Media Responsibility
Government of India constituted many committees to recommend reforms in its governance. Some of these committees have made brilliant suggestions. Government accepted some of these and rejected others. And today, those-in-the-know opine that reforms will come in only through pressure from civil society - NGOs, media etc.
The Right to Information Act, which is thorny to both bureaucrats and politicians, came in due to agitations from the civil society.
But then, we hardly get the impression that our media is a responsible player in evolving our governance set-up. Leave the tabloid journalism, set aside the obvious political leanings of newspapers. There needs to be a fundamental shift in the way we report, the way we transmit news to people.
Our reporting is event-driven. News items focus on "what" of the event. A bridge collapses, our newspapers focus on the "what". A bridge collapsed. Seven cars and an autorickshaw got crushed. So and so number of people died. Add to that a picture that rivets you to the gore of "what" happened. "What" did the Chief Minister say? "What" did the public say, think, feel..?
In this flood of "whats", the "why" is relegated to the Nth page with drab font and print that only few read. A report on the second page says "No coordination in work", "No Disaster Management Plan". Shouldn't this "why" be on the front page??
Isn't that the responsible way to focus attention on the cause instead of highlighting the symptoms? The headline should read "Lack of coordination kills 'n' and lack of a disaster management plan kills 'm'".
Really, should we care about the real exact event that was the immediate cause? I think we should focus on the disease instead.
The Right to Information Act, which is thorny to both bureaucrats and politicians, came in due to agitations from the civil society.
But then, we hardly get the impression that our media is a responsible player in evolving our governance set-up. Leave the tabloid journalism, set aside the obvious political leanings of newspapers. There needs to be a fundamental shift in the way we report, the way we transmit news to people.
Our reporting is event-driven. News items focus on "what" of the event. A bridge collapses, our newspapers focus on the "what". A bridge collapsed. Seven cars and an autorickshaw got crushed. So and so number of people died. Add to that a picture that rivets you to the gore of "what" happened. "What" did the Chief Minister say? "What" did the public say, think, feel..?
In this flood of "whats", the "why" is relegated to the Nth page with drab font and print that only few read. A report on the second page says "No coordination in work", "No Disaster Management Plan". Shouldn't this "why" be on the front page??
Isn't that the responsible way to focus attention on the cause instead of highlighting the symptoms? The headline should read "Lack of coordination kills 'n' and lack of a disaster management plan kills 'm'".
Really, should we care about the real exact event that was the immediate cause? I think we should focus on the disease instead.
posted by Anand at 11:20 PM
3 Comments:
Very timely post. My parents were telling me about exactly this when we talked about the Hyd blasts. However, I think there are two basic reasons for all this:
1) Gory pictures move papers. The editors might be willing to write more "editorial"-ly articles, but the common man votes for the gory pictures with his money.
2) Too many sources of information. The current society has newspapers, TV, news websites, blogs, (radio?) in an ever increasing list of sources of information. Given this, the natural urge of any source would be to publish every piece of information asap -- not really the best environment for analyzing news/getting to the root cause...
When you report "what", it is objective because you know what has happened.
But if you want to publish "why" it becomes subjective.You cannot pinpoint "why", especially in a democratic environment.
That is why no newspaper publishes "why" on the front page with a catchy font. Otherwise, it would be termed as sensational journalism by
our cynics.
Ramprasad,
Newspapers today do publish information about "why" something happened in an objective way. Sometimes they are able to do it right away, sometimes only after facts have emerged at a later date. For instance, we do know that some people lost their lives as they could not reach a hospital in time due to traffic and a general lack of disaster management.
I advocate that such items be put out in an eye-catching manner on the front page, instead of leaving it to one of those middle pages. It is just a change in focus of reporting. Instead of focusing on "what", "who", "how many", focus on "why".
I believe it can have a powerful affect on people's awareness.
I also think that this can be done without affecting readership. In fact, it might increase.
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