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 bureaucrats, 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 newspapers 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 in Madhya Pradesh. 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 mainstream 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 was 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 the market cannot accept pro-dalit and tribal policies, 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 mainstream media is as crucial as it is in politics and society. Our mainstream 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 high and upper social classes, who are part of the discriminative society, own the media houses? 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.

Sachin Kumar Jain