At a time when mainstream media, including the biggest news channels and newspapers evidently set the agenda for the day’s politics, providing maximum airtime and print space for one while blacking out or subduing another, it is important that the fourth estate starts practicing what it so loudly preaches from the pulpit. The mantra and good conduct of transparency and accountability must equally apply to the producers of news themselves, as much as they pertain to the political classes and the masses, the news makers and consumers in this late capitalist food chain of news gathering and distribution. With allegations flying around of political parties, from the biggest camps, throwing away astronomical sums of money, amounting to tens of thousands of crores, on oiling the wheels of their propaganda machines, showering bucks on advertorial blitzkrieg and relentless pounding the names of their top leaders, we need to know how much of that money has flown into the mighty rivers of Indian media networks. This conscious demand is made keeping in mind especially the newspapers that proudly declare their staggering circulation rates and post the minutest rise in the graph with much hype and fanfare, as well as the news channels that pronounce exactly at what time of the day they clinched the TRP battle, outmaneuvering the hundreds of others in this cut-throat world of news broadcast. Tailoring and repackaging khabar haven’t been enough, obviously: hence, opinionating and commentating to explain away the mighty tide of Election 2014 have been unleashed as weapons of mass distraction. We need to know the breakup, and it is important that it is provided, of how the grand apparatus of media has been kept working. How the government and political parties, who have, from before and during the elections, been on advertorial steroids, have planted massive ad campaigns in television, print and online media, have transacted such ad placements and what has been the monetary equivalent of such deals?
We are not saying that receiving advertisements from the ruling and oppositional political parties right in the middle of general elections directly translates into partisan presentation of the ground situation. But even a tiny amount of time spent on scanning the news channels and papers would give away the decisive slant, indeed the overt bloodlust, of the mainstream media, which has stubbed out relevant issues and has instead focused on hyperventilating on empty gestures, hollow talks and doctored interviews by so-called leaders of the political parties. The voice of the common man has once again been muzzled, and big media houses have been complicit in orchestrating this great devolution. In fact, it looks like media houses have been relegated to becoming the cheerleaders of a particular political camp, indeed turning the General Elections 2014 into a one-man-show. From being the arbiter of critical thought and being the mirror of a nation in churn, this is a great fall. It is time therefore to throw light at oneself. Media, please show the way. Millennium Post is ready to pick up the cudgels and the lamps. Are others too?
We are not saying that receiving advertisements from the ruling and oppositional political parties right in the middle of general elections directly translates into partisan presentation of the ground situation. But even a tiny amount of time spent on scanning the news channels and papers would give away the decisive slant, indeed the overt bloodlust, of the mainstream media, which has stubbed out relevant issues and has instead focused on hyperventilating on empty gestures, hollow talks and doctored interviews by so-called leaders of the political parties. The voice of the common man has once again been muzzled, and big media houses have been complicit in orchestrating this great devolution. In fact, it looks like media houses have been relegated to becoming the cheerleaders of a particular political camp, indeed turning the General Elections 2014 into a one-man-show. From being the arbiter of critical thought and being the mirror of a nation in churn, this is a great fall. It is time therefore to throw light at oneself. Media, please show the way. Millennium Post is ready to pick up the cudgels and the lamps. Are others too?