Off the cuff: Freedom of press in era of smartphones
Media’s penchant for sensational news has led to cynicism and distrust by the readers
It was National Press Day in India recently and Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu, who often speaks in rhymes, said journalism in the past was a ‘mission’, now it is converted to ‘commission’.
“Many of them are doing omission and also giving remission, to the truth, forgetting their own mission,” he said, chiding the journos, who enjoy the VP’s frequent foray into versification.
What I think he was telling the media was that you guys are now just ‘paid journalists’, hacks, who will write good things, puff pieces, to the highest bidder.
Maybe he is right because now you can get a terrific review of the latest movie even if it is a flop, or get a nice write-up of the marvellous things your local politician has done for his constituency and his people, even if he is invisible most of the time, and it can even create a riot, if the price is right.
Naidu said the ‘commission’ thing was also happening in the fields of medicine and education.
Things were bad enough earlier as the internet spelt doom for print publications as the tech-savvy younger generation went online to get their news, and when social media burst into the virtual scene, reporters and editors lost their prestigious posts as upholders of the truth as citizens became journalists and began writing their own ‘true’ news.
The vice-president said the press has the freedom to write anything, but he said the “torch bearers of news must always have the nation’s interest in mind”.
The National Press Day is observed every year across India on November 16. It marks the presence of an independent and responsible press in India, which is considered as the fourth pillar of democracy.
Prakash Javadekar, minister of information and broadcasting and also minister of environment, forests and climate change, said “press freedom is the essence of a vibrant democracy. this was trampled upon by the congress during emergency. We [the BJP Government] are ensuring full freedom to the press.”
The period between 1975 and 1977 was a dark time for the media when former prime minister Indira Gandhi, declared a state of Emergency in the country and gagged the press.
Incidentally, the first English language weekly newspaper in the subcontinent was the Bengal Gazette published from Calcutta (now Kolkata), in 1780 and edited by a rather eccentric Irishman, James Augustus Hickey.
He fell foul of the East India Company (the huge conglomerate that ruled over India), which was planning to start a rival newspaper, India Gazette, and was jailed for writing a story about bribe-taking by a Company’s executive and also by Mariam, wife of Governor-General Warren Hastings. He was jailed and eventually had to cease publication.
Hickey’s press was shut down and the paper’s types were sold to India Gazette.
Ever since the time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the media was “bazaru’ (‘bought’ in Hindi) and his colleagues in the cabinet termed the press as ‘presstitutes’, things have gone horribly wrong for journos in India.
Journalists who write the unsavoury truth have sometimes been arrested and trolled on social media and threatened with things worse than death.
Things were bad enough earlier as the internet spelt doom for print publications as the tech-savvy younger generation went online to get their news, and when social media burst into the virtual scene, reporters and editors lost their prestigious posts as upholders of the truth as citizens became journalists and began writing their own ‘true’ news.
Meanwhile, media’s chase for sensational news (that neither informed or educated but only entertained) led to cynicism from the consumers of news and eventually disenchantment and distrust of the media.
Today, newspapers are still delivered to tenants in the apartment block where I am staying but this however, is a boomer community that still enjoys reading a physical newspaper in the morning with a cup of coffee.
Meanwhile, everyone else in the city whips out a smartphone to catch the latest headlines and am sure have not heard of National Press Day.
— Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. Twitter: @mahmood_saberi