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 organizations 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. Organizations 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 analyze 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.
Sachin Kumar Jain |
