What you see is what you believe in. If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature-Julian Assange. But in India, we see 5 star journalists who sit in AC rooms and impose their views as the news on us.
Recent incidents are a testimony to what I think is a vicious way of doing journalism. Be it JNU row or Patiala high court incidents or #iamantinational campaign by so-called well-known journalists. On 21st Feb, in Delhi there was a march organised by ex-servicemen which were attended by 30000 people including activists. None except Times now aired the news. It didn’t even come up in those flashes…What was the reason?? Why do these people think they can handle mood of the nation as they wish?…Well-known journalists like Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Rana Ayyub and S Varadarajan started abusing Times now and Arnab Goswami in particular, for not attending journalist protest against assault from lawyers in Patiala high court. But the fact was Arnab Goswami’s dad was admitted to the hospital and Arnab was accompanying his dad. Eminent personalities like Mohandas Pai, actor Anupam Kher and Journalist Sudhir Choudhary of Zee were hounded by leftist trolls. There was a hashtag being trended called #shutdownzee just because they started showing another side of JNU and LeT links being exposed which HMO sources were indicating.
We miss those days where news channels were the only option for the majority of people to know the happenings in other parts of the country as well as other parts of the world. We had a one-dimensional view on each news and that view is what we see from the channel or newspapers. Now with the social media soo much aggressive, each news item is analysed by each individual and his/her opinion is known to everybody. Each day political leaders are scrutinised for their policies. Motormouth politicians, journalists are trolled and rebutted for their ignorance. Social networking sites like twitter and facebook have empowered people to keep their point of view on face value.
My only request to 5-star Journalists is that, you are not the news so please show us what your cameras capture and not what your political bosses/friends tell you.
Deviprasad Prabhu
prabhu.deviprasad@yahoo.com
featured image: IndiaExponent
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