Can the print media survive in the present digital era? Are participation, sharing and networking in the New Media (blogs, YouTube, Orkut et al) just part of a digital Utopia that we have started conjuring up? Well, it is too early to say yes or no on these questions. Figures show that circulation of printed copies of newspapers has come down in north America and major European countries, where more and more people are reading online editions of papers they choose to read. The greatest achievement of the digital age is the removal of a central Authority who controls and regulates Information. We cannot today imagine a Soviet Union where the people have no choice but to swallow, though with a pinch of salt, whatever its propaganda machine churns out by way of Information. The mainstream media across the world is gradually realising the potential of the New Media which demolishes any kind of monopoly on Information.
India is often described as a media wonderland because of the huge growth of the media industry in the country. As a media person, I often encounter questions relating to the objectivity of the media when it is becoming a big industry. I tell them that the objectivity of the media cannot be equated with the objectivity of science. The media objectivity has to be seen in relation to a process of selections involved in media activity. You have to choose words (I am talking about print media) from pools of other alternative words, headlines, newsworthiness of events and importance an event should be given (whether it should be on front page or middle page etc.). There are Chomskite media critics in the country who say Indian media identifies with the neo-liberal global agenda (read U.S. hegemony). They say that general support of the mainstream media in India to the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal displayed this bias favouring the U.S. global agenda. This is a criticism that is too ideological to be explained without provoking those who say this. First you have to assume that there is a clearly defined neo-liberal global agenda. Then everything fits in. You can then easily believe that the media coverage of the deal reflects the media's support to the U.S. hegemony and that the media is engaged in propaganda.
The problem with this `propaganda model' of the media is that everything can be treated as propaganda depending on from which position you look at things. When the mainstream media brought out the true menacing dimension of the post-Godhra violence in Gujarat, the Sangh Parivar's response was to take recourse to conspiracy theory. The CPI(M)'s reaction to media disclosures of atrocities in Nandigram in West Bengal was a throwback to the Sangh Parivar respose. CPI(M) politburo member Sitaram Yechuri envisions a `grand alliance' of forces including the media against the CPI(M). We are lucky that people like Yechuri, who will prefer the Stalinist model of propaganda to the media multiplicity and free market of opinions and views, have not gained control over the destiny of India. As a journalist and citizen in a democratic country I am still inspired by what Thomas Jefferson, third president of the U.S. said about newspapers in his letter to Edward Carrington in 1787. "...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
India is often described as a media wonderland because of the huge growth of the media industry in the country. As a media person, I often encounter questions relating to the objectivity of the media when it is becoming a big industry. I tell them that the objectivity of the media cannot be equated with the objectivity of science. The media objectivity has to be seen in relation to a process of selections involved in media activity. You have to choose words (I am talking about print media) from pools of other alternative words, headlines, newsworthiness of events and importance an event should be given (whether it should be on front page or middle page etc.). There are Chomskite media critics in the country who say Indian media identifies with the neo-liberal global agenda (read U.S. hegemony). They say that general support of the mainstream media in India to the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal displayed this bias favouring the U.S. global agenda. This is a criticism that is too ideological to be explained without provoking those who say this. First you have to assume that there is a clearly defined neo-liberal global agenda. Then everything fits in. You can then easily believe that the media coverage of the deal reflects the media's support to the U.S. hegemony and that the media is engaged in propaganda.
The problem with this `propaganda model' of the media is that everything can be treated as propaganda depending on from which position you look at things. When the mainstream media brought out the true menacing dimension of the post-Godhra violence in Gujarat, the Sangh Parivar's response was to take recourse to conspiracy theory. The CPI(M)'s reaction to media disclosures of atrocities in Nandigram in West Bengal was a throwback to the Sangh Parivar respose. CPI(M) politburo member Sitaram Yechuri envisions a `grand alliance' of forces including the media against the CPI(M). We are lucky that people like Yechuri, who will prefer the Stalinist model of propaganda to the media multiplicity and free market of opinions and views, have not gained control over the destiny of India. As a journalist and citizen in a democratic country I am still inspired by what Thomas Jefferson, third president of the U.S. said about newspapers in his letter to Edward Carrington in 1787. "...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
8 comments:
Much of what you have said is above me, except for the fact that a vibrant and free media is essential to a democratic nation.
You only talk of post Godhra riots, which were insane and the madness of a mob. It also has something to do with survival of the fittest theory of Charles Darwin.
Have you given a thought to those 59 people who were charred to death while returning from a pilgrimage? Dont they and their bereaved families need your journo nose to dive into the actual crime? If it was an inside job as many 'secularists' say, should that also be proved and the results brought out to the public? Is it a tragedy only if it is perpetrated on religious minorities and is the majority community only a wall that should stand erect even under the crullest of provocations? Or is it that violence can only be perpetrated against the minority community? Should all Hindus wear the soft Hindutva cloak that the Congress has stiched for the people of this vast country?
At this juncture I am reminded of an article published long ago in India Today, wherein Hinduism was pictured as Gulliver lying pinned to the beach with thousands of minute threads. When the hairs inside his nostrils were also tied up, Gulliver sneezed - naturally. And all the threads came loose. Now if the sleeping giant were to just stand up for a minute, nay less than that, there would be unimaginable destruction all round.
All this do not mean that I advocate violence of the inhuman kind that was Gujarat, post Godhra. I also wonder what actually happened at Godhra on that fateful day when the bogey carrying pilgrims returning from Ayodhya caught fire, right in the middle of a Muslim dominated area? Could you enlighten me on that?
I believe I had told you my observations on the origin of violence to genetic tendencies that are common to a society sharing the same language, culture and attitudes. One cannot write off these attributes as having no scientific basis, though I am all for science. In fact it is scientific studies that tell you that some communities have a uniform seeds of violence in them. Look at the Japanese. Have you ever seen them smile? No, they dont. That is the main reason people dont talk of going to see Japan, tho it is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. They have violence in their bloodstreams.
Look at the Thiyyas. They too have a violent streak in them. Otherwise can you imagine thiyyas killing thiyyas without a thought and still not learning from saner advice? Thiyyas are supposed to have migrated from Srilanka - no wonder they are ingrained in violence! Instead of ethnic cleancing, they seem to be cleancing the whole community. Posterity might just have to do with the relics of thiyyas - amongs them, my poems that talk of love.
I agree that digitization of print publications will increase the circulation. The publishers should use the services like www.pressamrt.net to digitize their print publication to publish through online, RSS syndication, pod cast, etc.
You seem to be easily provoked by my reference to post-Godhra violence. You know that I am not the kind of person who will condone the killing of 59 people in Godhra. For your sake, I would like to place it on record my strongest condemnation of brutal killing of those hapless passengers. Violence is violence whether it was carried out by the minority or majority communities. What makes post-Godhra violence more frightening is the active connivance of the State administration in the well-planned retaliation that left nearly 2000 people dead in what could be described as a carnival of violence. Your inclination to fall prey to the Sangh Parivar narrative of `our' victims and `their' victims betrays your failure to acknowledge the seriousness of the genocide carried out with the support of the Modi government. You seem to be easily provoked by your own perceived fear that all secularists are against the Hindus. Emotional outrage is no answer to real problems. The term post-Godhra in no way diminishes the gravity of the killing of Hindu pilgrims on board the train in Godhra. Educated people like us should be more balanced when it comes to questions which can trigger passions centred on the idea of `us' versus `them'. Hindus are the most tolerant people. I have no doubt about it. And the Sangh Parivar should not be allowed to represent the true spirit of Hindutva. I will not say this about Islam, because I believe that it is the most intolerant religion today. But I do not hate Muslims as I do not hate Hindus, Christians, Jews and gays and any other sect.
As for your interest in what really happened in Godhra that black day, I am not a scholar on the issue. But I can tell you one thing. Almost all those allegedly involved in the Godhra incident are behind bars now. All those who masterminded the post-Godhra are still at large. It was for the first time in India's judicial history that the Supreme Court allowed the trial of cases of violence outside the State where they occurred. That speaks volumes about the seriousness of the incidents. My condemnation or your outrage are only of marginal importance. What is important is justice to the victims of violence - both Godhra and post-Godhra.
Yes, there is mystery behind the train carnage. (you can get some details from http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2006/stories/20030328003203700.htm)Let the truth be brought out by the Commissions appointed by the government.
You seem to be stuck on the post Godra Era, while the world has moved on. Just yesterday, there was a blast in Lahore and among the 15 killed were 9 policemen. I think it was Napoleon who said that the death of one person is a matter of personal loss; the deaths of many people is a matter for records.
That is why perhaps we fail to see the tragedy happening around us all the time, but spent hours debating on what has become a blood stained part of history.
But the difference, my dear friend, is that Gujarat was the ultimate in violent orgy. Do not for a moment assume that I do not have eyes to sees and ears to listen to the soundless cry that emanated from the cut womb of a preganant woman and the crushed foetus. I do. I am ashamed. More so because the electronic media captured some women inciting the passions of their men from their terraced houses. Nothing - I say nothing could possibly erase the memory of that brutally agonising scene from my delinquent memory.
That shows the different dimensions of people caught up in a carnival of violence as you have mentioned.
Now let us get down to basics. Gujarat is not new to communal riots and bloodshed. It began right in earnest in 19th century itself. Communal riots happen everywhere and all the time. At present we are witnessing the Kandhamal riots between Hindus and Christians. Have you analised the reason behind it? Let me explain. The Dalits among Hindus did a mass conversion to Christianity some years back. Now they are demanding reservation as Dalit Christians! Untill they had been converted, the priests were after them with loads of food and fuel. But as soon as the coffers have been filled with the quota of conversions, the church began the walk back. Now Hindus being Hindus, who cannot look beyond caste were in disagreement of reservation being served on a platter to those who had converted. I would call it the right recipe for riots.
The Gujarat community is nothing like ours. They talk in terms of money and money only. They are world ahead of other communities in their entrepreurship and are ready to bulldoze over anything that stand on their way. The ghettoisation of Muslims also take its toll on a society already on the fringes of communal hatred. Mobocracy cannot be called by any other name. Like in Emperor Jones, the King realises that it is the collective subconscious of the negroid race that had made him so. Too Freudian perhaps, but easy to understand.
By the same yardstick, if you measure the terror attacks on innocent victims, the victims and their relatives should grab at your sympathy. Killed by a mad man's insane beliefs? Around 3000 people lost their lives in afew minutes time on 9/11. Double the amount of people were maimed. What kind of war is this?
As for you observation that Gujarat was state sponsored, I would like to add the Congress machinery as well. Jagdish Tytler is a living example. Just watch the drama of the political nexus rising to take up arms against hapless Sikhs in 1984. You say that all those who masterminded the orgy of violence post Godra are at large. My dear friend, I would like to bring to your notice that even the 84 victims have not got their share of justice. And Gujarat happened in 2002 openly on the roads and gullies, with TV cameras following the armed men, the bloodbath, the war cries, the hatred, the divide and - the dead.
There is nothing wrong in debating history's blood stained past. Such things should never happen in the civilised world we are living in. That is why we still remember Holocaust. That is why we still talk about Gujarat violence. Srebrenica, East Timur, Saddam's attacks on Kurds. Ethnic cleansing is worst kind of violence. Your argument suggesting that we should not invoke spectres of blood stained past because we have to discuss present tragedies is no argument. And you contradict yourself by recalling the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Who said that killing of nearly 5000 sikhs was less important than that of nearly 2000 Muslims in Gujarat? Not me. What you are doing is picking a quarrel on what I highlighted as an example of how political parties accuse the media of being engaged in propaganda when their cruelties are exposed. Read my original post. Post-godhra carnage was mentioned as an example to further my argument in defence of liberal media. Your analysis of the Kandhamal riots is interesting because it cynical. Are you suggesting that the demand by converted Dalits for Dalit Christian status justifies attacks on them by the Sangh Parivar thugs? Personally I will defend Dalit Christians' right to demand Dalit status. Conversion cannot be expected to raise their social status overnight. Conversion may be their way of escaping from the humiliating caste system, but the converted people carries the legacy of being victims of social injustice for centuries. The question of Islamic terror (I am not politically correct like you and I call a spade a spade) is a separate topic for discussion. We can debate it separately.
Neither am I politically correct, but because I am a woman, the dalitest of the dalits, the lowest rung of humanity, another caste altogether - that is the reason for my digressions. No I am not trying to hide behind my own skirt, but the difference always exist.
Look at the freedom issue and the ensuing difficulty of getting to the basics or getting at the root of things. Dear friend, freedom is a 'four' letter word, more so for people like me who crave for intelligent company, mainly male. Because I do not have access to intelligent women and who are anyway considered untouchables.
Your carping on BC Godra, PC Godra and AC Godra could be due to the collective subconscious in the Emperer Jones story.
Sorry, my dear friend, I can't get the real point you want to convey in the collective sub-consciousness theme. Are you suggesting...? No I don't want to misread what you may not have intended to drive home. Please clarify. I am not an expert in reading between the lines.
A line is a line
With some blurred meaning in between
And meaninglessness beyond.
Period.
Read a short story I am writing on line. Two paragraphs daily or more if I feel like it.
Title - THE C-LIST
Get Set GO -
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