Last week, we witnessed a rather unfortunate incident in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where a reporter named Sanjay Rana courageously questioned an elected representative as to why the promises made by her regarding some projects weren’t completed? He was simply doing his job of highlighting public woes but he forgot that he was speaking against a government which does not like to be questioned. Consequently, what followed is hard to believe. The entire episode was given a different twist with the poor journo being arrested and tied with ropes like a dreaded terrorist. Also, he was charged with serious allegations, such as he was aggressive, he hurled abuses and even physically assaulted the said MLA, fortunately for him, the entire episode is recorded and available on You tube for all to see and decide.
In the next few days, the entire episode will die down but many people like Sanjay Rana will not speak against the ruling and hence I sincerely feel the ruling has achieved what they wanted of not allowing people to ask questions.
The media which is considered as a watchdog and the 4th pillar in a democracy is reduced to being a puppet for vested interests.
Which brings us to the question, What is the role of the media today?
Not a very difficult question. Tune into the 9 pm news and you are served with lot of hate, against a particular community or against a political party or maybe an opposition member, in short anyone asking a question can be termed anti-national.
Many times, we are served with absurd news which will put any sensible person to shame, the other day, the anchor at the 9 pm news, tried his best to put forward the argument that the country is making huge progress and the fall in rupee value against the dollar was a good sign, how can we forget, when the news channels tried their best to inform us about the language spoken and the medical advances of the aliens, haven’t we witnessed the news we got during the Ukraine-Russia war, where the anchors claimed that Russia was about to strike nuclear in some time (In-fact this exaggeration went to an extent that the Information and Broadcasting Ministry had to issue a warning to the news channels to stop ‘exaggerating news), and of course how can we forget the news anchors who were smiling when the bull dozers were about to demolish houses in UP, as if they were happy when somebody’s house is being demolished.
The race for TRPs have set an agenda and we are equally responsible if we get this thrash.
Of course, this is not to belittle the entire media. We still find many independent journalists and a few social media platforms as well as print media which is holding on to its integrity and ethics. But they are very few.
According to a report by a Global Media watchdog, India’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index has fallen down to 150th position from last year’s 142nd rank out of 180 countries. Yes, our neighbouring countries are below us –Pakistan at 157 and Bangladesh at 167 but our competition is not our neighbours but our competition has to be with Norway, Denmark and Sweden who are sitting at 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Let us all contribute to bring back the glory of our media.
