CHENNAI: Truth isn’t a commodity that has many buyers, said Shekhar Gupta, veteran journalist and founder of The Print, at a Colloquy on Media and Social Responsibility organised by DG Vaishnav College here on Friday. Concerned over the polarising effect mainstream national media, especially television, is having on the public, he said “commando comic channels” are framing facts to sell a narrative that people easily latch onto.
He gave examples of how Muslims, who constitute 15 per cent of the population are being portrayed in bad light using radical imagery from around the world of extremist elements. “Less than 50 Muslims from India of the 13 million population are part of IS,” he told the gathering of budding journalists. “The media has painted a dark picture by using a stereotype.”
The media, he said, was slowly becoming a mouthpiece of the government, which was slowly learning to cater to the spectacle media wants to lure the public with.
Drawing examples from the turbulent sixties, which saw three wars and secession movements around the country, he said crisis brings people together in India. He narrated how DMK chief M Karunanidhi, a secessionist in the sixties, told him in an interview a few years ago that the crisis during the sixties had actually convinced the Dravidian movement to look for an identity within the country instead of leaving it. GS Vasu, Editor of The New Indian Express, expressed concern over corruption in the basic values of journalism which affects objectivity.
Observing the monopoly media has on shaping public opinion, N Ravi, Publisher of The Hindu, highlighted that media should be better than the common man it serves. Citing the example of the Kashmiri man who was tied to a jeep to serve as a human shield and ward off stone pelters, he said media houses were deemed anti-national for reporting the incident. “The media’s responsibility is to the people and not the government,” he said and stated that media houses should not be cowed down by tags such as ‘traitors’, ‘dogs’ and shut up by trolls.
G Ravindran, Head of the department of journalism, University of Madras, in his keynote address said, “Media is just one institution that is undergoing a cancerous disruption. It is often the only institution that is being held accountable for this changing trend where rhetoric eats away at facts.”