This is a short one, limited to my profession, but
significant nevertheless.
Three episodes this past week – a starlet’s tiff with The
Times of India; heckling of Rajdeep Sardesai in New York; and Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s radio address on the lines of Roosevelt’s fireside chats of
1933-44 – have underscored the crossroads media finds itself standing at.
The first incident was symptomatic of what has gone wrong
with the media in general – of the impulse to cater to the lowest common
denominator. Lest the onus be thrust on the easy scapegoat of media ownership,
it was an editorial call and the locus of responsibility remains firmly with
the editorial community, flagged as much by an editor from within the
organization.
The second reflected an increasing disconnect between media
and society. Without nitpicking into who was at greater fault, the episode
showed the mistrust of the profession, and the flippancy it attracts now. Just
as the crowd did not understand – much less appreciate – the concept of a
contrarian press, the editor too got carried away with the activist streak in
him.
And the third episode only draws attention to mainstream
media’s irrelevance, brutally rubbed in by a sharp politician. In reaching his
audience over the head of the self obsessed editor, Modi perhaps rang a loud
warning bell. Shape up or ship out. A cribbing note by a restless Editors’
Guild demanding greater access to the establishment is no answer.
In response to a question asked to him by the author at an
IIM-Ahmedabad talk about a year ago, Sardesai had admitted that news
television’s path today had become a race to the bottom. It came from someone well placed to at least influence the momentum of that race.
Sadly, newsmen have become prisoners of their own celebrity. Anonymity – once a
weapon in the hands of the faceless editor is now an even more potent missile
of the netizen. Television’s basic need of a face to connect means the benefit
of distance too has gone. We are in the muck of our own making.
In the Bond movie “Tomorrow never Dies” media mogul Elliot
Carver claims he is not interested in a war he did not start, after having
plotted the third world war by triggering a military exchange between China and
not so great Britain. Clearly, agenda setting has its glamour. It’s
pro-ambition. It attracts raw energy. It gives aura of wielding power. Also, like
Carver, it attracts self-destruct, a state our profession finds itself in.
So what can be done? A long answer would need a thesis. In a
short one, we need to discern the difference between being a watchdog and a
hound dog, and try to reinvent ourselves as the former; of being only a mirror
to the society rather than trying to be the celebrity in front of it; of giving
up the grandeur of power. Or the hubris would get back at us like a Greek
tragedy.
