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We have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and non violent pressure….. Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King
The mainstream media plays a significant role in the life of an individual; it has the capacity to direct the process of social change, media shapes the public opinion. It is all what is usually said regarding the straight of media. But, after shuffling through the pages of a news paper within 20 minutes, I ask myself- why I am not able to contribute more that 20 minutes in protecting media’s role in the social change process. At the end of the day I get an impression that if I don’t find my issues and perspective, I will not be able to contribute for the cause through the media. If media is powerful, than one has to decide how and in which direction this power should be used.
Today the new mantra of the media is that “Information is Power”. But what needs to be understood in this respect is who is being empowered by the information revolution that is at its height today? Does this information mean anything at all for the poor, hungry and the marginalized? An important fact that often goes unlooked is that in today’s information age, images and money become more important, when compared to, vital ideas, resources and reality that are supposed to be represented through this information. There is no denying the fact that the medium itself is the message and so, those who have control over the medium are powerful. Information in itself does not have much intrinsic value but it becomes a powerful weapon when it helps us to understand something else in a given context. The ongoing information revolution definitely does not bring about a socio-political revolution. The in revolution manages to inform, but it fails to empower the people who are in need of it. The process of globalization has fundamentally changed the way we communicate, think and act. Quoting John Samuel one can say that, “the new economy is a web of changing contours of information, finance capital and markets, with resultant change in socio – political identity, power relations and the process of political mediation between state, business and civil society [John Samuel, National Centre for Advocacy Studies]. The business potential of the media led to its commercialization.
In India, the media has a different role to play from its conventional role of purveying information. Public interest demands that the media should play an important role as a catalyst in bringing about a social change. It has been rightly said that, the press in democracy serves, as it’s fourth pillar alongside, legislature, judiciary and the executive in maintaining the freedoms and interests of the people. In a participant the media is the ideal means to serve as a link between the state and the society by educating the people about the happenings, which have affected them or may affect them. One has to acknowledge that the media was at one point of time a crusader of the Indian independence and has been instrumental in bringing about many social, political, economic and religious changes. Today though there are many causes that should be taken up as crusades, nothing much is happening. This is mainly because; the causes largely belong to those strata of the society (the poor and the marginalized) that are hardly represented in the field of media. The media is wholly, for and by the elite, the resultant factor is that vast sections of the society and their problems rarely find a voice. Vast sections of the society are subject to exploitation; discrimination and they are victims of unjust and inequitable social and economic order. The media through the columns can legitimately expose the corruption, nepotism and malpractices carried out by those in powerful positions, and the non-implementation of the welfare schemes devised for the benefit of the poor and the marginalized, and they can be pursued till they are properly redressed.
Present context- Changing priorities
This is a heart threatening fact that space is constantly being reduced for the thoughts and debates in the media, especially in the print. Only big names and thinkers can avail space, because they are saleable. An interesting phenomena that is now very evident from the fact that, writing a column is a most desirable profession for the retired beaurocrat, technocrat or police official, in which he talk’s mostly about ideal things and great suggestions for the change in the system, which unfortunately, they never tried to perform when they were in power. We feel that media is a platform where a common man can raise his voice but mercerization and changing priorities are reducing space for this purpose. Now we can reach to this conclusion that the circulation and reach of the media is increasing but the impact is getting limited because media in many senses does not take up the issue till a pro poor result is achieved.
The fact that the concept of the op-ed pages and space for the debates and thoughts is being reduced in the regional and Hindi media one important thing that is to be pondered upon. The editorial policies of newspapers are now are being decided by the management experts, who believe that readers should read and discuss the issues of personality, market trends, consumer products and ways of modern life style, because these subjects decide the growth of the market and capitalization. The justification put forward for removing these pages is that the issues printed on these pages are not of much importance to the layman and it is infact of importance to the intellectuals who ponder them and initiate discussions on them. It still needs to be understood how this justification works when, today, even the decisions of the WTO and G-8 come to directly affect the lives of the tribal living in the far stretched regions across the world. Privatisation, liberalization, genetically modified seeds all ultimately affect the common people and there ought to be news, editorials and discussions on them in the regional media. Today media wants to talk about employment, not because it may eliminate poverty, but this issue may build pressure on the state to be more liberalized and open for the private sector. It’s a reality that the Indian Government has made a policy decision for the foreign disinvestment in the media sector. And now it is a one of the most profitable sectors in the capital market, because it has a power to mobilize, social impact, acceptability and great reach to the most backward areas. The disinvestment in the media sector means if you want pro-poor social change, believe that media should be sensitive and rights based, you buy shares of the group, make a control over the board of directors or policy makers, then you can make the changes- like what issue will be published, how follow-up will be framed etc! It’s a new face of becoming powerful and influential, where values and sensitivity is not a prime policy, but the power to control market is the prime one, it won’t make a huge difference, whether it is achieved from mass-support- mobilization or from radical movement techniques.
Another fact that is noteworthy is that the media now seems to be interested in raising more non-political issues. On careful analysis one finds that, for the last couple of years, the media has been giving huge space for Bhasha (Language), Sanskriti (Culture), Entertainment (Films and Bollywood), and now Adhyatma (Spiritualism). These issues are actually framed by the political sector so that the main issues go unnoticed. A political party creates a controversy over some trifle matter and the others criticize the same. Even political issues are now being discussed very non-politically as they don’t hurt or open up the faces of their political rivals, because there is no kind of opposition of a concept in our national or regional politics. Every body takes care of each other’s interests. In a way available space is being killed. It is worth to mention Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu, P. Sai Nath’s analytical statement, who says that the country is facing a major agrarian crisis but the media reportage hardly reflects this. While journalism attains greatness or notoriety on the basis of how relevant it is to the great occurrences of that time, today it is (the) mass media, on (the) one hand, and mass reality, on the other. He says a young aspiring actress Nafisa Joseph committed suicide. While it was very sad that a young life was snuffed out in a stroke, for the next 12 hours the incident got more coverage than the death of 30,000 farmers received over the past 10 years. The suicide invaded every possible arena of television, but compared to that did the suicide of farmers get the kind of exposure that is needed. Similarly, while more than 400 reporters were accredited for the Lakme India Fashion Week 2004, barely six correspondents of the national dailies were deputed at the “height of the agrarian crisis”. [The Hindu, 22.12.2004] In the same sphere Amitabh Bachhan has become a new survivor of the neo-liberal society and when he faces stomach-ach our leading news channels assign 129 reports to cover and show him at the prime time. The study of Center for Media Studies shows that the mainstream news channels have given 700 minutes of prime time slot to him and neglected the nation. We may surprise to know the fact Big-B incident was given same importance as was given to the historical Mumbai flood. Can both these incidences be put at the same level? And Madhya Pradesh’s leading Hindi daily newspaper has decided not to publish the news items relating to Hunger, poverty, malnutrition because their market study says that poor people do not read our newspaper and corporate sector is our target and secondly, they, poor and marginalized, are not the consumers of our revenue generators also, who pay us for the advertisement. So naturally Big-B and Sachin Tendulkar becomes that full page news for media. It is not the question that actually what they are contributing to the Society, accept selling harmful soft drinks, shoes, Bikes. Any way Big-B has played a big role in making Gambling a national game, which creates greed.
A latest example may be seen in Madhya Pradesh, where during Cricket series between India and Pakistan four major main stream newspapers provided two special pages, approximately 10 percent of the total available space, for the sports for 66 days, different cricket expert columnists continue to write columns on the goods and bads, in form and out of the form, catches and runs and for them there was no lack of space and no material crisis. It is not the end, but these news papers made front page lead story from the cricket between India & Pakistan and this coverage secured space in all the editions of the newspaper. On the other side, at the same time malnutrition deaths and cases of black marketing of grain (which was to be distributed to the poorest, food insecure and drought affected families, under the relief and employment guarantee works) were taking place but these issues could manage a quarter page coverage for two days and double and three column news for a 5 days in local district editions, which has no impact on the policy change or may not play any role in making malnutrition deaths and black marketing of grain an socio-political issue. It is a debatable question as to who decides that the Cricket series is a matter of concern and priority issue, rather than malnutrition deaths and food insecurity?
In January 2005 the Panchayat Elections took place. It can be undoubtedly be stated that this political event may affect the life of the common people of the state but State media does not feel so. We should put some light on the data, there are 22,900 panchayats and 53000 villages in Madhya Pradesh and 6 lac elected Panchayat leaders represents the society of common people in the local governance system and one third of them are women. While contesting Panchayat elections, persons from marginalized communities, Dalits and Women not only face an individual opponent, but they fight with the class based hierarchal social system, Untouchability, Gender discrimination and communal conflicts. One may find it a most difficult step in the leadership building process. And in this situation one variably finds that none of the leading news papers made special arrangements or desk to cover the elections. And this negligence caused low coverage of the issue in the media. Some how local editions of the news papers formally covered the issue which lacked analysis.
On the other hand, it is ironical that the mainstream media appointed senior journalists to give proper analytical coverage to the general elections of Great Britain. They covered15 days news of United Kingdom on the front page. Does this comparison establish the fact that priorities need to be analyzed?
Moving ahead when we analyze the women’s issue, and see what gets covered, we find that strategically majority of the time, non-political aspects of women empowerment gets space in the media. The main stream communication sector eagerly covers activities and stories of Self Help Groups, which are mostly involved in small savings and doing genderly defined jobs. It is constantly seen that the matters relating to kitchen activities, furnishing of drawing and bed rooms, floriculture and fashion gets covered under the columns and pages devoted to women. Our patriarchal society is reluctant to accept that politics, industry or bureaucracy can be the areas of women’s life, either in terms of interest or achievement.
Although it’s a fact that women’s issues have now started getting some space, because it has a broad base of market and political interest, but tribal issues, such as Self Rule, Rights over natural resources and their own identity, are still not identified as market issues by the market forces. These are the critical political issues but even political powers avoid these issues because they themselves are under the shadow of influential pro-globalization groups. These groups have set their eyes on the richest natural resources. Although there are issues covered on physical violence and rape against them, but with the belief that these are routine hard news stories to be covered by the crime reporter. It not seen as a gender issues in a patriarchal society. So almost all the time readers do not get socio-political analysis of women violence and gender based discrimination.
Apart of that Dalit issues and issues relating to communalization of socio-political structure and values cannot be the mainstream issues of the politically influenced mass media. There are certain power centric structures like Industrialists, multinationals, academicians etc, who are protected by the fundamentalist forces, mostly political parties and supported social organizations. They have converted their socio-feudalist character in to ideological political mass base. The reality is that these groups ensured resource based support from the business class within the nation by protecting their benefits and formalized exploitative policies and from multinationals by supporting hard core globalization. It should be analyzed that when Bhartiya Janta Party was in power, United States never took the cognizance of human rights violation and communal violence in Gujarat, but it was made an issues when BJP was out from the power. It counts that who supports who, and who protects who and when. Now Media groups are entering in the capital market with Initial Public Offers (IPO’s). It means they need multi-dimensional protection both from market and State as well. It is crystal clear that pro-dalit and tribal policies can not be accepted by the market, and if it does not protect their interests, state will not move forward with those policies at all. In a sense the entire relationship between market, politics and policy makers will not appreciate any rights based step of the media, which now has its own interests. It’s a fact that coverage of dalit issue in the main stream media is as crucial as it is in politics and society. Our main stream political structure has never been in the favour of elimination of dalit discrimination, and if any group stands if favour of this, made set in to an alternative political framework. It also counts that who owns media? Can we accept the reality that the media houses are owned by the high and upper social classes, who are part of the discriminative society? It’s not a very optimistic picture of the situation, it may be biased but the fact is that it is a point from where we have to start our journey.
We can clearly see that there is a strong effort of establishing the media, not as a tool of social change, but as a product (a product to inform, to educate and to entertain with a specific purpose of consumer and market protection), which has a market value and it depends on the market forces (producers, marketing professionals, propaganda experts and pro-market politicians) what will be sold on the counter. And this situation has created a new front for the change seekers. The class whom we used to call pro-people media is now both, shrinking as well as losing its existence or is being pressurized to change its character from a pro-people one to a pro-market one. One hardly finds a difference between news and an advertisement, and even comments and thoughts are formally sponsored now. This whole situation gives an impression that, in the coming 3-5 years, if you are powerful, you will be able to control tools and process of debate and even thoughts. At this point one will not have to tackle media institutions, as a sponsor one will be in a position to control and divert the debate in the direction one wants.
Perspective in need
There is a lot of scope for the media and the NGO’s to work together. The media is in an advantageous position to work with the organizations by promoting the causes that are taken up by the organizations. The media can be used to promote the causes and issues by keeping it alive in the minds of people and building up a sustained pressure to resolve it in favour of the deprived and the underprivileged. This sort of advocacy was very beautifully used in the pre independent era by the freedom fighters. There were a large number of newspapers which wrote untiringly in favour of the struggle. Advocacy helps to highlight issues, create awareness about it and eventually induce people to change their attitude in favour of the concerned issue. There is a need to establish mutual relationship between media and development sector for a progressive and pro-poor social change process.
Media has tremendous potential where social change is concerned. It has always played an important role, it is not an external part of the whole process, and instead it is an integral part.
The process of capital accumulation has also commodified the communications sector around the world and made it into a branch of industrial activity for the sake of maximum profit. The past few decades saw the emergence of giant globally operating media conglomerates and the main effect of this is, the tightening grip of transnational corporations over the economy, resources and governments of the underdeveloped countries, which also includes control over its communication systems. It is interesting to note that the media industry has now acquired the position of the fifth largest industry in the world, having overtaken oil exploration and telecommunication services industry [Dancing to Global Capital: Media in India, Pranjali Bandhu, Pg. 5.]. India’s entertainment, broadcasting and print media has the potential to increase its turnover to 65,000 crore by the year 2005 [According to a Study conducted by The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.].Procuring space in the media is one difficult thing in today’s era, when advertisements are given the top most priority. So it is very important that the space that we get is put to proper use. The space should be utilized in a proper manner to highlight social issues.
Whenever an incident or a matter is highlighted in the media, its immediate effect is not only that the people are made aware of the matter, but also that the particular incident get legitimized in history through the media. This becomes a good platform for future reference as well. It cannot be denied that the press clippings are a very reliant source of evidence in the Courts around India
Social change is not the result of an effort or process in isolation or the impact of media only. It is the result of a perspective based integrated and unified effort of the society and the movements. Hence, it is very essential to co-relate their relationship and roles in the process. During the time of the independence movement in India, media used to play an active part in the struggle, but now, it is becoming a platform of non- political debate and it does not take up the responsibility to fight till the pro-poor result is gained. Today they are worried about their images and feel that if they constantly follow the issues that actually matter, their image may be tarnished. And we find media resisting the coverage and analysis of such issues frequently. We can look at the example of an event that took place in Bhopal on International Day of ACTION ON DAMS, RIVERS, and PEOPLE- Against drought, flood, displacement, destruction, privatization on 14th March 2005. Narmada Bachao Andolan had organized a dharna to protest efforts of increase in the height of Sardar Sarovar Dam from present status of 110 meter to 121 meter without proper rehabilitation of the project affected families in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. A conflict occurred between the Police and the NBA activists in course of the dharna. The Police snatched the andolankaries by their hair and fought with them. After that leader of NBA, Medha Patkar had a formal talk with media persons on the issue of Dam and rehabilitation. She chose not make the conflict an issue during the press meet but journalists were constantly asking questions regarding the episode and were ignoring the real issue. The next day’s newspapers stood testimony to the fact that the media were not at all sensitive towards the actual issue, as one could see that all newspapers gave far more importance to the conflict and accused NBA persons for the violence in their coverage. None (from the media) talked about the issue relating to the height of the dam and rehabilitation. It is worth mentioning that initially in the morning, it was a social issue but when police got involved in to it, it became an issue to be covered by the crime reporter.
And here is it, that we find a gap between the perspective, and actual behavior and capacity of the media. The truth is that the expectation one has from the media is too high and the approach of the media is too non-political. One can see that since independence, media has not stood out as the voice of the poor thoroughly. Each and every advocate of rights, including government and CSOs has tried to use them for their own benefits. Media has not been able to not hear the voice of the needy, amongst the noise generated by the politics of issues. Media has been used and issues have been raised, but the results have never become an object of the media politics. Issues are published only because they are current news and can be sold. Once they are old, they are out of the media definition. When a person dies of hunger, the hunger death becomes a sensational story, but none are bothered to address the policy that has caused the death and to build pressure to change it, so that it does not become the death Nell of another poor person and his family. Even in these cases, there has arisen the need that the numbers who have died should be big, only then will the piece of news find place in the concerned newspaper. The space available in the newspapers is limited and the readers do not have the time to go into the details of a starvation death or gender discrimination caused by bad governance.
Media plays an important role in the shaping of the course of development as well as the formulation of policies in a democratic society. The issues taken up by the media usually become the priority areas of the work of the government. The press acts not only as an informer, educator and purveyor of the news but also as the modulator of the views.
Gap need to be filled thoughtfully. Unless one believes in a cause, one can not advocate for that particular cause. Integrity and legitimacy of advocates are what provide moral force to advocacy. Hence it seeks to bridge the gap between the words and the deeds; theory and the practices; rhetoric and real life experience. It stresses that unless you challenge yourself, you cannot change others.
Principally and perspective wise it should be believed that in the social change process media is not a passive spectator, It not only transfers the information and data from the place of the event or incident, but also analyses the information in light of the society, need of the people, individuals and a common man. It’s a fact that media is a decisive factor, on how and what change to be initiated. Especially in rural areas, the media has become a reliable source of information, which could be seen in last Panchayat elections of Madhya Pradesh. During the elections the people were fed with a lot of misleading information regarding reservations by some newspapers. They were under the impression that women could contest only on the seats reserved for them and not on general seats. But Newspaper clippings became a source of information and in many places women did not file the nominations on unreserved seats under the impression that it was reserved for men.
Media Vs Voluntary sector- a different point of view!
It is a established fact that media plays a multi dimensional role in the development process but in the present context this role playing theory has entered in a very critical situation, on the one hand, the pro-poor values of two important pillars of the society, Voluntary sector and the media, are not in the priority state. And on the other hand, there is a never-ending debate running amongst the NGO’s and people’s organizations regarding the question as to whether the media is an important way of advocacy for the rights of the poor and the marginalized. The debates usually come to a close reiterating the fact that the media definitely plays a powerful role in bringing out the problems and difficulties of the poor and the marginalized. There is some amount of legitimacy attached to the media and it definitely acts as evidence in the process of law.
But as far as the NGO’s are concerned they are of the opinion that the media does not consider on priority the issues of the needy and marginalized. It tries to portray itself as pro developmental but the truth is far from it. The issues relating to the women and children receive very little space in the mainstream media. The issues relating to women and children have found only 1.6 percent space while, those of the poor and the marginalized have found only 1.9 percent of the space of the mainstream media. When the question under consideration is, whether the media should take sides with the oppressed or the oppressor, most of the time it ends up taking sides with the oppressor.
It is an accepted fact that the priorities of the media are definitely not the issues of the poor and the marginalized and changing fastly in the era of globalization, but one has to also understand the structure and system under which the media works, like what gets published, how and in which form, & who is the decision maker. The organizations have not tried to understand these structural aspects of the media, which are important. During the struggle of Indian independence the media played a very important role supporting the struggle and action but here one has to keep in mind the fact that the media then was set up and used in a manner with a perspective and mission, which is different from today.
Today the organizations working in the developmental field definitely want the media to play active part but they do not take any step to develop its perspective. They have a sound knowledge and experience on the grass root issues and they also want the media to highlight these issues. But they never try to link it with other aspects and make it the concern of the media as a whole; instead, they just want it to be highlighted as the issue of that particular organization. They feel that they have a right over the issue because it arose in their area of work and none other should be involved with the particular issue beyond a certain limit. On the other hand when issue is controversial, organizations find themselves unable to speak out openly as a representative organization of the concerned community, because in that context administration may always put them in a difficult situation.
Another fact is that the documentation that the organizations do on the issues cannot be of much use to the media. It is done in such a way that it is neither poetry nor prose, neither a story nor a satire and leave alone all this, it is not even in a good report form, inclusive of all facts and evidences regarding the incident. The end result is such that even the truth and actual facts of the incident fails to show up in the documented article, which makes the media incapable to publish the incident or issue.
The people working with different organizations have been working on those issues for many years and hence are aware of all the aspects of the concerned issue, but a person belonging to the media fraternity is expected to collect an in depth information on the concerned matter, laws relating to it, different perspectives etc in just a couple of visits.
The oraganisations should be in constant dialogue with the journalists on the issues in their area and they should also provide data, facts, laws, details of incidents, their personal analysis etc to the journalists as reference material. But this never happens and the organizations keep blaming the media who in turn say they are helpless. The ultimate result of this is that the organizations start searching for alternative methods to get their stories published. Most of the time one sees that they start publications of their own in which they write about these issues. One can find publications ranging from single page pamphlets - posters to newsletters to full fledged books. Though a lot of effort goes into the publication of these things the sad part is that, these publications do not have a broad reach to the genuine target group. These publications get distributed amongst the people’s organizations, NGO’s and other individuals who are already pro-developmental. These publications definitely cannot generate the required effect, which a mainstream media can.
Another matter, which is very controversial, is actually the image, which the organizations have regarding the media. The organizations look at the media as a group, which can build as well as break images. Organisations constantly want their image to be portrayed as a very good, pro-active and clean one with no misgivings what so ever. The organizations want the media to analyse the incidents and issues but in this process they do not want even a finger raised at the organization and its perception, actions or its work. So they start maintaining distance and their relations become conditional.
There is lack of constant dialogue between the organizations and the media. The organizations make use of the media only for the coverage of events, their success stories, and press conferences and to get their press notes published. Ironically the paper clippings of the coverage of these events form a very important part of their annual report.
It is clear that if the media is to be used as a tool for advocacy, both transparency and dialogue has to be used as a weapon by the organization. One has to also understand that the media cannot be used as a tool to promote an individual or an organization. Instead it has to use the media to generate debates among different groups regarding the issues of the marginalized and the poor. There is a strong need to fill the gap practically between social sector and the media with a pro-active mutual dialogue and behavioral change is condition to get expected out comes. Effort with a strategy
It will be a very general statement to say that the media is not playing any role in the development process. In fact it is the media that is deciding the way and indicators of development. The experiences of Vikas Samvad clearly throws light on the potential and opportunities, which the media has for playing a role in framing a pro-poor structure, in both the sectors- Social as well as Media. An effort took place in the year 2001 with a perspective of bringing the media closer to the developmental and human rights issues. As strategy it was aiming at socially sensitive stringers (journalists, who work at the block and cluster level for a particular newspaper. Normally they are the main source of feeding village level news to the newspaper. They also perform the role of an agent for them and maintain the circulation of the newspaper. The stringers consist of media persons from the local society who are affected by the local politics. Our main concern is building their issue specific understanding, training them for better writing skills and also capacity building of voluntary organizations to work with media on issues of concern.
In a period of two and half year’s 16 training programs were organized in different districts of Madhya Pradesh and 377 persons participated in these trainings. Numerically it may be a big achievement but when we analyzed its impact on the process, we found that this initiative could not make a dent on the system. No body can claim that it could make any impact in the behavior of the media or changed the priorities of mainstream media. NGOs were sharing their pain with each other and accusing the media for their present priorities. The media in turn was not available to hear or respond to their allegations. There was no space for dialogue between the two. We also found that out of 377 persons trained, only 57 were actually working as stringers writing in the press while the others were representing NGO world. It was also found that stringers were not in the position of publishing news on the page that would matter and in the position of influencing the newspaper decisions.
Another interesting fact to be noted was that the 130 representatives of voluntary organizations, build their capacity for documentation but no substantial media advocacy issue was taken up by these participants.
In a sense, a media advocacy effort became a typical NGO initiative for the NGO brothers and sisters. There was no focus on interface between media persons on the higher level such as editors, state and regional bureau chiefs who make the decisions in mainstream media. Apart from there was no formal involvement of media in the process so it did not own the same resulting in obstacles in raising the issues by trained persons? That’s the mistake, which usually takes place in the media advocacy or sensitization efforts.
And in the last months of the year 2003 on the basis of a strong review of the first phase a new initiative was conceived for Vikas Samvad. Individual carrier journalists were to be the prime stakeholders in this process. A process of dialogue with the editors and mid carrier journalists was started before finalizing the initiative’s next perspective and strategy. Unanimously it came out that journalists are usually keen to work on specific issues but in a specific structure and lack of time and resources they don’t get opportunities. Most of them were in the mood to continue issue based media workshops. It was also felt that, to avail maximum space for issues in media a data base and perspective documents should also be made available in a media friendly format. The question of lack of opportunities for the carrier journalists was answered through the one year, 4 full time issues based fellowship for the mid carrier Hindi journalists of Madhya Pradesh out of which, two of were reserved for women journalists. The selection and advisory role undoubtedly played by eminent editors, media academicians and development activists. The main aims of the initiative are to work in the area of Governance, food security & Poverty, women empowerment, women’s health and leadership. All the issues relating to these areas are to be highlighted in the media. Cases of ideal role models and struggling marginalized communities with the impact of present policies and globalization are to be given importance and brought into the forefront for the readers who in turn could be sensitized on the issue. There is no choice between the two indicators of quality and quantity. Both are important. Vikas Samvad decided that a person who is working as a Vikas Samvad fellow will have to get 40 articles published in the mainstream media. This is a clear output indicator. On the other hand we have a clear object of perspective building of the fellow journalist on the issue he is working. This year we have planned an intensive orientation program for the fellows, which will cover research methodology, principles of the issues, situation analysis, perspective, media strategy and coordination planning. As a result Vikas Samvad fellows and support group could achieve the difficult target with the 223 articles published in mainstream media, not in alternative media, in a year’s effort.
As one of the prime object Vikas Samvad works for complementing field level action on the issues concerning the poor and marginalized and complementing campaigns and influencing policy makers of the priority issues. In this context it intensively interacts with the peoples organizations constantly.
There are a number of organizations, people’s organizations and individuals who are working on the issue and in course of our work in one year, we have tried to also serve as a platform for these groups so that their work and the difficulties faced by them can be highlighted and shared with the media.
It however, has to be understood that the effort of bringing the media and the organizations on a single platform has not been very successful, owing to the fact that the media has a very rigid perspective towards the organizations, and the organizations in turn only collaborate with the media for the purpose of getting press notes released and for press conferences.
Conclusion
On the one hand there is an expected need to create a media that is Pro-Poor and has humanitarian rights based approach, one which fights and renders voice to the voiceless and the marginalized, and acts as a stakeholder in the process of social change and finds oneself accountable towards the society. And on the other hand social sector and voluntary organizations has to find ways and strategies to work and co-exist with the mainstream journalists as well as the media institutions to provide voice for the issues of the marginalized and to bring about change in the policies for a just and equitable society. It is also a very crucial question in the era of globalization that how it can be established that a pro-poor media can also survive in the market.
Clearly one has to accept the fact that in the present context, where economic power controls the socio-political system, media can create a noise and expose the conspiracy. It is really a fact that readers do not have a mutual relationship with the media and that’s why media decides what a reader will eat in the Breakfast, in the Lunch and Dinner. There is a need to put our reactions forward and pressurize them to follow it up. Experiences of the desk also supports the analysis that news papers are reducing space for open debate or letters to editor, because now readers do not express their view.
In the same sphere, experience of intensive developmental media advocacy efforts, like Charkha and Vikas Samvad developmental media advocacy initiative establishes a fact that there is enough space available at this point of time, although they are advocating for maximum space for the issues of poor and the marginalized and experience also reiterates the fact that we have not yet reached the saturation point where space is concerned. However in order to obtain space one has to fulfill a basic requirement that is the material should be written, according to the needs of the media. Our issues should be worded in such a way that it automatically gets space without any constraint. It is to be understood that the highest authorities of the management do not get involved in the day-to-day editorial activities and giving space to the any issues is the concern of the editorial group. Hence we have to get involved in the orientation and dialoguing process with the editorial group of the media structure for a number of reasons.
Sachin Kumar Jain |
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