THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The concept of ‘post-truth’ is a quantum leap to the unknown to challenge the known, senior journalist Sashikumar said while delivering a lecture on the topic ‘ Television in post-truth India’.
He was inaugurating a television workshop organised by Kerala State Chalachitra Academy on Saturday.
“Post-truth stands for extreme subjectivity. It is being positioned as oppositional to the media. The world is moving towards an age of polarisations and extremism. Here, moderation becomes a crime. Shujaat, Lankesh, and Shantanu paid the price with their lives. In fact, if the truth belongs to the present world, the idea of post-truth belongs to the next world. The post-truth is indeed a surreal ‘post’ state of understanding and engaging with reality,” Sashikumar said.
He also pointed out the three generations when the technology has evolved enough to shape up the concept of ‘post-truth’.“ In the 19th century, merchant capitalism came into existence. Later, monopoly capitalism and much later, the multi-national capitalism. When the post-modernism era came, the television has become a major component of communication and for perpetuating the news. Though we have moved forward in terms of digitisation, there is a sense of tentativeness in the current era,” he said.
He added that poetry came closer to vital truth than history and the concept of post-truth itself is rubbish.
Sashikumar also stressed media must aspire for the realm of facts.Senior television journalist Neelan said the visual media should follow-up the stories rather than turn their attention to other stories coming day after day.
“I am afraid the television journalism has lost its credibility and many journos are going behind new stories forgetting the past stories.“This is a dangerous tendency. I have stopped watching news on television. Now, the real issues are being under-covered by non-issues. So a self-introspection is needed for TV journalists,” he said.
Senior journalists C Gouridasan Nair, Sunnykutty Abraham, film critic C S Venkiteshwaran, Chalachitra Academy secretary Mahesh Panju also spoke at the occasion.An interactive session was also organised with the journalism students. The six-day workshop is taking place at SEEMAT, Attakulangara.