http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/detailsnew.asp?id=aug1010/at09
Media not raising real issues: Rai Staff Reporter GUWAHATI, Aug 9 – Eminent journalist and social activist Usha Rai today said that the media had failed in its responsibility of reporting the lopsided development taking place in the country and the resultant widening schism between the rich and the poor. “... the neglect of the rural people – villages and tribal pockets being caught in the bullock cart age while the affluent and the metros surging ahead – has not found adequate representation in the media. It is not as though no journalist has reported or campaigned on this growing divide between the haves and have-nots in India. But it has not been strong and sustained enough to compel the government to focus on removing the disparities,” Rai said while delivering the memorial lecture to mark the 19th death anniversary of Kamala Saikia, the first journalist-martyr of Assam. Lamenting the lack of a national upsurge against the growing disparities and inequities in the society, Rai held the media to be largely responsible for that, saying that the media seemed more interested in non-issues and trivia than the real issues confronting the society. Stressing the need for a sustained campaign of matters of vital socio-economic interest, Rai said that the media should campaign vigorously on the stagnation of development in the villages – on lack of good education, healthcare and employment opportunities. “We should focus more on inequities and poverty literally driving the marginalized into the folds of hardliners… picking up the gun to become militants or terrorists.” Criticizing the all-pervasive trend of marketing gimmicks to increase TRP ratings by the electronic media, Rai said that the newspapers were also following in the footsteps of television with increasing focus on colour and glamour. “In fact revenue earning supplements of newspapers called metro editions are largely gossip supplements—all the media’s focus has been on celebrities … gossip has become an intrinsic part of today’s journalism,” she said. Advocating a regulatory body for the media in view of its growing corrupt practices – including the paid-news syndrome that was making inroads into even the editorial spaces – Rai said that while the best option of self-regulation was not happening, the Press Council of India was little more than a toothless tiger in its present form and hence there, was the need for “a powerful and ethically-run regulatory body.” Expressing concern over the increasing use of newspapers for promotion of business interests of the proprietors and “to jockey with those in power”, Rai said that editors had been devalued and sidelined. “Proprietors call the shots even on editorial issues. The proprietor/editorial director of one of the capital’s leading daily newspapers calls the editor to find out what is going on the front page and what line should be taken for the day’s editorial,” she said, adding that today there was a surfeit of editors, but no single powerful editor in total control of a newspaper. Rai said that newspapers had not invested in journalists for reporting from small towns and rural hinterlands and instead they had stringers who were paid per column inch published. “The money they received was so little that many began to bully and even blackmail people to earn a decent living... ‘newspapering’ is passing more and more into the hands of marketing and business managers. The status of the business manager in some newspapers is higher than that of the journalist and even the editor,” she added. On the growing threat to journalists during discharge of their professional duties by militants and anti-socials, Rai said that it was shocking that 18 journalists had been killed in Assam by ULFA and others in the past two decades yet not a single arrest had been made. “It is shocking. As violence rocks our world, more and more journalists are dying in the conduct of their duties—such as the recent death of the Indian Express journalist, Vijay Pratap Singh in Allahabad recently. I can understand and even condone the death of journalists killed covering wars, riots and such events, but to be bumped off by hoodlums or criminals who want to silence a journalist and send a message of fear to other journalists needs to be condemned in the strongest terms,” she said. Veteran journalist Kanak Sen Deka, who is also the president of the Kamala Saikia Memorial Trust that organised the function, also spoke. Another veteran journalist Jadu Kakati was felicitated by the Trust for his stellar contributions in the field of journalism. ------------------------------------ -- INFORMATION OVERLOAD? Get all ZESTMedia mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to zestmedia-dig...@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! 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