Just as I was about to start writing this post, Abraham George's strongly-worded opinion piece on India's media was uploaded to our site's homepage. Many Indian journalists might squirm with discomfort after reading what George has to say, but on a number of points we really have no choice but to agree with his scathing assessment of the state of the press here.
And he’s clearly not alone. For its 15th anniversary issue, currently on newsstands, popular news magazine Outlook has chosen (I think bravely) to look not just back, but inwards as it explores the state of the Indian media through a number of guest columns and op-eds. Titled ‘Media in Crisis’, the special issue also features celebrated intellectual Noam Chomsky's interview with the magazine's senior editors.
According to Chomsky, who many regard as one of the most fearless voices alive, we have a lot of soul searching to do: ‘The media in India is free—the government doesn’t have the power to control it. But what I saw was that it was pretty restricted, very narrow and provincial and not very informative, leaving out lots of things.’
And he added: ‘Media subdues the public. This is so in India, certainly’.
I read the magazine cover to cover Sunday, but I didn't think every one of the problems critiqued in the issue would manifest themselves within 48 hours of me reading about them.
In both The Times of India and Hindustan Times, unarguably the country's most influential English dailies, pictures of recently married cricketer M S Dhoni and his young wife Sakshi's day out at the beach in Goa adorned the front pages. Anyway you look at it, this isn’t news.
Meanwhile, Tuesday was also ‘Karwta Chauh’, an annual festival celebrated across large parts of northern Indian where wives fast the entire day for their husband’s long life. The fast is broken at the first sighting of the moon and, for much of the evening, the Hindi news channels went on ad nauseam about the whole thing, including showing the skies in different cities. Star News went as far as to say that this was the day's biggest news.
Chomsky was right. I felt subdued after seeing all this triviality. On most days, being a journalist in India comes with an incredible sense of pride as you feel you are part of a robust, critical estate that’s supposed to help keep this democracy functioning. But today was definitely not one of those days.
Reddit
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
Technorati
Yahoo
Google
Plurk
Hariharan
Chomsky is a libertarian socialist — somewhat utopian and ahead of our times. He’s gathered an impressive following. However, I’d like to point out that his take on Western politics is more likely to be accurate. Perhaps he hasn’t spent much time in Asia to learn more about the nuances of the complex political landscape out there.
I totally agree with you on the ubiquitous triviality found in articles of all major Indian newspapers. Talk to Khushwant Singh. He is likely to have pointers for you to get your writings out in front of large audiences through major media outlets. You could also do detailed research to crush Roy’s hypocrisy like “Gandhians with Guns” and plain lies like “Kashmir is not an integral part of India” and then write solid articles directly challenging her positions. Someone has got to do it. And why not when popular journalists come up with defenseless arguments bordering psychosis?
Alex Thomas
Amid all negativities and sombre news all around, Indians deserved a little break.I liked seeing smiling faces in my television celebrating the festival. “Karva Chauth” might not be a big thing for you, but for millions of Indians, it is a big thing.
Shashwat Gupta
Well said Alex.
Hariharan
After continuous hysterical diatribes against all things Indian and India, and then confusing the youth of Kashmir in her relentless pursuit of fame, here comes the vitriolic mobile republic of AR misleading America on Kashmir: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/opinion/09roy.html — oh but wait, maybe she was just looking to show how she is smarter than Obama. She did that to Bush too by accusing him of pouring a pitcher of blood on the tomb of Gandhi, but calling Maoists as “Gandhians with guns” isn’t. What hypocrisy!
This is a classic example of — we have met the enemy and it is us! All in the name of free press. Mark my words — India will not become any power, and none other than Indians will ensure that, with an iron-clad guarantee.
BTW, still not one solid article in any prominent publication yet exposing the massive ponzi scheme fraud of Syed Masood — the Bernie Masood of India. Isn’t democracy great?