Home

Why Subscribe ?

Popularise CC

Join News Letter

Editor's Picks

Press Releases

Action Alert

Feed Burner

Read CC In Your
Own Language

Bradley Manning

India Burning

Mumbai Terror

Financial Crisis

Iraq

AfPak War

Peak Oil

Globalisation

Localism

Alternative Energy

Climate Change

US Imperialism

US Elections

Palestine

Latin America

Communalism

Gender/Feminism

Dalit

Humanrights

Economy

India-pakistan

Kashmir

Environment

Book Review

Gujarat Pogrom

Kandhamal Violence

WSF

Arts/Culture

India Elections

Archives

Links

Submission Policy

About CC

Disclaimer

Fair Use Notice

Contact Us

Search Our Archive

Subscribe To Our
News Letter



Our Site

Web

Name: E-mail:

 

Printer Friendly Version

The Ugly Face of Media

By Prabhat Sharan

01 November, 2010
The Verdict Weekly

Thus, it was not surprising that the media world a couple of years back desperately sought help from the state to bail it out from the economic bankruptcy. The reason for seeking bailout was that jobs had to be saved; and the first casualty in the media world-like in any corporate-governed sector-were the journalists at the lower echelons. The argument presented by the managements for justifying retrenchment is a case in point of a warped and erroneous logic…

They say in plague rats die first and ironically the germs of plague are spread by none other than rodents themselves. In an economically sick society, if not the first, the journos have managed to grab the second position in the list of fatalities, and ironically like the rodents they were also responsible for spreading the germ of conservative exploitative economic structural adjustment which they glorified by calling it, “neo-liberal economy.”

Within a span of two years, the corporate establishment media is back with the rat poison hacking the hacks as well as the handful honest committed journalists who bravely carry the cross of integrity. The vanguard for this impending hacking like in earlier ‘Operation Raticide,’ is none other than a so-called national commercial newspaper which except for providing business news carries propagandistic fabricated material emanating from ‘private treatises,’ under the veneer of ‘news.

Hacks, like the rats are once more desperately seeking a rat hole, burrow and shelter from the epidemic of economic plague and so-called massive retrenchment. Till some time back, the same journos went around the town tom tomming about the grandiose success of the late 19th century economic system. Courtesy, they (read journos) were getting ginger bread spread with jam even if it was the same as the one made in some rural area, this species like the sick rodent family went to the town casting the germ of superfluous consumerism and promoting it as the need of every human being even if it meant shackling them and sucking out their very life and joy. They espoused the age old maxim-greed is good mentality.

Like the mythical scientist Dr Frankenstein who created the monster only to be killed, by it, the journos are now dying by the very own creation. A case in point is the resignation of the much-hyped Outlook Money’s editor, just a year ago. In her post-resignation letter to her colleagues from the magazine, the editor made a startling admission that the reason behind her quitting the job lay in the management’s pressure on her to blow-up insurance companies profile in the periodical.

Not an uncommon, occurrence in the world of corporate media where deals are fixed and so are the reports and articles. In fact the flurry of newspapers, periodicals and television news channels in the last one and a half decade took everybody by surprise.

More surprising was that journalism which hitherto had always attracted half-starved socially committed person on the one the end of spectrum and those who wanted to go up the political-industrial power broking lobby on the other end suddenly became the top sought after jobs amongst youngsters.

The reason was of course the sudden emergence of media from the façade of being mission oriented to brainwashing propaganda machine for the corporate world which wanted to fashion the thinking and obliterate the logical and emotive aspect of the masses in India.

With a token of anti-establishment news reports mainly criticising the public sectors and other state machinery, an impression was created that the corporate governance was the sole solution to the people’s ills. The sycophancy towards MNCs and TNCs ideology reached a crescendo during the Indo-US nuke deal when the Indian corporate media crawled on its stomach to get it cleared hiding all the insidious facts from the masses. The media blatantly forgot its role of being a mirror to the reality.

The half-starved journo whose anger against the exploitative system roiled along with the rumbling in his or her stomach suddenly found that there was too much food on the plate. Industrialists, multi-nationals executives were being eulogised with superlatives which they certainly did not deserve. In fact worse for the Indian journalism scene was not just the anointing those who toed the line of conservative economic structural adjustment with fancy designations like ‘Quality Editor,’ et.al but relegating the critics of the regressive exploitative economic system to queues of unemployable and rope in the most inexperienced just-out-of-college students for journalism with a strap line - “experience not required.” The result the corporate world got what it wanted: A dumbing down of journalism and a facade of frivolous reporting.

The masses were duly hypnotised by the glitz and glamour in the media which pontificated with religious fervour the maxim that greed and consumption is the way to social ladder and happiness. Usurping hinterlands, erecting vertical slums, possessing senseless, mindless gadgets coupled with the power of spending were being deliberately epitomized as the quotient for one’s success.

Though the Outlook Money editor took quite a substantial time to realise the covert media machinations, which is quite surprising, given the fact that the periodical was devoted to woo the masses into the speculative trading world by imparting them kindergarten lessons in the world of stock market, the fact is that resignation also has another hidden facet.

The other fact which is more gruesome is that even as the bubble of non-existent capital keeps exploding at an alarming regularity, in the same space and time warp, the media bubble also fizzles out like the air from a soda water bottle leaving the once effervescent water devoid of all air.

The result; the hoarding painters who lustily paint the minds of the masses with the greatness of economic system, again and again find themselves totally redundant and useless for the class which controls the reins of the monies.

The new fangled term, nothing but an old wine in a new bottle-financial inclusion, which if analysed was to extract money from small and minor land holders in the rural India for playing in the speculative money market, has also lost its fizz.

The corporate governance which the media used to go around shining it into the eyes of the masses, are all biting dust. Where does, that leaves the media? Nowhere. The so-called top-notch journalists and media management which talked about the corporatising of journalism, are now adrift in a whirlpool created by their own erroneous logic, greed, servility and hypocrisy.

Thus, it was not surprising that the media world a couple of years back desperately sought help from the state to bail it out from the economic bankruptcy. The reason for seeking bailout was that jobs had to be saved; and the first casualty in the media world- like in any corporate-governed sector-were the journalists at the lower echelons.
The argument presented by the managements for justifying retrenchment is a case in point of a warped and erroneous logic. Even as the management of various newspapers went with a begging bowl with pockets overflowing with profits, launches of newer and newer magazines never come to a stop nor does the pressure on their once blue-eyed drum-beaters to leave the fold. The media world is facing the same sting which other sectors are facing; the only thing in the world of journalism is that the paths taken to retrench are different.

And most of the times it glosses the underbelly of the dark reality of the economic structures which it loudly proclaims to the world. In fact during the ‘feel-good’ maxim spouted for the dying and miserable masses, the relationship between the corporate world and corporate media had become something like that of donkeys who in the weddings of the camels, become songsters and sing how handsome the groom is and are answered by the camels with praise for the beauty of their voices and words.

Prabhat Sharan is a Senior Journalist with interest in social, working class, wild-life conservation, media, philosophical and literary studies. He can be contacted at: [email protected]