The crisis in the media today defies logic. Unlike in the West, a cloud has just burst over us, raining advertising, circulation and subscription rupees. While technology hammers a daily nail into the coffin there, the sky is the lower limit here, with soaring literacy and aspirations.
If we have lost our moral and ethical compass in such a happy setting, it is because of competition, yes, but also because need has given way to greed. Our pauper tigers, instead of inspiring us on to the high road, are only too happy to invite us inspect the gutter.
But this isn’t about us, it’s about you. While you, as a consumer, have the power to read, watch and listen to what you like, you, as a citizen, also have a responsibility that goes beyond paying for what you buy. Question is, how often do you exercise that right, since it’s in your name that a multitude of sins are committed?
Who speaks for the world? There are now over 150 news broadcasters and 1,000 newspapers in India. For all the width and vibrancy, we are philistines; we are frogs in the well. Our world ends where our ‘market’ does; rare is the media baron causing tremors in the pants of BBC and CNN.
Contrast this with the recent efforts of China, France and Russia to use television to announce their arrival on the world stage. Even tiny Qatar has almighty Al Jazeera. When Newsweek magazine was on the block, a Chinese hand went up. Is it modesty that circumscribes our global ambitions, or mediocrity?
Who speaks for Bharat? Fulminating against the pseudo-secular excesses of the English media is now a blood sport. Truth is, our influence is directly proportional to our ego and inversely proportional to our reach. Even the world’s biggest English daily is a third the size of the nation’s largest Hindi paper, Dainik Jagran.
Yet, large parts of the language media operate in a near-professional vacuum, sans the searing scrutiny and self-flagellation their anglicised counterparts are used to. Anything goes, and usually does: wheeling-dealing, brokering, corruption, blackmail, extortion, plagiarism, poor salaries, and worse journalism. Who will rein in the regional cows?
Who speaks for Doordarshan? For all their shrieking and screaming, English channels have a viewership of 0.4 per cent. Ergo: for the majority of the poor and rural households with access to a TV set, Doordarshan remains the primary channel of news, views and entertainment. (And All India Radio.)
Yet, can you name one show made by Prasar Bharati’s staff of 38,000 employees, whose annual outlay of Rs 2,100 crore is underwritten by the taxes we pay? Despite talk of putting public service back into broadcasting, DD remains the captive poodle of the government of the day, lying languidly outside our mind’s eye. How much longer can we afford that?
Who speaks for public ownership? Forget crossmedia monopolies, the biggest threat today comes from the ownership of media by parties and politicians. It is possible to go through the length and breadth of as literate a state as Tamil Nadu without once listening to the news untainted by the colour of the party putting it out, either in print or on a news channel.
While the Election Commission works itself into a lather over electoral expenses, the voting masses remain silently hostage. And the stranglehold obtained by political factotums over the cable distribution systems also means that the power to switch on and off is not with you, but with the local goonda who controls channel distribution.
Who speaks for the future? Admittedly, media is not a charity; it’s an expensive business with a bottomline. Yet, what does it say about our priorities if we do not plough back more than a portion of our profits in not just building capacity, but the building blocks of journalism?
The number of Indian foreign correspondents can be counted on two hands. Outside experts provide our best opinion. Freelancers do our most rigorous reporting from the back of beyond. Investigative reporting in politics, business, cinema and sport is now very nearly dead.
Who speaks if you choose to remain silent?
