Some Questions The Mainstream Media Must Answer

Nalini Taneja

ALL along the election campaign and formation of the new government it is the corporate media --- electronic and print --- that has been asking all the questions, sometimes with unjustified peevishness and impatience, as if the media enjoys an unqualified right to make people commit themselves before they are ready to. The media must now answer some questions for a change.

WHOM MAINSTREAM MEDIA REPRESENT

Whose interest was this so-called mainstream media unashamedly representing during these past few crucial months? Can it lay claim to objectivity or advocacy of popular will? No newspaper or news channel has even attempted to ask why and how all the poll surveys and exit polls --- taken after the voters voted --- turned out so wrong. It is hiding behind the general surprise experienced by political parties themselves. In other words, it is again reflecting and parroting those who were the subjects and objects of its study! It is refusing to concede that its failure amounts to a professional failure and cannot be equated with the failure of those who were participants in the exercise of winning votes, and having a stake in the votes, could not have been objective.

They have not bothered to analyse their own pre- poll surveys and exit polls --- from the point of methodology, suitability of samples selected, questions asked, and questions not asked? After all, how could they have known what the Indian people want or expect from their political leadership when they never asked those crucial questions.

INCONVENIENT QUESTIONS

No poll survey asked the Indian voter what he/she feels about the Gujarat genocide, the declining standards of livelihood, or even whether they agree at all that India is shining and in what respect. Do they want a government that makes people fight on religion, or do they wish for social harmony? Do people think that the BJP government succeeded in ensuring social harmony? Did it prove to be non discriminatory on grounds of religion and caste? Do people want a Hindu rashtra at all, or are they at their wits end dealing with unemployment, displacement, hunger, poverty and declining incomes? Do they want a government that is sympathetic to the needs of the poor, and the common man? Had they asked any of these questions they might have arrived at different answers altogether. But why these questions never got asked tells us a lot about the state of the media today.

No doubt some in the media will say such questions are not valid because nobody will say openly and frankly that they do not want social harmony or a government that is unconcerned about the poor. But the point, which the media ignored is that majority of the people in any country do not want a government that is unconcerned about them, and missed seeing is that this majority was quite aware that the BJP led government had been quite unconcerned about them.

MEDIA OBSESSION

It is really amusing that something the media itself is so obsessed with, the stock markets and sensex, found no mention at all in the pre poll surveys and exit polls, and once the election results were out, we heard of nothing else from the media. It seemed India would live or die with its sensex falls and stockbrokers, so crucial were the stock market reactions! Desperate at their favourite party’s defeat the corporate owned mainstream media came open with its hidden agenda.

It was a “Black Monday” as far as they were concerned—completely missing the point that the majority of Indians were rejoicing and exulting at having thrown out an unresponsive and anti people government. Even an amateur pollster would have known that day that Muslims and Christians all over the country must be justifiably relieved and even joyful at the fall of a government affiliated to organizations openly committed to reduce them to second class citizenship. In Gujarat significant defeats for the BJP must most definitely have eased the pressure on Muslims. In Andhra the average citizen must have experienced triumph and a sense of people’s power not experienced for sometime now. But on TV screens it was all doom and apprehension, and one may add, a desperate hope that it may somehow intimidate the newly elected parties to either shy away from their proclaimed agenda of ensuring a “human face” for the reforms, or somehow engineer such confusion that the new government formation may again become difficult.

UNAMBIGUOUS VERDICT

Fortunately for us, the people’s verdict is unambiguous, and the non-NDA bourgeois parties were quite aware of it. They knew if they fail the Indian people at this stage of government formation, they are not likely to be given another chance in the near future. But the media cannot be faulted for not trying its best to camouflage the people’s verdict behind images of sensex falls and cries of “Black Monday”. It kept saying that Left pronouncements have sent shivers down the markets, and were not satisfied that Congress is committed to “economic reforms” because its spokespeople also wanted to add the “human face” angle. Even now Laloo Yadav’s emphasis on social responsibility of railway is being seen as a let down, and he is being criticized for not being concerned about profits.

MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY

Such utter loyalty to concerns of the stock market and privatization lobbies begs the question of media accountability. To whom after all did the mainstream media hold itself accountable during this election campaign and formation of the government. A more positive role envisaged for the media is certainly that it must not simply reflect what is going on but must also play the role of an educator. In this case the media not only failed to reflect people’s concerns, it actually came out as campaigner for stock brokers and financial speculators arguing strongly that the interest of these groups represent popular welfare and the interests of the nation as well.

Will the media now answer what a Left leader asked a television journalist during the ‘Hundred Hour’ show? Why should the reforms not include land reform? Why should reforms not have a human face? And why should public sector enterprises be sold if they are making profits? The media must answer these questions. As things go, it has not even recognized the validity of these concerns or taken cognizance that they can matter to a majority of Indians.