Democracy – A Business Venture Of Our Media

 
 

If Jesus were born today, he wouldn't be riding on a donkey. He would be flying in a plane, he would be using the media...

Not sure who said this but for sure I haven’t ever come across any quote that I agree more than this. Media across nations, irrespective of their power, position, economy or policies are largely the same. Manipulative, absurd at large, pioneer in pushing vested interest of individuals or group and most important; SOLD out or ready to sell them off. Media form a very basic pillar of any democracy. Bigger the democracy, bigger is the inherent power associated with the country’s media. Since both democracy and media are largely dependent on each other to coexist, it is no surprise that there is huge amount of similarity between these two institutions. As someone correctly said; politics is the last hideout for scoundrels; it only implies the veracity of the statement with respect to the media as well. More so when we talk about the media of the world’s largest democracy.

I would be joking if I say our democracy is full with honest people. Abiding the above mentioned quote, we only see scoundrels that fill most portion of our democratic framework. And scoundrels need all the support of the world to keep on continuing with their crooked interest. Here our media comes handy. To push agendas supporting and corroborating the morons of our political domain, it certainly is the requirement of bigger scoundrels to come forward and bail out. By design, to address the long standing nonsense called mutual convenience; our media joins hands with these scoundrels of our politics and feed us with stories and lies fabricated all around so that we start believing an entirely nonexistent set of events. By design the facts are always kept hidden from the nation since that’s what suits the scoundrels. Or worse, even facts are molded to malign someone’s character so that it would help few others. The sorry part of all this is we as the populace remain blind and encourage our media and the people associated with it to make a business out of our democracy.

But there still is a bigger concern. And the concern is the easiness at which we are fed with deceitful stories again and again. Never has the political class or the mainstream media that covers them been more out of touch with the Indian people than they are today. If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly. But alas, we still remain ignorant of the difference between facts and propagandas. We remain ignorant because we tend to believe these clowns from media and what they had to say about an issue or a person without thinking much beyond their oration. Hence we virtually handover a conducive environment on a platter to people like Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai and many other to spew their mendacities all the time without even blinking their eyes.

I never, ever have seen media this way. It's almost indescribable. Making up stories; refusing to run real stories. It's making themselves look like utter fools. There's no journalism, there is no media. There's pure, full-fledged advocacy here. The mainstream media today has the biggest disconnect with its audience that it's ever, ever had. And as the disconnect grows and as more and more people distrust them, then the media digs in more and more and says you don't know what you're talking about, you don't know how we do our jobs, you don't know what's important. Perhaps the only business where the customer is always wrong and that's the media.

Talking about the dirty business of connivance, read this phrase from Barkha Dutt, published in Hindu sometime back –

The frontal assault on him by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar - who wants a "secular face" to lead the campaign in 2014 - is evidence that Modi's instinctive unilateralism may make him the Master of Gujarat, but outside of the state no other strong politician will be ready to play Minion. The inability to be a consensus-builder and the unwillingness to display compassion and regret for the 2002 riots will mean that Modi's fiefdom can't grow into an Empire.

Read this carefully and try to see the agenda behind this piece. While the post, as it claims deals only with Rahul Vs Modi as the PM candidate for 2014, it hardly talks about that. Instead the post is all about Modi and the Gujarat 2002 riot. Frontal attack of Nitish Kumar? Really? When? Did any time being an official ally of BJP in NDA, Nitish Kumar or JD(U) lodged a formal displeasure in having Modi campaigning in Bihar? Certainly not. It was something which our media, pioneered by people like Barkha have skirted. On records, Nitish Kumar has gone ahead and refuted any such claims which our media is continuously harping on. This is only an understatement to term all such attempt at maligning Modi as plain and absolute absurd. While three independent (well, at least as per the books) investigative agencies and couple of SITs have failed to find any evidence to nail Modi on Gujarat, our media and especially people like Barkha are going gaga on this for last one decade. Is it something which our media has figured out but missed badly by our investigative agencies? Though there is no particular explanation on this question, in toto it always people like Barkha who go overboard the moment the name Narendra Modi is popped up. Hilarious? Or plain and simple vested interest? And, please someone ask this lady on what account she is so sure that Narendra Modi has no regret for 2002? Just because he is not theatric like Rahul Gandhi to do farce to showcase his concerns doesn’t mean he is delighted about 2002. And if she expects Narendra Modi to apologize and admit to the crime which he never did (well at least no proof yet) then shouldn’t she first ask the Gandhi family to erect a mega stage right at the heart of Delhi and apologize to each and every Sikh family for 1984? And yes; someone must also explain me, what this “secular face” means. One jargon which for sure is overtly misused by Congress party and our paid media at equal magnitude.

Look at another class act going by the name Rajdeep Sardesai. In this post, which should be talking about the graft charges of Nitin Gadkari; this man from nowhere brought Narendra Modi into the context. Read this phrase and again very carefully at that –

While Modi’s experiment has met with spectacular success in Gujarat, the RSS is worried that the politics of Gandhinagar could now be replicated on a larger stage in Delhi. It is this fear of Modi above all else which prompted the sangh to prop up Gadkari as their protective armour. In every interview when the BJP president was asked about the BJP’s prime ministerial contenders, he would smile, “We have six to seven people in our party who can be prime ministers".

This chap seems to know a lot about RSS’s internal matters; I am afraid which even BJP might not be knowing. Has the RSS called upon Rajdeep to showcase their concerns on the meteoric rise of Narendra Modi? How in earth Rajdeep got to know the concern and hence the induction of this Mota aadmi called Gadkari to counter Modi? As far as I know, RSS vouches for Hindutwa and they only see BJP as the party to push their interest at the national platform. For them BJP making it to Shastri Bhawan is the primary interest. With or without Modi could very well be secondary or may be a nonexistent thought. Why RSS should be so perturbed if a certain Narendra Modi or for that matter anyone else makes an identity for himself/herself worth being the next prime minister? So this line, for me is an unnecessary attempt at building an issue out of nothing and at best can be termed as a brain child of Rajdeep to push his agendas. And how does Gadkari not committed on who could be BJP’s PM candidate for 2014 implies rift between him and Modi? Just because Congress is a party only in papers while in realty it is about that one family doesn’t mean all other political parties also would have hoards of sycophants for the namesake while one person or family would be calling the shots. So when Rajdeep tries to highlight this nonissue so deliberately, it only shows how sold out his though processes are.

So a lot of people in the media, and some everyday people, really aren't in search of the truth. They're in search of something worse than that. Money, yeah. I think the media's the kind of a thing where the truth doesn't win, because it's no fun. The truth's no fun. These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over. For a healthy democracy we need a powerful media; no two ways about that. But the power should come with an unbiased approach unlike the way and manner our media is behaving since a long, long time. We all learn in school that the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government must check and balance each other. But other non state institutions must participate in this important system of checks and balances as well. These checking institutions include the academy, the media, religious institutions and NGOs.

Can our media be a real checks-and-balance body of our democracy? Can we expect this from our media? One which never stay away from pushing its agendas? Is it expected of the Rajdeeps, the Barkhas of the world to stay away from fabrication and speak the truth for once? Unfortunate, but it looks highly unlikely.