THE DEVIATION OF THE MEDIA By Padmabhushan Dr. M.V.

Kamath In India today, what we have is a sick media that is steadily going down the drain. It has become untrustworthy; it is increasingly becoming the shame not only of the country, but of the world. Shorn of principles, its owners have come to treat it as a commodity no better than a box of soap or a packet of toothpaste, ready for sale. It began than with a leading national daily which came to the conclusion that a newspapers ultimate aim is to mak e profits for the proprietor and not provide education to its reader. Ergo, one can buy inches of space for hard cash. Newspaper columns are for sale. One can get anything publishedfor a price. This has come to be known as Paid News. One of the countrys leading national daily has admitted to it openly, without fear or shame. We have come to a stage where all news is suspect. The Bible recounts the story of trial of Jesus with Pilate as the judge. At one point there was a reference to truth. Says the Bible: What is truth? asked Jesting Pilate and paused not for an answer. The question now is: What is news? and there is no answer. It has been claimed that a leading daily undermined the very concept of giving objective news to readers when it introduced the concept of Private Treaties, which has come in for much criticism. What it means, in effect, is that the paper comes into an agreement with party for giving it positive publicity for a price. Right now, an unseemly controversy is going on concerning Zee TV. Two senior editors of Zee apparently sought advertisements worth Rs. 200 crore from Jindal Steel Private Ltd if it wanted positive coverage on the news channel. There had been reports linking the company to the coal block allocation scandal, and Zee TV allegedly told the company representative that such connections will not be aired. What, in effect is happening is that news coverage has become a business; news is not what happened but what the newspaper has decided the reader should know. It is sheer impertinence; worse still, it is an insult to the entire reading and listening public. But the saddest part of it all, many newspapers do not engage editors who are increasingly becoming a dying community. Prior to independence and for at least three or four decades afterwards, editors of newspapers were held in the highest regard in the belief-and rightfully so that they were the guardians of democracy and the rights of the people. No more. Editors have become irrelevant. It is the Business Manager who runs the show. Editorial staff is no longer employed on a full time basis. They are hired on contract which is a way of enforcing the managements demands. The reporter is told what to report and the sub-editor knows how to edit copy to make the publisher happy. Any deviation from it attracts dismissal. With the economy growing at a robust rate, of 17.1% in Indias media and entertainment industry is expected to top Rs. 1.75 trillion or $ 33 billion. Television being the largest segment has been the highest contributor in terms of revenue addition to the industry, with a annual growth rate of 16%. Incidentally, Internet access and gaming have become the fastest growing segments with an annual growth rate of 57% and 33% respectively. With business doing well, the Jain Brothers who run Bennett Coleman Co. are quoted as saying that they are in the advertisement business and not in newspaper

business. How is this done? Writing in Aseema (November 2012) Susheela Hegde Says: Celebrities and advertisers pay the paper to have its reporters write advertorials about their brands in its supplementary sections. The newspaper enters into private-treaty agreements with some advertisers, accepting equity in the advertisers firms as partial payment. Now, writes Hegde, Advertisements masquerading as news items have become passe. During last years Uttar Pradesh elections, the Election Commission identified paid news published in two Hindi dailies as news items in favour of sitting legislator Umlesh Yadav. As the amount spent on the news was not accounted for in the poll expenditure, the EC disqualified the MLA and barred her from contesting elections for three years. But this is a rare case. We have come to stage when it is difficult to differentiate between a piece of genuine news and a piece of paid news. Even columnists who air their views are coming under suspicion. A series of articles appeared in the English print media damning Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Were the articles the genuine views of their authors or were they paid columns? Again, were the newspapers paid for publishing them? Who knows? Often one sees page after page of articles on film stars, along with their photographs. Were they paid articles? No one can tell. Even worse is the growing tendency in the English media to display sex, blatantly, as it looks. A Kolkata daily once published in one single issue as many as nineteen semi-nude pictures of girls in their bikinis. The trend is spreading. One has only to look at supplements, for example in Hindustan Times to know to what depths the media has fallen. This comes under Entertainment. Newspapers no longer have a great vision. They display no ideals. They have become tools of the rich and the powerful and follow their dictates. Money, it seems, is all. We are living in a dangerous age where newspapers cannot be trusted, nor even the television media. There may be a few decent and honourable media men but how is one to identify them? Someday, one hopes that justice will be done and the media will be made to pay for its folly. Till then one can only wait and see.