Has the media become irresponsible and biased?

The four pillars of our democracy are Legislature, Executive, Judiciary and the Media. But, I would say that in today’s advanced world, media is just not one among the four pillars for a successful democracy. But, it is a central pillar and a strength giving pillar for other pillars to support for a successful democracy. The big question to debate is whether such a powerful constituent of the democracy is doing its job or not? Is it behaving responsibly or not?

Few days back, BJP Prime Ministerial candidate L K Advani has released an IT vision document for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections in a BJP election committee meeting. Having heard of this news, I switched on the TV to find out what Advani promised in his vision doc. I changed around five news channels but I found that all five of them broadcasting either the news that Arun Jaitley didn’t attend the meeting or the debating on the alleged rift between Rajnath and Jaitley. I found similar such kind of phenomenon in most of the newspapers the next day. IT vision is something that’s first of its kind in India. Isn’t the media responsible for bringing out that vision, listing out merits and demerits of such vision and putting that in front of the people for a national debate? I am sure that most of you will agree that India needs to take some revolutionary steps to realize 2020 and it won’t happen out of the blue. So, at this juncture, IT vision assumed significance but that has been left out of the news without any kind of discussion around it. Instead of discussing such an important issue, they discuss for hours and hours about the rift between Rajnath and Jaitley. First of all, is it right for the media channels to discuss intra party issues? Should political parties consult media to appoint someone as their campaign incharge for a particular state? Second, aren’t they responsible in letting the people know what a particular party promises to people?

The other day, I saw the chief editor of a popular news channel saying that this election is all about secularism versus communalism. How sick is the media? How can media ignore many other important issues that concern a common man? Aren’t they responsible enough to bring out the right issues for an election debate? How can they ignore important issues like security, inflation, unemployment, economic crisis, poverty, farmer suicides in backward states etc.? On Times now channel, I see Arnab Goswamy conducting a discussion with a Chief Minister and passing judgments and conclusions on every political issue. Is passing judgments the role of media or is it empowering the people with unbiased information to help them pass judgments the role of media? On another channel, I find a lady making conclusions based on SMS polls. Isn’t it funny to decide things just by looking at the number of yes and no SMSs. Let’s say, If they receive 7 yes and 3 no SMSs, they would say that 70% are supporting a particular issue while 30% of the people are rejecting it. How scientific is this kind of analysis?

CNN IBN releases pre-poll surveys before every election. This time, Rajdeep Sardesai released the pre poll results just few days back. I was told by one of my friends recently that CNN IBN has surveyed around 16,000 people across the country and based on that they released their predictions on what is going to happen state wise in a country of around 70 million electorate. Do you think that this is scientific in any manner? Do you think it has any credibility? At least, I as an analyst won’t think so. But unfortunately voters do not understand the science behind it and get swayed by these surveys. As per whatever I studied in my psychology course in the campus, the voter always would like to be on a winning side and therefore he would be influenced to make his choice or change his choice based on the pre poll results. It’s like ‘an election before an election’ to manipulate the public opinion according to their interests and their corporate sponsor’s interest. Such pre-poll surveys have failed to predict the reality as many times as they predicted anywhere around the actual. Is media doing any good to the country by doing all this? I think nation has to thoroughly discuss the issue of whether these pre poll and exit polls have to be banned for a better democracy.

The situation in AP and Tamil Nadu is still worse than in the rest of the country. Alleging that all the newspapers and news channels in the state are writing and talking against YSR government’s corruption, Jagan Mohan Reddy, the son of the Chief Minister of AP launched a news paper and a news channel called ‘Sakshi’ on his own. Sakshi started writing pro government news and gradually it became YSR Government advertisement pamphlet. The paper was distributed in each and every village in AP for free for a long time. Do I need to tell you what impact it would have created on people’s mind? Hasn’t YSR exploited villager’s inability to buy a newspaper and deceived them by distributing the free and biased newspaper? Rest of the media as well is biased if not as biased as Sakshi. They never bring in the merits of the government and only talk about the demerits and fully support the opposition. We all are aware of what is going on in Tamil Nadu. I need not discuss more about it. The two major parties own news channels and they broadcast their own versions of news. Days have come when political parties themselves own channels. What a shameful era we are in? Today, be it English channel or regional channels, people are confused what to believe and what not to believe and time has come for people to interpret the news if it’s biased news or unbiased before actually reading it. As we know, information is power and wealth. When such information is biased, how can a democracy succeed? How can people expect good governance?

Media has seen the new lows in the recent past raising many apprehensions among the people. Successful electoral process and thus a better society are not possible without a responsible media. Media has got more responsibility than even the government in reaching the people with right information. Media should not become opponents to either Government or the opposition parties instead they should choose to become pro-people and pro-democracy for people to get empowered with legitimate information and for people to choose India of their choice.

Jai Hind