Friday, December 3, 2010

Radiagate, barkhagate, mediamafia ...

The last few days have presented a very sorry state of Indian media. First the leak itself and then the deafening silence by leading media houses. It is debatable whether they have crossed the line or not. N. Ram (editor, The Hindu) thinks they have.

The Hindu was the only major media house which gave coverage to this murky affair. I thought very much on the issue and feel that the journalists in question have crossed the line although have done nothing criminal. I personally believe Barkha Dutt should step down but she has not done anything so wrong as to leave journalism. Just as sports persons can have poor form, error in judgement, complacency and disregard for public sentiments so are journalists prone to these fallibilities. Barkha Dutt has done very well as a journalist and this mistake of hers can be forgiven bearing in mind her contribution to field of journalism. It is quite obvious that she has been maliciously targeted on twitter not because of this case but for her stand on other issues.

It is high time that prominent media persons get together and root out this evil from amongst themselves. This is only tip of the iceberg considering that issue of 'paid news' cropped up not long ago. It will be great if people like Rajdeep Sardesai, Karan Thapar, N. Ram, Siddharth Varadarajan and Shekhar Gupta can come together and get India media out of this mess.

Judiciary and media are the only saving grace of our democracy and I hope media continues to bring justice to Indians as it has done in Manu Sharma case.

1 comment:

Ankit said...

In the interview that you are referring to, N. Ram said that media persons suffer from the overdose of ego. The tapes make it look like these people are running the country. I just hope that it actually is not the case.