You know how people constantly, relentlessly, moan about how terrible the media is, how it exists only to spread fake news, how it polarises people?
Well, you know what? India is still a free country, last time I checked. We don’t need to consume the kind of media we heap so much contempt on. It’s our money, our choice.
My rant comes as I grow sick of the constant scapegoating of the media. It is not my contention even for a minute that much of the mainstream media is operating from a place of responsibility, ethics or decency. Quite the opposite, in fact, as we know. That media is slowly normalising the dissemination of vile content, of fake news, of sensationalism. As people are fed their daily dose, more of them accept what they see, read and hear as the gospel truth, and it usually brings to the surface all the latent bile, leading to acts of aggression, setting the vicious cycle in motion.
It is an indisputable fact that there exist publications and channels that will make up, twist, tweak, downright lie to achieve their TRP targets. This is media that stays true to their political alignments, and truth be damned; they will report the facts but in such a skewed manner that the faithful will be left in no doubt that they need to take to the streets and defend their faith/cause/beliefs.
However, for every biased media platform, there are a handful (alas, just a handful in these post-truth times) that bravely do what they signed up as journalists to do: report the truth, analyse it in a non-partisan manner, give the readers/viewers a clear idea of what is happening on the ground. They are, in today’s times, really brave in flying the banner of objective reporting. It is quite another matter that we the people who have become addicted to our daily dose of hyperbole dismiss them as stodgy, tedious, too content-heavy.
The point to be pointed out here: all media does not list to the right or the left. All media is not slanted news. All media is not lying media. Which brings me to the second indisputable fact: it’s about choice. Who is forcing us to consume sensational news? Who is forcing us to read scurrilous gossip or watch talking heads shouting their heads off on TV?
We know well enough to sift the grain from the chaff; it’s just that we enjoy our daily diet of garbage. We have our s**t detectors working just fine; it’s just that we easily succumb to the noisy lure of scuttlebutt. We would rather drown our unemployment/inflation/spiralling gas prices sorrows in bursts of vociferous discussion on what filmstars wore at Cannes, why the person pointing out that Hindi is not the national language is an anti-national and suchlike. We would rather look away at what stares us grimly in the face, and seek distractions elsewhere.
But you know what? Ultimately, we are what we consume. We need to think about that, long and hard.
Sheila Kumar
kumar.sheila@gmail.com
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