In contemporary India the media, both print and especially the television media with so many 24x7 news channels, are often found playing a rather active, sometimes bordering on aggressive role. Gone are the days when news casting was this staid objective reporting of news stories, description about an event that has taken place or one about to unfold such as a sports tournament, about government policies, laws being legislated, or information about the success or failure in implementing those that have already been enacted. The news reporting has become interpretive, pretending to be an analysis of what has happened or is likely to happen, who the main dramatis personae are in this news-as-unfolding-drama on the national stage, what their motivations are and what social and political forces their actions represent. The news watchers have often been told on many such channels about their programmes being ones that are supposed to take the viewers behind and beyond the bare bone news stories. They are enlightened by background information, helped along with analytical sounding presumptions, hypotheses, to understand, or as they say, make sense of the stories. A question often being raised and debated within the media itself is what to make of such an activist trend and whether it is good or bad.
It is probably undeniable that during the last few decades (especially since India’s open espousal of the liberalized economic policies during early 1990s) there has been an impetus to the ongoing modernization and the media has been both an active agent for democratization of Indian society, bridging the distances and breaching many social barriers and in the process is itself transformed in radical ways. Increasing media activism is a reflection of the social activism growing over the last several years among sections of Indian Middle classes who are growing in importance within the Indian polity.
News media by way of informing empower people. Increasingly media is taking on the role of an interlocutor (if not an interrogator) on behalf of the people in ‘asking questions’ to and ‘getting straight answers’ from those in charge of governance, others involved in political actions and maneuvering, holding and acting on ideological positions, reformers and renegades, evangelists of progress and modernity on one side and bulwarks of tradition and conservatism on the other). One is reminded of the rhetorical flourish in the way the popular anchors of the TV channels would often like to preface their news analysis: Tonight the Nation wants to know.
Technology today has enabled people, especially in urban and semi-urban areas of the country most exposed to the television and the print media, not just to consume news as readers, listeners and viewers but also to participate in its analysis and dissemination by way of interactions between the news broadcasters and the TV audience, phone-ins with and setting up questions for the anchors and expert panelists at the TV studios, apart from the readers’ response surveys and feed back columns (not to forget the traditional letters to editors) in their print versions.
An important part of this media initiated democratization is an apparent bridging the gap between the patricians and the plebeians, the high and mighty on one side and the lowly proverbial ‘common man’ on the other in the discussion arenas (e.g. TV studios) characterized by an ambience of irreverence. Any body can ask any critical or damaging questions of any body else, cross swords with and lampoon the rich and the powerful and tear down the carefully cultivated façade of lies and hypocrisy built by them over the years to hold down the masses of voiceless people. Class conscious niceties, need for decorum, maintaining a pecking order and orderliness are often dispensed with in no-these holds-barred shrill debates.
A clear danger associated with the inquisition format of much of the television debates is that media (and the consuming public whetted by it) is increasingly displaying a Madame Defarge like tendency, reveling in the downfall of and stridently baying for blood of the high and mighty in the society, the celebrities. Notice the hectoring style being adopted by many television anchors where they ask tendentious leading questions to trap selected participants and extract ‘confessions’. So much so that some people have called these debates/discussions trial by media.
Some people have also discerned a newfound urge for vigilantism in the zeal of the media in indulging in investigative journalism to buttress the generally held opinion on corruption cases involving big politicians and bureaucrat, conducting unorthodox ‘STING’ operations, making disclosures based on unidentified ‘sources’ and ‘leaks’ from those (whistle blowers) who are sometimes part of the government administration. There is insufficient attention on the part of the media to balance people’s right to know vis-à-vis possible defamation of presumed wrongdoers in government, politics and business.
There is also a set of inescapable follow up questions. Is media becoming a parallel center of power not just by occupying a moral high ground seeking ‘truth’, but also because of the financial muscles of some media houses sustained independently of the government largesse, acting/operating outside the pale of government? This supra-government positioning of the media may appear to be beneficial for keeping a watch on the government, which is increasingly appearing to become non-transparent and unaccountable to very people who elect them. This kind of outsider vigilante view of the old style, ‘corrupt’, inept democratic polity is popular with the vocal urban middle class elites
But who is the media accountable to? Is their truth seeking completely value free? Are the big media companies not mixing commerce with conscientiousness? Can the media be a threat and cause destabilization of the other organs or pillars of democracy? These are questions that can not be unequivocally answered.
