These are, we are told, exciting times for those in the media.
Not an unsubstantiated, flippant contention one would say if one is abreast of all the investments that have been pouring in, the plethora of newspapers and magazines that are being launched every other day, or for that matter the television channels that are going on air till you stop losing count on your fingers. And if you are aware of all the technological breakthroughs that is driving communications today, you would stand firmly convinced that it is indeed so. The media is in flux, and excitingly so.
But then it is also time for us to take stock of things by going beyond the exciting headlines that have been tingling our fertile imagination. We need to look at the trees, and miss the forest, for once. For the sake of convenience and space constraints, this write-up will look only at the news media and desist from pedantic number-crunching. There are a number of elements that have been shaping the news media in recent times, especially the last decade-and-half or so.
Internet and so-called new media: If anything has had the maximum and irreversible impact on the media scene overall, it has been the Internet – both in terms of the working of a news establishment itself, as well as bringing about some fundamental sense of transparency as well.
The Internet together with mobile phones, no one will wrangle, has reshaped communications. Those of us who were in the news-gathering profession in the pre-Internet days are in a position to assert how much it has changed things within an establishment. The entire process has become immediate and efficient. If you need to get in touch with a news source, you can do that with consummate ease now. If correspondents need to get in touch with the office either to file a story or for whatever other reason, they can do as effortlessly. And immediacy. In other words, the timelag that earlier existed between the time of the incident and breaking it in the form of a news item has been brought down to a minimum. Twenty years back in time, a stale or dead story could still be considered news; now they have no news value.
This same technology has also had another corollary fallout too – breaking news now no longer remains the sole proprietory prerogative of journalists or the news media. Anyone can break news – either by communicating the same to a news establishment, or doing it on one’s own through a blog or an email forum, or any such platform. In many markets/countries, this has put journalists on their toes. News set-ups also have to go beyond the headlines. There is no other way out for them.
Media monoliths: If you look at the holding structures of media companies, you will realise these are becoming more consolidated with every passing day. On the face of it, nothing could be better if a journalist were to be looking for professional security (no, I am not alluding to job security here). A stable industry ought to mean stability for one and sundry. But that is not what it is all about.
For, this pecuniary consolidation comes with an injurious cross-media promotional tag. Nothing can be more detrimental to a society which strives to call itself a democratic one, than a media set-up which is in a position to dictate what is news as well as dilute anything that a good journalist would construe as newsworthy.
Companies are becoming bigger, and big media is just that – big media. Exciting times, indeed for them. But for journalists worth their salt, it isn’t. That’s because for journalists this is a profession, for owners it is nothing but business. So when business interests hold sway over all others, the basic tenets of journalism fall by the wayside.
Newsworthiness: There’s little point debating about objectivity, for objectivity itself is a very subjective term. Our respective definitions of objectivity depend on our value systems as well as ethics. Journalists, media owners, media critics, the citizenry – all have the unfettered right to set their own parameters of objectiveness/objectivity. On the other hand, it does not suit anyone to sit on a pedestal and determine terms.
Let’s not go around in circles, but see what’s happening now. With the media industry smothering the journalistic profession, it is news itself which has become the casualty. And the rule of the game is that there are none.
Consumerism: This is something that is bound to happen in a consumerist, liberalised society. It comes with the package. Irrespective of whether we like it or not, one thing is certain – we have to live with it.
The rancour that we see whenever this issue is debated unfortunately leaves no room either for middle ground, or for a way out. On one hand, we have media organisations who allegedly leave no stone unturned to get higher NRS/IRS or TAM ratings. On the other are multifarous stakeholders all of who either want to ordain requisites or want their share of unsavoury mileage.
Are we concerned about consumerism? Or populism? Or both? It is difficult to draw lines here because quite often they are synonymous.
There can be nothing wrong if a particular news item is read or viewed by millions of people. After all, what can be better in a democracy? If someone’s readership/viewership goes up on account of this and he/she makes money out of it, no one should be grudging it. This, needless to say, does not happen because it is the flipside to this very argument that can be seen at play every day, everywhere. What rules is unbridled, brazen populism. News value plummets to a zero, for quite often there is neither news nor any value in what we are made to read or see.
While no one in his/her right senses can justify these acts of journalistic misdemeanour, it is equally important to understand this phenomenon. Just as in a democracy we have the politicians we deserve, in the same society we get the media we deserve as well. If millions in this country have no other work but sit glued to their idiot boxes for days on an end watching frivolities, maybe we deserve this garbage.
If we want mature journalism to behold, we ourselves have to mature too. Of course, this “we” is not confined to readers of this write-up.
There are other reasons too as to why we are seeing so much of bad journalism.
Quality professionals: If you have a hard heart-to-heart talk with veteran journalists, they will tell you there is a famine of two things – quality journalists, and quality content. The first does have a bearing on the second. But why so?
Let’s hark back a decade or so. When the cable-and-television industry took off, innumerable jobs were created. Many senior and mid-level journalists migrated to the broadcast media. This did two things. For one, it created a vacuum in the newspaper industry. Secondly, the migration numbers were not enough to sustain television news channels themselves. This was deleterious for both.
One must understand that journalism is not a profession like medicine or accountancy or law. A degree in journalism means nothing – one has to grow in the profession. You can have some elementary skill-sets when you come out of college, but building a sense of news judgment happens only over time. And you need to have good bosses to help you do that. Else, the journalism that you do is nothing short of a sordid joke. It is not without reason that the juvenile delinquency that we are subjected to, particularly by quite a few news channels, are precisely that.
The level of professional maturity we expect from journalists will not level off till the industry continues to grow. That’s because the industry is growing at a frenetic pace, and the quantity of quality journalists is not apace. Only after the industry reaches a plateau, that we can expect the quality of journalism to stabilise as well.
Accountability: The news media has to be accountable. More than anyone, journalists have to be accountable to the people. They are the readers and viewers. The way things stand, journalists are not accountable. The owners, however, are — to their political and corporate interests and compulsions.
No, things are not as bad this write-up, so far, might suggest. There has been a dramatic improvement in the quality of content in at least one major multi-edition newspaper I can think of. It does not look like a preposterous dumping ground for ads as it did ten years ago. It carries fewer journalistic, grammatical and linguistic errors too. It is finally the audience which decides the quality of the product. When audiences mature, the products do too. And those who make these products.
There are newspapers and other news publications which have recently introduced the practice of carrying the email addresses of the reporters/writers concerned. This is one short, but measured, step into introducing a process of transparency.
Something that one would definitely like to see would be the respective code of ethics on the websites of all news establishments. If you publish it on the site, it means you are transparent. If you don’t, then something is wrong with you. And if you don’t have one, you probably shouldn’t be in the news business.
Citizen journalism: This ought to have been the future, but the way things are shaping up a number of things leave a lot to be desired.
Many established news set-ups are already twisting this to their own advantage. What you have in hand effectively is a roll of freelancers who you don’t have to pay. You get your news, but it doesn’t cost you a dime. And if promote this feature, you are also likely get more readers and viewers. The more the merrier.
There are a number of so-called citizen journalism sites that have cropped all over the Internet. If you care to spend some time browsing through many of them you will conclude that most items have precious little to do with journalism. You just get views, not news. Giving a voice to opinions is one thing, manipulating views into news is quite another. So where’s the difference with the big, bad mainstream media?
This is not to insist that citizen journalism has no value, but to point out the existing practices that are harmfully manoeuvering this exercise. Citizen journalism works best in crisis situations. The best news output during the Mumbai floods of last year came in the form of ordinary people who posted stories, photographs and videos on the Internet. When the junta in Burma clamped down on the established media a few months back, the news that was worth it trickled out of the country through its citizens who risked their lives through their reporting.
There is another positive aspect – citizen journalism becomes a watchdog that keeps a watch on the media itself. If media organisations themselves are transparent and give a voice to the people, there would be no need for this though.
These are just a few elements that one could touch upon. Each subset of this write-up can be blown up into a full-fledged research paper. That’s what makes it exciting.
