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I
happened to hear the speech of President Kalam
yesterday on the eve of our Republic Day. He had
made reference to some wonderful work that has
been done by the individuals, institutions, or
some state. Let me start with some of those.
Shall I talk to you about the proud feeling I
had when the farmers in Punjab succeeded in
doubling the seed cotton productivity in tune
with the world record?
Shall I talk to you how a village in
northeastern state has become prosperous by
developing its core competence in native silk
production?
Shall I talk to you about the elation of the
Gujarat farmers celebrating the arrival of
electricity to all the villages in the State?
Shall I talk to you about many great human
beings whom I met in various parts of the
country such as, one great soul providing the
leadership for transforming a polluted rivulet
into a clean river in Punjab through the efforts
of pilgrims themselves, or about another divine
soul who has connected the hearts of people of
Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu through the flow
of water or about another divine personality,
building a bridge connecting the peninsular
region to the mainland near Kochi over the
backwaters of the Arabian Sea in the Tsunami
affected area?
Shall I talk to you on how 65 villages with a
population of one lakh in Tamil Nadu have
generated a self-sustaining economy through PURA?
Shall I talk to you about the way that the
judicial system of the State became a partner
for on the spot disbursal of compensation to the
victims of an earthquake in J&K for ensuring
timely compensation to the right persons?
The speech has some more references of unique
achievements that hardly get any coverage.
Neither the media talk of the achievements or
major failures of the projects of the national
importance, such as Bharat Nirmaan or NREG, nor
it covers the road, irrigation and
electrification projects for the rural India
that could have helped the country go ahead
faster on the road of development.
Let me confess I have not come across these
success stories in the national newspapers that
I read. The national newspapers are shy of
covering the success stories of Indian people in
different fields. Why is that? Like the
Bollywood endeavours (that has been proven wrong
hundreds of time through flopped films), the
media too keep on working under a
misunderstanding that only the news regarding
Nithari, Nitin Katara, Jessica Lal, or Kavita
Chaudhry, and Madhumita Shukla are the
marketable ones, and are liked by the Indian
people reading newspapers. As per the
journalists and reporters, the hot news only
serve the Indian tastes and society, and so
these news get covers running in pages and to
all details.
Even in the national newspapers of January 26,
there is hardly a respectable coverage of even
the President's speech on the eve of the
Republic Day. Is it not surprising that there
are so many awards from Padma to gallantry award
for extraordinary brave work of the children
from all over the country? Why are the stories
of these persons of extraordinary merits and
achievements are not told for the benefit of the
mass? On the other hand, the same national
newspapers have covered the news of public anger
against the monsters of Nithari fame with all
humane touch and in all details with a number of
colour photographs. What is the message that the
media wish to pass on to the public by giving
all the coverage to the culprits of Nithari? Can
these coverage not induce some more
psychologically sick persons to repeat the
horrendous work of Nithari style to get
publicity with photographs on the leading news
magazines of the country?
Why can't the media cover at least 20% of the
space for the work going on in rural India, or
some great achievements of our technologists,
scientists and educationists? Does it happen
because of the inferiority complex among the
journalists community but for some exceptions?
In last few months perhaps the foreign news
media and their reporters have covered the
achievements of Indians better than the Indian
reporters both in quality and quantity. Latest
Business Week has beautiful article on
outsourcing in rural India. Why can't Indian
media follow the examples? I saw a similar
indifference in coverage of the recent Bihar
Global Meet. The same media that has been
covering all the jester-like statements of the
great leader of Bihar and all stories of
kidnappings in Bihar for years in all details
didn't bother to cover the event.
Let the media take some responsible step and not
only those that are meant for page 3
celebrities. Let the media appreciate what the
President writes in a special article for The
Times of India on the Republic Day, "In short,
the media is for the one billion people of India
and has a big role in bringing smile on every
face." Why can't the media go for a little
re-engineering the structure and content to suit
the need of the country and see it helps itself
too?
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Comments: |
After Independence, India was
sabotaged by Judiciary, Executive,
legislative and Media - the four
pillars of the any nation, by
continuing to allow fewer and fewer
conglomerates and power brokers to
own more and more front-end with
only one objective of making
monetary profits a higher priority
than Indian democracy. In the name
of democracy an ugly game of power
we play and slay our convictions
everyday and night. Who controls the
media?? The answer is these “power
brokers”. The growing power control
of the nation’s media not only
denies us vital information but also
promotes consumerism more than
citizenship and results in
homogenized programming.
Like the author of this article, his
or our testimony – often passionate,
sometimes nervous, and sometimes
funny – have access to fewer
segments or free news portal like
PatnaDaily which encourage readers
to write. I with heart felt
gratitude towards the author for
this article would like to add that
we should consistently ask to ban
further media consolidation and
should even advocate breaking up
existing media empires then only we
will get the true definition of free
speech which rests on the assumption
that the widest possible
dissemination of information from
diverse and antagonistic sources is
essential to the welfare of the
public.
Despite the fact that the airwaves
legally belong to the public, media
often tell us what they want us to
see, not what we need to know and we
are becoming unquestioning consumers
ready to buy whatever they’re trying
to sell us. This litany is endless
and continued:
"Journalism is concerned with sound
bites, not sound truth."
"It is their duty to inform us, not
to patronize us."
"They control the airwaves that we
own."
Every SP, DSP, DM, MLA, MP, Chief
Judge wants a space on page 3. This
discussion takes on additional
importance because all radio/tv/print
media licenses are manipulated and
controlled. Rest of the damage is
done by Profit and Loss statement of
these media people. It is a pity
that these stations (all kind of
media) strive to "operate in the
public good" and disagree with the
concept of "the public’s airwaves,"
are allowed to say "we risked
everything" to create media
stations. They should not be allowed
to say "We’re a business and
coverage costs money."
We the citizens also have different
ideas of how we like to be engaged.
We read because we have time then
why should we waste our time reading
trash. At the end of the day, we
should always think there are many
Indians who do not have any access
to any kind of media, so it our sole
responsibility to engage media in
much more meaningful way. There is
no fun in reading and writing about
Amitabh Bachchan however short his
wife is.
I don’t know but would like to ask
"Does Right of Information Act
covers media?" - Narayan Prasad |
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