INDIAN JOURNALISM - II

            

  Hi, readers after a long time we are going get insights on Indian media not as a continuation but as an upgraded version of Indian Journalism. 

Media 

   The media was established itself as formal institutions in the history for generate awareness and inform masses but sadly those institutions evolved into a thing that easily governs masses. Morally press institutions are always quasi-public because it must act as the connection between government and people even though it must free of the former.

Laws and media in India 

            Being in the foreign rule for almost 200 years has taught the constitution-makers of  India republic need for robust and free press.infact the freedom movement mostly depends on the press as they had a taste of colonial acts like rowlatt act, Lytton'svernacular press act of  1878 etc.. so even though the part iii of Indian constitution does not explicitly mention it has the freedom it wants as said by Dr Ambedkar, however, had mentioned that being part of the guarantees of Freedom of Speech and Expression in Article 19 (1) (a) of the constitution it was not necessary to stipulate the freedom of press separately it has come along with Article 19(2) to prevent the misuse of the former. 

            Press Council is a mechanism for the press to regulate itself. even though it is a statutory body it is out of government control at least as per law books. Reason for this is in the democratic society the press needs to be free and reasonable, Thus the press council of India functions under the Press Council Act 1978. was established for the first time in 1966 and has members from a wide spectrum.

Media Ethics

     Due to the vital role of media, it was proudly called as the fourth pillar of democracy because it has power to a catalyst and shape the masses opinion even the outcome of the election result develop sentiments to an incident most of the viewers watch only one tv channel regularly so mostly their views are biased, so watch the news from more than one channel each present same news just the opposite way.

Ethical dilemmas 

      After the 1995 supreme court judgement telling airwaves are public property lead to liberalisation of media. Now more Indians became aware of foreign media impacting the policy decisions, using as a tool of cultural imperialism, western business and foreign policy interest in turn hampering national security 

Who owns Media in India   

• NDTV -CEO of this company is Prannoy Roy who is related to Prakash karat, the General Secretary of Communist Party of India.
• Sun TV owned by Kalanadhi Maran, His brother is the MP of the DMK-Dravida Munnetra Kazagam and a close relative of late Karunanidhi
• Republic tv owned by Arnab Goswami, his father is BJP member  and Rajeev Chandrasekar is the former investor, business partner is the co-founder of Republic TV turned BJP MP. 
• Sakal Media - Abhijit Pawar is the Managing Director of the Sakal Media Group son of Pratap Pawar  and he is the younger brother of Sharad Pawar
• NEWS 18's major share is with reliance group
• TheTimes group is owned by the Jain family inherited from  Birla's
• Zee Media Corporation is a part of Essel Group, headed by Subhash Chandra.

    From the above points, we can safely conclude that most of the popular media both in print and tv media were controlled by either big corporate or political group.(above points are taken from report of reporters without borders'Who owns The Media in India)

WHAT IS HAPPENING

    News is meant to be objective, fair and neutral ,but because of the affiliation and advertisement income the divide between the news and ads faded very much in indian media like selling the editorial space particularly during election time .Paid news become very menace in the election process.with vested intrest some media houses are incresingly publish news according to the wish of payer.In addition, owners of media organizations have financial relationships, including shareholdings,with advertisers, resulting in only favourable information about such advertisers and concealing the unfavourable information

 

What can be done 

            Actually, it is not very easy to produce foolproof system, but to some extent like giving more powers to press council of India, setting up of tribunal, creating a statutory regulatory body. we must revamp. The advertisement industry some accountability must be developed.

    Thus acts of some media group lead to a loss in faith of all others who were actually many standing against injustice.Media is very important for free society lets hope for best ethical and honest media