Is media a bitter chocolate?

 Whenever threatened, Aam adami will retaliate by saying that he will call the media – just like a child threatened by a bully retaliates by saying, that he will call his elder brother. Media had an impression of an elder brother of the aam adami, but just till kejriwal blamed it.

Is media really a saviour, a sweet or a bitter chocolate?

Bitter chocolate is the name of book written by Pinki Virani on the bitter truth about child sexual abuse in our so called highly moral society. This shows how a trusted person – who could be a cousin, uncle, and teacher or any near and dear - lures the child by a chocolate and wins the child’s trust only to abuse her sexually, leaving the child hurt. Recently, the Bollywood movie Highway depicted this.

Purpose of Media: There is no single objective of media.

Desired objective of media – To act as an error detector like a thermostat in an air conditioner, to sense the temperature, compare it with the desired temperature and in case of error send the message to the motor which starts or stops.

But in case of Media it can only sense and convey.  The motor in the form of various organs of govt may or may not act. Desired temperature of media is the declared objective of our constitution.

Actual objective - To fulfil some part of the above because it has to serve interests of many agencies

• Aam adami wants - media to voice its concerns
•  Owners of media want media - for profit and power sharing.
• Govt wants - propaganda of whatever it wants to tell the people
• Journalists - Start as a mission, but while moving in the corridors of power to keep a watch on the powerful, some get lured or sucked into power centres. Thus, they become partners in power and end up as power brokers or pawns in the hand of rulers.  Some obey the dictates of owners others to who - so ever pays their price. No Indian institution is free from such people. Some are honest and take it as a mission, but question is whether they are given the beats to cover ‘Nature’ or ‘Power Politics’?

What actually happens – From chocolate to ‘bitter chocolate’

 As Noam Chomsky says, “The mass media is little more than a public relations Industry, for the rich and powerful. The media’s job is train the minds of the people to believe in the virtue of powerful goons who rule them”.

Media For profit-

• Advertisement or News –   Few years back, when I bought a chocolate, to my shock when opened there was a plastic piece of two inches in it. I contacted a news reporter who sent the photographer, who clicked at least 10 photos of the defective chocolate.  Next day, in the news paper, there was no news but a big advertisement of that chocolate. This is how news got replaced with Ad.
• Ads or Promotions - Visiting actors on various channels in aren basically paid advertisements in guise of visits or interviews to sell their films. Ads of God men like Nirmal Baba are given as discourses. Even the magazines of the stature of India Today, published features on the third rate institutions, which were actually high paid ads.
•  Are advertisements packed in between two serials? Or  Serials are packed within two advertisements?  Samir Jain (co proprietor of Bennett Coleman of  Times Group) said once “we are in the business of advertisement rather than News”.
• Are advertisements bad?  No - As they are must for financial survival of the newspaper or TV or we will have to buy our Newspaper or TV subscriptions at very high prices. What is bad is to give that type of serial or news which will gather a particular type of audience who will buy the advertised product. The content of a news or serial is dictated by the product to be sold. So Ad agencies are deciding, what to feed in the minds of people.
• Media keeps people  busy in little petty things-in the name of entertain  most of the serials  show stories woven around  worst of the human traits like cheating ,greed, suspicion, deceit, manipulation, superficial ,bitchy nature of characters . Thus what starts as dose of entertainment ends up stunting the Indian viewers mind?
• News channels in the name of debate or discussion doing the same.
•  Prime Time discussions – are they discussions, debate, dialogues? They are neither. But they are like pre fixed moves of WWF entertainment matches. In most of the political debates you will not see free men, who can speak for the Nation. But petty men are saving the skins of their parties, for which they keep on telling lies. And TV’s keep on calling these liars daily.

Why the media does it?

 To limit the Thinking range of People. Because ‘thinking’ people can challenge the Misdeeds of Rulers.

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