BENGALURU: Protecting society’s values, cultural importance, brotherhood and unity, and helping build a strong nation is the responsibility of journalism: why we call it the fourth pillar of the constitution, said Assembly Speaker UT Khader.
At a National Press Day programme on Monday, Khader stressed that politics and journalism are interconnected, and neither can function in isolation. “Politics or administrative governance and journalism are the two eyes of the nation. One eye highlights society’s problems and difficulties, and the other must work to solve them.
When these two eyes fail to recognise problems, the nation is pushed into darkness,” he said and expressed concern over the rising misinformation on social media. “News should be news; views should not be news. When views become news, it misleads people,” he said.
Veteran journalist Nupur Basu said she started her dream career in journalism in 1982 in Bengaluru and worked in print and television media, which took her for coverage all over the world, besides teaching at J School UC Berkeley for a year.
“Journalism has changed now. India now ranks 151 (in freedom of press index). But look around our neighbourhood — what about other countries? Our ‘favourite enemy country’, Pakistan, is at 158, just seven places behind us, and we always thought it was much worse. Nepal has a much better ranking. Whenever there is trouble in a country or leaders feel insecure, they start attacking the media. They try to control the media," she said.
She said, according to the Free Speech Collective, around 329 free-speech violations took place in India between January and April this year, and 39 journalists were attacked. “A few channels, in their hurry for TRPs, publish stories without cross-checking or confirming information, which leads to misinformation and damages the credibility of journalism.”
Basu said journalists losing access to politicians and bureaucrats may also be contributing to misinformation. “The credibility of journalists has suffered. People do not believe them now, and that is a very sad thing. When we were reporting, people believed us and trusted that we were telling the truth.”