ManifesTOI
is good but what about manifestation of media
Through write ups like ManifesTOI the popular media is
manifesting its own original avatar as fourth estate deviating from its yellow
journalism, scandal mongering mania, gossip garnering games, biased reporting
and irresponsible cover ups. True to its original avatar it covered a very wide
range of activities pertaining to governance. But to sustain such qualitatively
superb status media needs to do self introspection as a part of journalistic manifesto while it sits
on its assumed high pedestal passing opinions
and judgments on every issue ,individual and institution as the know all and judge all
umpire.
Media must remain as an unbiased umpire. Instead if
it gets into match fixing then it will get into trouble. It created a baby
called AAP which is now targeting the parents because they have stopped
pampering its tantrums. Media cannot distort nor blindly reproduce distorted
versions and mutilate the denotations and connotations of words to please some
sections as most of the Indian media do like their selective and distorted use
of terms like secularism, inclusive growth, communalism etc.
For example in today’s news items itself there is a
news item about many poor kidnapped girls from Megalaya rescued and handed over
to their parents. All newspapers mention it as ‘children rescued from a NGO in
Krishnagiri’. Why can’t they publish the name of the NGO? What amount did the media
get? Or who is preventing the media from publishing the name of the NGO? When media
adopts these double standards and makes reports like members belonging to a
particular community, learnt from reliable or a certain source etc be assured
that popular media will get its burial sooner or later because correct information
and truth leak through and linger on in social networks and the myriad other ubiquitous
internet sources with more authentic proofs. If the newspapers do not mention
the name of the NGO then the public know that it is not any Hindu or
nationalistic NGO but a foreign funded NGO.
Laity and local people now have their own lexicon
for media’s mutilated versions.
Media personalities at all levels would do well to
remember these two quotes always .
"We can evade reality, but we
cannot evade the consequences of evading reality." by Ayn Rand and “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our
wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the
state of facts and evidence.” by John Adams.
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