Samudra-da and Sanjoy-da have made very valid points regarding the so-called
'national' (METRO) media. I tend to view things positively, and would say that
if one compares with ten years ago, the amount of "positive" news from NE in
metro media has increased, even if not to the desired level. I see that as a
direct impact of the increase in the number of our boys and girls getting into
media outside the region, in both print and electronic. Even in HT (where
Bidyut works), for example, such news from the region is at least published.
Indian Express and Hindu have long given enough importance to NE, and
thankfully, even after Sanjoy-da left The Statesman, the paper has continued
with its weekly NE page, probably the only outside paper to have a page like
that. But having our own guys in the metro media (either in their headquarters
or as their NE correspondents) is not enough. As both Samudra-da and Sanjoy-da
have pointed out, sometimes such 'local' talents do more harm than
good (ref: Sanjoy-da's example of 'over 20,000 killed', obviously filed by a
local correspondent of an MNC wire agency).
With regard to Bidyut's observation that barring Assam Tribune, other
newspapers in the region do not put much emphasis on developmental news - well,
I think the truth lies somewhere in between. I remember, Samudra-da and Nitin
Gokhale had conducted a few workshops for moffusil correspondents of various
newspapers in different parts of Assam a few years ago at the behest of UNICEF,
following which 'positive' news coverage went up from those regions. But
definitely, a lot more needs to be done. We have to take into account several
factors before expecting more developmental news - such as 1) journalists
working in regional media are never trained on how to look for positive news.
For many of them, only bad news is news, 2) many of the so-called 'journalists'
representing regional media in smaller towns and rural areas are people who
wear many hats, one of them sometimes being of businessmen / political party
worker and the like. Can we expect real news from them? 3)
corruption in media (which exists both in metro and regional media) is another
bottleneck. being in the profession, we know how many black sheep are there. 4)
Many of the journalists in moffusil areas are so poorly paid in our region that
it is virtually impractical to expect sincere work from them, as they have to
carry on with another profession for livelihood (that is true for those who
have not fallen to corrupt ways). And these are just a few of the reasons...
To look at the issue from another point of view, in an age when there are
supplements of the same newspaper targetting different areas of the city (like
TOI's East Delhi, Ghaziabad, West Delhi.... etc., Pluses), it is not surprising
that news about NE get restricted to the editions of metro dailies that go to
the region. But at the same time, given the peculiarities of North-East, I feel
the metro media have a duty to highlight the positive aspects of it more
aggressively among its readers across the country.
And at the end, till now comments have been restricted only to the print
media. But what about the electronic media? a few buses burnt in New Delhi is
'national news' but 30 innocent children massacred in Karbi Anglong does not
even figure visually in the news channels, though some of them have
correspondents in the region who reportedly get fat paycheques to do their job.
Any comments.
Utpal Borpujari
Deccan Herald
New Delhi Bureau
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for
your freeaccount today.
