Unfortunately the critics have missed the point. They are unable to come to grips with the animal that is 21st century media in India. They are trapped in socialist style elitist pronouncements about The Death Of Old Standards. Today's media is a beast that mutates constantly. It is incorrigibly intimate, it is seductively omnipresent, and like all technology, it is amoral. Yet it is a patchy and rough democratic service. The patriarchal baritone of the Times of India in the Fifties and Sixties has given way to a high pitched cacophony. But it is a cacophony that is pushing the envelope of democracy. The socialists crave a media run by the government where the masses must be fed improving programmes and reports about crops, education, space research and social justice. The elitists are profoundly uncomfortable with any media that actually treats Indians as human beings and not as statistics, human beings in full technicolour and not in black and white phoney photos of so called "sober" journalism.
Certainly the Elizabeth Hurley Arun Nayyar wedding was a media tamasha. But the shrill complaint of who-on-earth-even-knows-Elizabeth-Hurley, was nothing but disingenuous hypocrisy. The unpalatable yet inescapable truth is that almost everyone who consumes English language news knows who Elizabeth Hurley is, right from her safety pin dress to her colourful love affairs. Just as everyone who consumes news also knows about the Khairlanji assault, farmer's suicides, the Jessica Lal case, the Nithari killings and Mayawati's ticket distribution. Scan the blogosphere or the comments on websites and you'll find that there's an information and analysis overload. The accusation that the media is "misleading the public" assumes that there is a public out there waiting to be misled. This may or may not be the case.
When the accused in the Nithari killings were attacked outside a Ghaziabad courtroom, venerable lawyers thundered that the media had pre-judged the case and motivated the public to strike an accused. That this was a case of "vigilante justice". Sure, the media has been guilty of errors of judgement in the Nithari case. Lurid stories of cannibalism have been printed without any caveats that there is still no linking evidence joining the accused with the skeletons, apart from narco analysis confessions which are not admissible in a court. But the accusation that the media fuelled "citizen vigilante-ism" fell flat on its face when it was later revealed that the individuals who apparently attacked Pandher and Koli were loyalists of a particular political party seeking to score points against the UP government. They were not enraged citizens after all.
Today's news-oriented citizen is far too empowered with information from all sides to act according to anything but a good understanding of situations. Everyone (or at least everyone who consumes news) knows everything (or almost everything) and everyone is able to critically judge for themselves. This knowledge is the result of the information superhighway that runs through our lives. Information is being bombarded from mobile phones, from television sets, from computer screens and from radios. The same media that expends newsprint and videotape covering Elizabeth Hurley, will also expose how members of parliament falsify their identities, how coastlines are threatened by smugglers and how children are being trafficked. A newspaper may carry Sushmita Sen on the front page but will also carry reports about bogus voters in electoral rolls. The sheer size and diversity of the media prevents it from being any one thing: media today cannot be described in just a single word "sensationalist". Just as the internet can be a source of wisdom or pornography, so also the media, (more specifically television media) is an avalanche of images pictures and information and analysis, all of which, in the end become a patchy form of democratization.
The Jessica Lal Murder Case for example would have been buried in the crime pages of the doughty old broadsheets a decade ago and crime reporters would have got two centimeters of space. Pride of place would have been hogged by patriarchs of the editorials would have eaten up newsprint lecturing readers about delicate Indo_Pak negotiations over Sir Creek and Wullar barrage. Today not only has the Jessica Lal Murder case become a serious intervention on India's criminal justice system but the fact that the case has featured on front pages or on prime time television bulletins has created a nationwide engagement with the legal process. A farmer who doubles as his own bullock would have been a rural report buried in an inside page. Today he becomes headline news and helps focus attention on a neglected region. Tabloid-sation has its own value.
Of course the avalanche of images is often thoughtless and voyeuristic, yet media has created a national conversation, a growing consciousness of a pan-Indian identity on issues, which may be restricted to the television and newspaper consuming classes at the moment but which is growing every year. To quote Kenneth A Myers, former producer of the American National Public radio, "Television is the dominant medium of pop culture. It is the most significant shared reality of our times and of all mediums, plays the most culturally unifying role." Television, and all media to some extent, undoubtedly simplifies debates that perhaps need deeper consideration and disseminates binary polarities where there should be none. Yet at the same time, media today has created an extraordinary immediacy between subject and viewer. Whether politician, celebrity, farmer who is his own bullock, orphan, or lottery king, it is the Indian individual who is slap bang in the centre of the media universe today, not the Indian policy or the Indian government hand out.
While personality-oriented media may have its pitfalls, yet it focuses public interest far more sharply than joyless editorials based on government documents. Today's media lives by the dictum, "nothing that is human is alien." Be it farmer's suicides or a two million pound wedding. About the AuthorSagarika Ghose Sagarika Ghose has been a journalist for 20 years, starting her career with The Times of India, then moving to become part of the start-up team...Read Morefirst published:March 16, 2007, 07:29 ISTlast updated:March 16, 2007, 07:29 IST
window._taboola = window._taboola || [];_taboola.push({mode: 'thumbnails-mid-article',container: 'taboola-mid-article-thumbnails',placement: 'Mid Article Thumbnails',target_type: 'mix'});
let eventFire = false;
window.addEventListener('scroll', () => {
if (window.taboolaInt && !eventFire) {
setTimeout(() => {
ga('send', 'event', 'Mid Article Thumbnails', 'PV');
ga('set', 'dimension22', "Taboola Yes");
}, 4000);
eventFire = true;
}
});
window._taboola = window._taboola || [];_taboola.push({mode: 'thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article-thumbnails', placement: 'Below Article Thumbnails', target_type: 'mix' });Latest News
A range of outraged critics have expressed their fury at the media's coverage of the Elizabeth Hurley Arun Nayyar wedding. Similar fears of a "trivial" "sensational" media were voiced during Aamir Khan's wedding, the Chatwal wedding, and before that the Rakhee Sawant kiss episode and other incidents involving celebrities. Ah the degraded media! Why has it sunk so low? The media is peddling celebrity culture. The media is peddling religious stereotypes. The media is misrepresenting economic facts. The media is creating heroes out of nobodies. The list of complaints against the media is as endless as the Milky Way.
Unfortunately the critics have missed the point. They are unable to come to grips with the animal that is 21st century media in India. They are trapped in socialist style elitist pronouncements about The Death Of Old Standards. Today's media is a beast that mutates constantly. It is incorrigibly intimate, it is seductively omnipresent, and like all technology, it is amoral. Yet it is a patchy and rough democratic service. The patriarchal baritone of the Times of India in the Fifties and Sixties has given way to a high pitched cacophony. But it is a cacophony that is pushing the envelope of democracy. The socialists crave a media run by the government where the masses must be fed improving programmes and reports about crops, education, space research and social justice. The elitists are profoundly uncomfortable with any media that actually treats Indians as human beings and not as statistics, human beings in full technicolour and not in black and white phoney photos of so called "sober" journalism.
Certainly the Elizabeth Hurley Arun Nayyar wedding was a media tamasha. But the shrill complaint of who-on-earth-even-knows-Elizabeth-Hurley, was nothing but disingenuous hypocrisy. The unpalatable yet inescapable truth is that almost everyone who consumes English language news knows who Elizabeth Hurley is, right from her safety pin dress to her colourful love affairs. Just as everyone who consumes news also knows about the Khairlanji assault, farmer's suicides, the Jessica Lal case, the Nithari killings and Mayawati's ticket distribution. Scan the blogosphere or the comments on websites and you'll find that there's an information and analysis overload. The accusation that the media is "misleading the public" assumes that there is a public out there waiting to be misled. This may or may not be the case.
When the accused in the Nithari killings were attacked outside a Ghaziabad courtroom, venerable lawyers thundered that the media had pre-judged the case and motivated the public to strike an accused. That this was a case of "vigilante justice". Sure, the media has been guilty of errors of judgement in the Nithari case. Lurid stories of cannibalism have been printed without any caveats that there is still no linking evidence joining the accused with the skeletons, apart from narco analysis confessions which are not admissible in a court. But the accusation that the media fuelled "citizen vigilante-ism" fell flat on its face when it was later revealed that the individuals who apparently attacked Pandher and Koli were loyalists of a particular political party seeking to score points against the UP government. They were not enraged citizens after all.
Today's news-oriented citizen is far too empowered with information from all sides to act according to anything but a good understanding of situations. Everyone (or at least everyone who consumes news) knows everything (or almost everything) and everyone is able to critically judge for themselves. This knowledge is the result of the information superhighway that runs through our lives. Information is being bombarded from mobile phones, from television sets, from computer screens and from radios. The same media that expends newsprint and videotape covering Elizabeth Hurley, will also expose how members of parliament falsify their identities, how coastlines are threatened by smugglers and how children are being trafficked. A newspaper may carry Sushmita Sen on the front page but will also carry reports about bogus voters in electoral rolls. The sheer size and diversity of the media prevents it from being any one thing: media today cannot be described in just a single word "sensationalist". Just as the internet can be a source of wisdom or pornography, so also the media, (more specifically television media) is an avalanche of images pictures and information and analysis, all of which, in the end become a patchy form of democratization.
The Jessica Lal Murder Case for example would have been buried in the crime pages of the doughty old broadsheets a decade ago and crime reporters would have got two centimeters of space. Pride of place would have been hogged by patriarchs of the editorials would have eaten up newsprint lecturing readers about delicate Indo_Pak negotiations over Sir Creek and Wullar barrage. Today not only has the Jessica Lal Murder case become a serious intervention on India's criminal justice system but the fact that the case has featured on front pages or on prime time television bulletins has created a nationwide engagement with the legal process. A farmer who doubles as his own bullock would have been a rural report buried in an inside page. Today he becomes headline news and helps focus attention on a neglected region. Tabloid-sation has its own value.
Of course the avalanche of images is often thoughtless and voyeuristic, yet media has created a national conversation, a growing consciousness of a pan-Indian identity on issues, which may be restricted to the television and newspaper consuming classes at the moment but which is growing every year. To quote Kenneth A Myers, former producer of the American National Public radio, "Television is the dominant medium of pop culture. It is the most significant shared reality of our times and of all mediums, plays the most culturally unifying role." Television, and all media to some extent, undoubtedly simplifies debates that perhaps need deeper consideration and disseminates binary polarities where there should be none. Yet at the same time, media today has created an extraordinary immediacy between subject and viewer. Whether politician, celebrity, farmer who is his own bullock, orphan, or lottery king, it is the Indian individual who is slap bang in the centre of the media universe today, not the Indian policy or the Indian government hand out.
While personality-oriented media may have its pitfalls, yet it focuses public interest far more sharply than joyless editorials based on government documents. Today's media lives by the dictum, "nothing that is human is alien." Be it farmer's suicides or a two million pound wedding.
Comments
0 comment