MEDIA IN A MARKET DEMOCRACY

Today I met a seasoned journalist who has spent a considerable portion of his life in the print as well in the broadcasting media. As our topic of discussion veered towards the condition of print media in India , I got surprised to know  how 'Times of India' the biggest English daily of our country manages its business.

It is basically the TOI (TIMES OF INDIA) which is responsible for making newspapers sexy and attractive; it  is this paper which brought the page 3 and other soft news like stock market on the front page and gave more importance to the advertisement. The smart marketing moves that Sameer Jain the owner of TOI took turned out to be legendary. Almost all newspapers followed the model of TOI, and increased their readership through cutting prices and increasing the number of pages.

Initially, I felt very happy that due to these marketing moves a lot more readers can afford to read newspapers, as the TOI was full of soft and glamorous news with glossy layout which attracted the young college going generation also. I was thanking Mr. Samir Jain for changing the way people see newspapers, until I came across an article by Mr.Riyaj huq in his blog, Huq’s Musings. Titled "Rulers and Media Manufacturing Consent in India"    after reading it ,I realized that the content of the media post liberalization has actually changed for the worse. News has been commoditized and the readers are being treated as consumers.

In the pursuit of becoming beautiful and attractive, the media has somehow banished the concrete and more important real news to the middle pages. Even the readers themselves don’t want to see the reality any more, and remain in the make believe world of India rising, India the next superpower and various dazzling but illusionary India centric things. This tendency of the public has resulted in the leaders getting off the hook easily on matters which require intense public scrutiny. This dichotomy of newspaper readers were shown during a Pew global survey where 85% Indians who got surveyed were satisfied by the government’s performance. And a country where 7000 people die every day because of hunger, still feel that terrorism is its biggest threat.

After seeing these figures and facts the qoutes of Naom Chomskey seem apt “Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism.” 

Rather than being a watch dog, Media seems to have become a loyal dog of the government and the Market.