Democracy is described as “a government by debate and discussions as against arbitrary diktats.” For debates, one needs freedom of speech and information. This freedom of speech and information is provided properly by the Press which, over the years, has acquired a special status for itself. It is known as the fourth estate of the democratic realm. It is an ideological state apparatus and a subtle manipulator which provides a selective construction and representation of events happening in society.
Art lies in concealing art. Greater art lies in deciphering it.
An important function of the Press is to correlate and interpret the events in order to enable the people to obtain a perspective and to understand the significance of the events. The events are evaluated and interpreted, the motive being to mobilize the opinion of public. The Press has come to affect not only public opinion, but also, public choice. For example, a large share of news stories are based on politics and the statements of politicians, while a magnifying glass needs to be arranged to find stories on religious, artistic, sporting, scientific, health related or recreational stories. This automatically gives a message to the reader that political features are of more importance.
Walter Lippmann recognizes Journalism as an essential part of the democratic process. Public opinion is the prime mover in democracies and the Press plays a vital role in organizing public opinion. Apart from being an agent of political development and socio economic change, it is also a mirror of the society it rests in.
For a country like India which is the world’s largest democracy, being regarded as the respiratory system of its egalitarian setup, is indeed a huge responsibility and power. It becomes essential for the Press to maintain a balance between these two domains. Where instances such as media’s probe into Jessica Lall murder case reassure the faith in justice and empower the Press as a helping hand in governance, the same community of journalists is questioned when it comes to controversies such as Radia Tapes controversy.
“Within a fortnight after Jessica Lall was shot over her refusal to serve drinks, an ice-cream parlour attendant was allegedly shot dead for not stocking a particular ice-cream brand. What happened to that case?” asks an article in Reuters pointing towards the plutocratic nature of the Indian Press.
The concept of trial by media has also aroused debates of its authority and validity versus its significance. “In recent times, the media have lived by the dictum of ‘guilty till proven innocent’. Perhaps the concept of trial by media has now come back to sting the media itself!” said Rajdeep Sardesai on the leak of Burkha Dutt’s telephonic conversation with Nira Radia.
Peepli Live is an interesting movie that exemplifies the concept of ‘media circus’ in India. It depicts how it is impossible to neglect an issue taken up by any one channel or newspaper and that the prime focus of the media is to make money out of airing anything.
In what is rightly called the Age of Information, purveyors of information are an inevitable influence on society and government. What kind of influence? A good influence, most journalists would say. American Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis put the journalists’ case succinctly in his famous remark that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” In other words the press, by exposing flaws in government (or business or academia or the other powerful “estates” of modern democratic capitalist society), helps to correct those flaws.
But this view is not widely shared outside the media itself. Polls consistently show that the press is unpopular. While complaints vary, many of them can be distilled into two basic ideas. One is that journalists are biased and their reports are not balanced or objective. The other is that journalists, by exposing matters that ought to be nobody else’s business, trample other citizens’ right to privacy.
Issues of press responsibility, bias, and invasion of privacy have all been sharpened by the arrival of the Internet as a new force in the media. The Internet has changed things in at least two ways. First, it has speeded up the news cycle—the time it takes for new developments to be reported. Second, it has lowered the barriers to entry: anyone with a computer and a modem can be a media mogul. These developments have increased competition in the press and, some argue, have lowered standards of reporting. Accuracy suffers from the rush to beat the competition, especially when beating the competition is a matter of minutes or seconds rather than hours or days. Increased competitive pressure also makes it harder for the media to maintain traditional taboos on subjects like the sex lives of politicians. New arrivals may not have the same standards of accuracy or discretion as traditional news media have had. Yet, once a piece of information is out on the Internet, it becomes hard for the media to ignore it.
There is some truth to these concerns. But they also echo alarms that have accompanied advances in the media since the arrival of the printing press. Each innovation has produced worries about lower standards and the dangers of making mass communication too easy. Yet each has promoted democracy by making people better informed and making it easier for them to express their views.
Another condemnation of the Press includes rampant advertising. Perhaps the best communicator that India has seen, Mahatma Gandhi on receiving advertisement support for running a newspaper wrote: “It is now an established practice with newspapers to depend for revenues mainly on advertisements rather than on subscriptions. The result has been deplorable. The very newspaper which writes against the drink evil publishes advertisements in praise of drinks.” Apart from a conflicting viewpoint which the ads lend, the sponsorships have also started controlling the content of the stories in some way or the other.
There is also an ethical decline as a consequence of changing market realities. In a highly competitive news universe, access is the key, a privilege that is often dependent on building personal equations. Film journalists, for example, are expected to give favourable reviews if they want an ‘exclusive’ interview with a star. Lifestyle journalists rely on sponsored deals to travel the world. Political journalists get identified with individual and ideological camps to get ahead, often with a brazen disregard for neutrality. Business journalism is even more difficult because the commercial muscle of major advertisers can conflict with the notion of journalistic independence.
The theory behind the state of Indian Press as it is now, is that truth has a natural advantage over falsehood, provided that information and argument are as freely available as possible. The more information and argument—whether true or false, wise or stupid—the more likely it is that truth and wisdom will float to the surface while falsehood and stupidity will sink. The Press, as the powerful Fourth Estate in our society, is making information and argument more plentiful than ever.
Whether or not the Indian Press is fulfilling its role as the fourth estate depends largely on where this role starts and where it ends. But the blurred borders of its role make it difficult to conclude. However, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that in spite of being criticized for crossing the line and basing every feature with the viewership turnovers in mind, the Press is working towards the vision of Media Utopia where the Press, the Power, and the People walk hand in hand.
