In recent years, several news media websites have come on the scene in India offering ‘independent’ reportage and analysis. What is quizzical is why these news channels, which have grown in stature and command significant following, have opted to position themselves as independent, and are seen to leverage that as a strong brand differentiator, when media platforms across the spectrum were expected to be avowedly independent with no strings attached.
The Fourth Estate, as it were, is foundational to the functioning of a vibrant democracy, and until the turn of the Millennium most media houses in the country had adhered to the established principles of journalism that gave no room to editorialise news content. However, with proliferation of media platforms, treatment of news became the product differentiator for media organisations looking to get ahead of the industry growth curve, even if that meant objectivity in news reporting and presentation had to be compromised. That created in its wake a generation of news reporters, presenters and producers who believe news is what shape they give to any data and information that is of the essence to audiences. In the process, the messenger took precedence over the message itself.
As both politics and business became more competitive, and media and communications became the inexorable levers to engender a certain herd mentality, the propped up news messengers, and in many cases the organisations that they represent, served as the via media for reinforcing that herd mentality that promotes vested interests, backed with seemingly inexhaustible resources.
Along the way, news media, which in its early days in India had played an instrumental role in the country’s Freedom Struggle, started to function as an industry with lofty revenue growth goals, more so in the last two decades. While that ensured more resources were increasingly available to pay fair wages to media professionals, unlike many other industries, media could not have eschewed its collective social responsibility as the Fourth Estate. References to ‘Godi media’ is illustrative of that growing public distrust of media houses that discernibly double up as apologists for people holding public offices.
While one hears about various political bosses and business barons exerting considerable influence and pressure on media houses to toe their line, it is incumbent on the media houses themselves to resist that pressure, even if that means giving up on some of the freebies. For, in the pursuit of independent news reporting alone can a media house retain the credibility of its news platforms – which is central to the long-term acceptance by audiences. Otherwise, just a political regime change or shifts in the fortunes of business conglomerates will put many of the extant media platforms out of business.
There’s indeed much that media needs to be independent of.