"Indians today are governed by two different ideologies. Their political ideal set in the preamble of the Constitution affirms a life of liberty, equality and fraternity. Their social ideal embodied in their religion denies them"-
Babasheb Dr.B. R. Ambedkar
Media has lost its sense of Priorities: Sainath.
Pointing out that a disconnect exists between mass media and mass reality in India today, P.Sainath,Rural Affairs Editor the The Hindu,said the media had lost its sense of priorities and was out of touch with the problems of a vast section of the population of the country. He was delivering the Silver Jubilee Lecture on “Mass media: But where are the masses?” at the Indira Gandhi Natinal Open University here on Wednesday. Noting that the media coverage and editorials following the recent oil price hike failed to fully understand the implications this would have on poor people, Mr.Sainath said he was surprised that the coverage given to this issue was dwarfed by a model’s suicide in some newspapers.
“In the last 15 years, everthing that has become a convenience to the upper and middle class has become cheaper. You take air tickets, computers, cars etc… they are all affordable for us . But in this same period rice, wheat, electricity, water, etc has become 300-500 per cent more expensive for the poor. Why is this not reflected in the media?” On stories of rural resurgence appearing in various magazines in 2010 he quipped that these stories “tiemed well” with the national crime records bureau statistics indicating 2,00,000 suicides since 1997 and three Government appointed commissions recommending the pushing up of official figures of population living below the poverty line.
The veteran journalist said the media to day had a “structural compulsion to lie as several media companies had interests in various arms of the economy. He commented that “private treaties” and “paid news” were undermining the media’s credibility. “Out of the ruins of private treaties, emerged paid news. Private treaties which gave media companies financial stakes in companies became worthless after the stock market tanked in 2008-09. Paid news enabled these corrupt companies and politicians to make unrecorded cash transactions during the Assembly and Genreral Elections in 2009”
Mr.Sainath also mourned the disappearance of number of social sector beats from newspapers. “Today newspapers have no labour correspondent, housing or primary education correspondent. We are explicitly telling 70 per cent of this country that they don’t matter to us”.
Source: The Hindu.
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