media ethic

We live in an age where history is getting compressed. The kind of changes which took at least 30 years to materialize is taking place in a matter of five or six years. And nowhere is this trend more visible than in the media world. A paradigm shift has taken place in the way we use and consume information. Nowadays, we get our information from diverse sources, unlike in the past when people were passive recipient of news and information handed down from state and traditional broadsheet newspapers, today we are increasingly relying more and more on the world wide web. To say that the advent of internet has radically altered the whole template of media industry would be an understatement. This digital age has enabled us to not only consume information but also create content and subjecting those to peer review. It has democratized knowledge and information in a way which was unimaginable some twenty, thirty years ago. Recently we saw the power of social media like facebook and twitter during that shambolic election in Iran when people used the medium of micro blogging site like twitter to expose the real state of affairs in the country in fact social media was being seen as more authentic source over there than the conventional media in terms of getting the real news of the high handedness of the regime out there in the public domain. And how can one forget the so called ‘’Arab Spring’’ in Egypt where hundreds and thousands of people galvanized themselves on the ground in Tahrir Square using social media to garner support world wide to get rid of tyrannical Hosni Mubarak regime.

In most of the countries today, the governments are waking up to the reality of this modern day information age. They see the last vestige of control over their people slipping away from their hands and they are becoming paranoid. They see phantoms everywhere and are forever devising new ways to either control or censor the internet which has resulted in a severe backlash from the online community who are trying to be one step ahead of the government. It is a kind of cat and mouse game at the moment which will have serious implication for the future of free flow of speech and ideas.

The above mentioned is one facet of the power game going on in the media world. The other disturbing trend is the traditional media’s too much closeness to the powers that be where the proprietors and editors of newspapers or  news networks start to curry favors with those in positions of power and authority in order to gain access and also to feather their own nests. The recent scandal surrounding the media Moghul Rupert Murdoch in UK is a very grim reminder of what happens when all the journalistic ethics are given a go by to chase a story just to be one up on your rivals. Even if it means hacking into the phone of ordinary people, one of whom happens to be a dead rape victim. The Leveson inquiry that followed clearly exposed the rot in the British media. Here in India we are increasingly seeing the menace of paid news where political parties are quite willing to pay large amounts of money to newspapers to get positive coverage and lots of papers are ready to do their biddings. There was a shameful spectacle of two reporters of Zee news brazenly negotiating the price for blacking out a coverage where a steel company promoted by the Congress MP Naveen Jindal was alleged to have indulged in corrupt practices to get a coal block allocated. Fortunately, the same media fraternity raised this matter after the tape of the meeting was leaked by that MP complaining that he was being blackmailed by those reporters. These two gentlemen are in police custody and are awaiting the outcome of an investigation. But they were caught, we don’t know how many go scot free because of this insidious nexus between those who holds the levers of power and those whose job it is to be the watchdog and hold up a mirror to the society. The journalists are in a unique position to have a ringside view of the goings on in society and polity at large. They literally write the first draft of history, but they must do this as a spectator and not become players.