Can The Media Be Trusted Anymore?

Prameyanews English

Published By : Prameya News Bureau | July 19, 2022 IST

Sutanu Guru, Executive Director, C Voter Research Foundation It is foolish to expect journalists and media professionals to be totally independent, objective and unbiased. They are human beings. But rather than being observers, they have become active participants in political and ideological wars. Two recent incidents related to two national TV channels reflect the crisis of credibility confronting Indian media. In the first one, an anchor at Zee TV said misleading things that showed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in poor light. The anchor apologised the very next day. But FIRs were promptly registered and Chattisgarh police landed up at the residence of the anchor in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh to arrest him. The Uttar Pradesh police did not allow their Chattisgarh counterparts to execute the arrest warrant. In any case, the Supreme Court has granted the anchor protection from arrest. This incident created a huge controversy. Many Pro Narendra Modi folks denounced Chhattisgarh police while anti-Modi folks wanted the anchor to be arrested. Freedom of speech was not a concern for either camp. The second, more recent incident, did not generate as much controversy except in social media. The former Sri Lanka President GotabaayaRajapaksa fled his country as protestors rampaged through his palace and landed in Maldives. As analysts wondered where he would spend time in exile, NDTV sent out a tweet from its verified handle that the Indian government was going to helpGotabaya with a private jet so that he could move on to Singapore. The Indian government has remained steadfastly neutral during the crisis in Sri Lanka and maintained that it stands by the people of Sri Lanka. There was an angry response to the NDTV tweet from both the Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian Embassy in Maldives denying the misleading and patently false story. There was storm of protest in social media. NDTV quietly withdrew and deleted the tweet. No apologies were offered and no arrest warrant was issued. These two incidents and the channels sum up all that is wrong with the media in India. Anyone who even casually follows the media in this country knows this: Zee will rarely if ever do a story that shows the Narendra Modi government in a poor light. Correspondingly, NDTV will rarely if ever do a story that shows the Narendra Modi government in a good light. There is nothing wrong with being ideologically tilting this way or that. In advanced democracies like the United States and England, the media openly takes a stand for or against political parties and leaders. For example, in the United States, you know you will watch commentary that is favourable to the Democrats. Similarly, you know commentary will be favourable to Republicans if you watch Fox News. The England based magazine The Economist regularly endorses candidates when elections happen in major democracies. It is a different matter that the magazine has been making a fool of itself in recent times. Both in 2014 and 2019, it endorsed Rahul Gandhi over Narendra Modi as the popular choice to lead India. Unlike what so called pundits and intellectuals think, citizens in democracies are not fools. They know what political leaders, parties and even the media stand for. They make their electoral choices based on ideological, identity and economic issues. They listen to what the media says, but rarely follow the opinion based diktats of media stars while going to vote. Even media stars with over inflated egos know this to be a reality. To that extent, the media does play an important role: as long it separates opinion from delivering fact and data based information to citizens. The problem with contemporary media, both in advanced democracies like the US and relatively younger ones in India is that information is being either suppressed deliberately or false information with misleading data is being presented to suit ideological agendas. Let’s start with the US. During the presidential elections in 2020, the New York Post did a story that claimed to have proof that Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic candidate Joe Biden, had been getting money from Chinese and Ukrainian companies in a suspicious manner. The story was completely blacked out by the rest of the media. Even Twitter prohibited anyone from forwarding the New York Post to anyone. Now, the media in the US accepts that Hunter Biden might have done something illegal and the FBI is investigating him. Now lets come to India. Media that is favourably disposed towards the current regime simply refuse to point out the fact that the handling of the second wave of the Pandemic in April and May, 2021 was a disaster that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Data doesn’t matter to them. Similarly, media that dislikes the current regime refuses to acknowledge that giving 200 crore doses of the vaccine is a huge achievement. Data doesn’t matter to them either. In such a situation, how can any sensible person trust the media?

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