During second half of 2009, The Hindu (newspaper) launched a major offensive against paid news phenomenon. I find the ill effects of paid news being greatly exaggerated in media.
First, it is wrong to assume that a reader blindly accepts news items. I believe that The Hindu is biased towards CPIM. That doesn’t prevent me from reading Hindu. I treat all political articles in Hindu with skepticism and look up other sources for alternate point of view. This enables me to get a balanced perspective. Same should apply for other readers and that will diminish the harms of paid/propaganda-news.
Second, paid-news does introduce bias in newspaper but bias in newspapers is natural. Sometimes bias can be due to ideology of editor. So why one should be overtly concerned about bias introduced through money?
Third, newspapers/media cannot change public opinion at its own will. An example is 2002 Gujarat elections. Most of the media went for the jugular of BJP government. However the election result showed that public has a mind of its own, which is not easily affected by newspapers.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Media is Rita Skeeter
In the link(http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/rajdeepsardesai/1/53653/tv-news-good-bad-and-ugly.html), Rajdeep Sardesai lamented how the visual media might be behaving irresponsibly. He had given three case-studies where media should have behaved differently. First one was 26th Nov 2008 terrorist attack on India. Second one was related to reporting of2009 polls. Third one was regarding media's hysterical reporting regarding India bashing in Australia. My reply to the topic is here:
I see that Rajdeep has given 3 case studies. Allow me to present a 4th one. Chetan Kunte retracts his blog and publishes an apology to NDTV & Barkha Dutt. Blogosphere explodes with indignation. Not a single 24 hour news channel (including CNN(BN) reports this issue. The chetan-kunte episode was very controversial giving lots of juicy and righteous debating opportunities. Surprisingly not a single news-channel takes it up. Was it a conspiracy of silence?
However my message to Rajdeep and his ilk of 24-hour-news-folks... Relax! Your high pitched reporting and other drawbacks are not something which can be overcome. These are integral part of your job definition. Your job is to entertain us and you do that quite admirably. Your job is also to make a living and money for your employers (like all honest people do). As Rita Skeeter once said to Hermione "The Prophet exists to sell itself, you silly girl". So Rajdeep and gang, do not indulge in mea-culpa. You folks are acting quite natural and there is nothing to feel guilty about.Some of my thoughts (not exactly related with the topic though) are at http://oshantomon.blogspot.com/2009/06/law-to-censor-expression.html
I see that Rajdeep has given 3 case studies. Allow me to present a 4th one. Chetan Kunte retracts his blog and publishes an apology to NDTV & Barkha Dutt. Blogosphere explodes with indignation. Not a single 24 hour news channel (including CNN(BN) reports this issue. The chetan-kunte episode was very controversial giving lots of juicy and righteous debating opportunities. Surprisingly not a single news-channel takes it up. Was it a conspiracy of silence?
However my message to Rajdeep and his ilk of 24-hour-news-folks... Relax! Your high pitched reporting and other drawbacks are not something which can be overcome. These are integral part of your job definition. Your job is to entertain us and you do that quite admirably. Your job is also to make a living and money for your employers (like all honest people do). As Rita Skeeter once said to Hermione "The Prophet exists to sell itself, you silly girl". So Rajdeep and gang, do not indulge in mea-culpa. You folks are acting quite natural and there is nothing to feel guilty about.Some of my thoughts (not exactly related with the topic though) are at http://oshantomon.blogspot.com/2009/06/law-to-censor-expression.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)