Corporates have hijacked media agenda: P. Sainath

The Hindu
Staff Reporter

P. Sainath, Rural Affairs editor, The Hindu, at the first lecture organised by the Paulose Mar Gregorios Chair at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam on Friday.

P. Sainath, Rural Affairs editor,The Hindu,has said that the mass media in India has undergone structural, physical, contextual, content-wise and moral change during the past few years and was also marked by an unprecedented convergence of political, corporate, media and family spheres which has resulted in the emergence of a new class and cultural sphere in the media.

Delivering a lecture on ‘A structural compulsion to lie: how corporatisation and corruption in the media harms Indian democracy’, organised by the Paulose Mar Gregorios Chair at School of Gandhian Thought and Development Studies under Mahatma Gandhi University here on Friday, he said the mass media during the past few years has been marked by an increasing disconnect with the mass reality on account of the corporate hijack of the media agenda.

The extinction of agriculture correspondent and labour correspondent in the media is a clear message which tells that they were not interested in talking about 75 per cent of the population, he said.The mainstream media also happens to be the most exclusionist branch of Indian democracy, Mr. Sainath said and added that the representation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as chief editors in mainstream media was almost nil, in spite of the fact that people from these sections have held top positions in other branches of the democracy, executive, legislature and judiciary.

The mainstream media is marked by emergence of contract journalism which has dealt a severe blow to the independence of the journalist. According to him, the most important development during these years was the shift in the moral universe of the media. There were publication of reports making fun of the farmers suicides and blacking out of the report of the Parliamentary standing committee on Agriculture seeking a ban on GM cotton and GM experiments.

Referring to the emergence of paid news, Mr. Sainath said the system created double jeopardy for democracy as on the one hand it removes the level playing ground for the contestants and on the other it removes whatever vestige was left of fairness and honesty in politics.

According to him, good journalism was marked by how it covered the great processes of the times, but the media had increasingly failed to report the stark realities given out even out of official documents including the crisis in the farm sector and the catastrophe awaiting the people in the food security area.In the interactive session that followed, Mr. Sainath stressed on the need to strengthen public service broadcasters and the alternative media. He also called for exploiting whatever space was available in the new media.

Rev. K M George, chairman, Mar Gregorios Smaraka Samithy welcomed the gathering and M. S. John, director School of Gandhian Thought and Development Studies made the presidential remarks.The function was inaugurated by Rajan Varughese, Pro Vice-Chancellor. Yuhanon Mar Demetrrios, Head of the Delhi diocese of the Malankara Orthodoix Syrian church and K. Suresh Kurup MP, spoke.

The Chair has been instituted to do research and studies on the life and works of Paulose Mar Gregorios, theologian, philosopher, commentator, humanist and academic, and the themes he advocated such as peace, inter-faith and inter-cultural understanding, interdisciplinary studies, philosophy of science, holistic healing transcendent values and secular world view.