Crumbling Fourth Pillar! Can 2021 Help Restore Objectivity In Journalism Of ThePast , Very Unlikely!

  • | Monday | 4th January, 2021

BY DN Singh

The year 2020 has revealed one thing that, compulsive journalism has become the order of the day. Like in the change of taste of politics, today’s journalism, at all spheres, suffers from partisan posturing.  Sometimes from bad to worse, exposing the gap between language and thought.

If journalists choose to don the garb of a politician, in essence, be it print ot electronic media, there is little scope for objectivity to have its place in the firmament of the media as a whole. A subtle yet tangible compulsion seems driving the trend and the message from the political dispensations is very clear: do or die.

  

National Channels Are To Blame Primarily

 The Fourth Pillar’s sense of pride for holding non-partisan views, seem to have thinned pathetically. Journalists, cutting across streams, search for an identity that serves as a template for many tools of ambition.

The trend, in fact, was set by the national televisions where the panelists are subjected to a shouting match, more often than not,  holding the brief for a political party. Not that alone but, like any party spokesman, journalists in the panels exhibit intolerance towards anyone who takes a position against the party they appear to defend .

Be it any political party, a set of such defenders in the guise of scribes or analysts,  try to score a few political brawny points for the party. It is not that they are hack-turned-analysts nor small-time pen-pushers  but they are usually the ones from media houses of repute . The trend of this siding with one and annihilating the other is now chronic among the national channels.

 

Intellectual Dishonesty

Most recent lot of such shadow boxers are authors, historians, academia  or legal luminaries who have entered into such an ambit where sometimes obfuscation or unnecessary technicalities are used to score over the other or swim past the confluence of questions the anchors or moderators create. There is, in fact, nothing wrong to hold  any view but an opinion- maker, more so if a scribe, who claims a holier-than-thou image, should not sound brazenly eulogizing of a political ideology or deeds.

What has further added to the owes of journalism in India is, there is a proliferation of channels and newspapers and journals, contrary to their claim, rarely seem within the realm of an independent mechanism the viewers or readers would look up to.

The Great Divide Of  The Year 2020

A complete yet uneven divide has emerged among this fraternity where the minimum semblance of objectivity appear distancing fast. Perhaps, a very few houses now muster the courage for straight speaking let alone resort to scathing attack on issues where the system willingly or not,  runs foul of a core responsibility causing harm to peoples’ larger interest.

So the divide from the national level  has crept through the fault-lines to the regional sphere where the local channels chose not to tread into any risk zone and that is where they leave the task to the jounos who fill the gaps.  

Not So Endemic In Odisha

Speaking about Odisha, which had till the recent years had a visible dearth of media focus, now has wriggled out of such things and is back with a bang. And more so in the last couple of years, the outreach has been substantial and impacting often.

Yet the media as a whole, here also, does not seem completely free of the pugnacious predispositions towards the certain party and demonize the other. Although the state does not have a plethora of such think-tanks from the field of journalism,  the proclivities are often too pronounced in their views.

 

While talking about panelists from the media it would be imprudent to forget the television channels where the news readers or anchors or the moderators mirror the perspective of the channel. Yet again a trend either good or bad has descended from the national channels where the combo of aggression and ferocity, often bordering on disregard  to a panelist’s views are becoming a new fashion .

Anchors of 2020 Were In T-20 Mode

Anchors necessarily ought not to be a quantity who can scream to speak over the guest and his or her hands with pointing fingers pointed like that of a teacher.

However, in a positive note, some of the Odia channels still succeed to maintain a modicum of that balance, although not all.

The anchor is he or she who by the homework can pierce holes into the hollowness of rulers that can underpin a system of rule to rectify itself. Not a mere shouting match as is seen these days. Sadly, some anchors appear suffering the reducibility of TP (teleprompter) readers and remain shuffling the questions only.

There is a discernible dearth of preparedness or research among the majority of the news anchors in Odisha, when they appear like news readers leaving the floor to the panelists only and the debate loses the sting.  


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