To say or claim that our media is free, fair and impartial is only to live in a world of make-believe. It is not a reality but just a daydream.

The first principle of news reporting generally taught to journalism school entrants is that if a dog bites a man, it is no news. If a man bites a dog, it does make one. India's media derives its legacy from the great journalism of the British era and from the numerous illustrious editors and journalists who brought laurels to Indian journalism with their commitment to objectivity, freedom and fairness. They suffered a lot for this. But that now seems practically past. Today, before it flashes the news, it would certainly try to find who is the man who has bitten the dog and whose dog is it. Its report will then get tinged with the subjectivity of the man and the dog. This is true about the news channels and the print media which have, otherwise, a ‘name' in the respective fields.

The media, by and large, suffers from its own prejudices and preferences. Discerning objectivity, fairness and fearlessness is like the ordinary mortals boasting that they have had darshan of god.

These pious souls who shout about their so-called ‘liberalism, secularism, objectivity and truthfulness' from housetops are in reality rank partial, communal and narrow-minded in their real self. If the National Human Rights Commission gave a clean chit to the Delhi police in the Batla House encounter, they doubted its impartiality and integrity because the report failed to satisfy their whimsical conclusions. The report would have been "fair and objective" to them only if it had been according to their tastes.

If the accused in Gujarat riot cases, if they happen to be Hindus, are acquitted by a court, they shout that the government did not perform its duty. But they have never shed tears when hundreds of accused involved in terrorist cases were acquitted in Kashmir and various parts of the country as the prosecution failed to prove the case against them, perhaps, only because the accused were not Hindus.

These great pious souls who beat their chests everyday at the denial of justice to the victims of Gujarat riots but not to the thousands of the families victims of anti-Sikh riots that took place only in Congress-ruled States in the aftermath of the unfortunate assassination of Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi.

Last update : 10-08-2009 18:02

Keywords : Myth of Media Impartiality and Objectivity, Amba Charan Vashishtha

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