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Propaganda and campaign journalism decried

AHMEDABAD: The Editor-in-chief of The Hindu, N. Ram, on Sunday strongly criticised the “propaganda and campaign journalism,” particularly in the electronic media, and called upon management experts to find a solution to balance the economic needs of the print media with journalistic interests to protect the core value of journalism.

Stressing the need for the media to play an important “agenda-building role” to stamp out social evils such as child labour, Mr. Ram said he was pained at the present trend in the media, more pronouncedly in the electronic media, of “propaganda and campaign journalism” where a reporter was required to give “snap judgments” on all kinds of issues without knowing anything about the subject and the anchor person asking all sorts of questions. Such careless treatment of important issues by the media which was expected to shape the opinion of the masses could not be taken lightly.

Mr. Ram was speaking on “Media Outlook 2011,” the role of the media in the light of India marching “Towards Economic Leadership” at the annual jamboree of the students of the business schools in the country and abroad organised by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. “India Towards Economic Leadership” was the theme of the four-day event, Confluence 2007, which concluded on Sunday.

He brought out the striking contrast of opinions about India’s economic growth with one side expressing abundant optimism and the other extreme scepticism and regretted that successive governments had done “remarkably little” to challenge the increasing gap between the rich and poor.

Reminding the audience how the “India Shining” campaign boomeranged on the ruling party in the last parliamentary elections, he pointed out that many noted economists and social activists had correctly called for a “cautious optimism” to balance economic growth and social deprivation to usher in true development.

Mr. Ram said the fact that over 1.5 lakh farmers had committed suicide in the last nine years with two-thirds of the deaths reported from the five comparatively progressive States of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh as also Chhattisgarh, and the survey report of the National Family Health Services bringing out little improvement in the malnutrition levels of children below three years and anaemia among married women affecting the future generation of the country, were the issues that needed to be addressed seriously, but had shown only the “gigantic failure” of national politics.

With job opportunities shrinking in the manufacturing, unorganised and agricultural sectors, life in the countryside was becoming more and more difficult and policy makers and the management experts needed to give a serious thought to creating more job opportunities and bridging the poor-rich gap. Though India and China faced almost a similar situation, China was now better placed as it had attacked the problem of mass poverty and malnutrition in the rural areas.

Describing the growth of the media in the backdrop of the economic liberalisation policy, Mr. Ram said that unlike in some developed countries in Europe and the United States where the circulation of newspapers had decreased, in India all sections of the media, print, electronic and even FM radio, were showing a remarkable growth, but lagged far behind other countries in the use of knowledge-based internet.

He asked the management experts to develop infrastructure for increasing internet usage and take the medium to the countryside as part of the media’s important “educational role.”

Regretting the attitude of some media managements in treating news as just another “commodity” and means to raise their profits, Mr. Ram said the increasing dependence of newspapers on advertisements was threatening “core journalism.” Some newspapers did not even appoint editors and the marketing forces decided the editorial policies resulting in cutting down in the number of journalists.

So far, the Indian press had been behaving like a “worthwhile, valuable institution” but there was a need to get out of the vicious circle where the newspapers would not be dictated to by the corporate world. He said the role of business journalists was particularly appalling, as they were becoming increasingly corrupt, being “bought over” by corporate players to get media coverage. There was no serious attempt being made to prevent this.

He opposed any “code of practice” imposed by the government on the media, as was being considered by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, and advocated “self-regulation” by journalists. Referring to the appointment of an Ombudsman by The Hindu to guard the readers’ interests, he wondered why other major newspapers were not following the example to encourage “ethical journalism.”

He asked journalists to strictly avoid “editorialising” reports with heavy opinion and segregate “advertorial materials” from hard news for the healthy growth of media in the country.

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