I agree that national Media needs to do more about the Northeast but please also appreciate that unlike print which can get jobs done over telephone.... the electronic media immense problems in the northeast in terms of logistics.... quite often if gets impossible to manage footage of an incident.
deborshi chaki On 6/7/07, biswajeet saikia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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 ------------------------------ *Re:* http://groups.yahoo.com/group/assamonline/message/3204
