet and are not addressed. Why? Social Media controlling news is a very serious issue and instead of giving it more power, electronic media needs to focus on important issues and make people know the facts.
To conclude, the important question here is who is responsible for these miserable loopholes. Media? Yes, definitely. It’s high time that Indian media needs to introspect. But more importantly, its audience who takes more interest in sensationalized, flavored news rather than grave issues with facts that exists in the country.
In today’s time audience will be served what they ask for. So change starts with you!
[By: Nandini Parikh, Student of Journalism and Communication, The Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, Gujarat. This article is published in the historical book ‘175 Years of Media in Assam & Beyond’ on the occasion of 175 years of media in Assam, published by Mahabahu.]
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