Beyond Assam tribune
I was regularly reading everyone arguments over couple of days on role
of regional media as well as national media. It is correct that national
media is metro centric and news reporter (both print and electronic)
fist; they don't want to go outside metro boundary and secondly, not
received enough space (physical space in the news paper, slot in the
electronic media as well as space for thoughts and arguments) for
regional news.
So what we are looking beyond that? Who is responsible? Why we are
looking desperately for a so called national media?
Although many have several arguments, I feel following are the major
reasons.
1. We don't have single news paper effectively covering all North
Eastern States in English. (As we have more than 200 languages and
dialects, the English is the sole medium for communication among all).
The Assam Tribune although crosses its fifty years long back but it
primarily tries to publish government advertisement with limited news
coverage. The Assamese Pratidin emerged as alternate to Assam Tribune in
Assamese in 90's only able to reach few pockets in Assam. It does
not have any role in other parts of region. The Shillong times,
Arunachal times, Manipur times, few news paper from Silchar have very
limited role due to various reasons.
2. The region doesn't have any effective mass communication and
journalism institute. Although few state universities have mass
communication and journalism department, they are more classrooms based
and not able to create an effective skill journalist. Who ever working
already in these field are from various field need to have much more
training.
3. In the era of globalisation, media is become a more lucrative
business option than social responsibilities. Except the region, other
metros in India have historical entrepreneurs for this business.
Although from Guwahati and Shillong, many Assamese and English news
papers published over the 150 years, but majority have vanished due to
lack of capital, lack of business skill and limited nature of readership
due to diverse language based. Recently, NE TV try to overcome this
diversity by telecasting multi lingual programmes, but being run by a
outsider (a Bihari) this channel not able to represent anyone voices.
4. During the post liberalisation period, Guwahati becoming second
category metro(yet not reached first) due to last linkage to enter to
whole North East India, concentration of financial activities as well as
educational centres. Yet Guwahati is not able to brand itself as leading
metros due to several reasons. One of the reason is, the Assamese, who
is the leading community in the state of Assam are very defensive to
project themselves (it may be due to 100 years inter-tribal conflicts,
cross border migration and economic backwardness). Therefore, primarily
the Assamese community not able to brand Guwahati as another metro of
India and not able to produce enough literature to put forward demand in
all aspects for readers of the world in English( to become smart, we
have to learn from Bengali, how since colonial days they learned English
and published enough literature over their culture.) Recently Suresh has
written a very good editorial in his magazine' Jiban' June, 2007
issue. Any one could read for further detail.
5. So what we look forward, we need to write everything of all North
Eastern States more than 200 community's language, literature,
grievances, political development and economic backwardness in Guwahati
metro based news papers. The rest of the world will come automatically
to your feet if we do it. No need to desperately wait for so called
national media
Biswajeet Saikia
[moderator created thread]
utpal borpujari <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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
