It is not an exaggeration to say that the average Indian citizen has lost faith in today’s media because unbiased journalism is extinct in India (“Newsrooms under siege”, August 22). Switch on your television and there is either the relentless rambling of some noisy reporter covering ‘live’ some event or indulging himself in some mindless sensationalism. Even the most ardent television viewer would get exhausted by this noise and din. They literally scream in your face.
Coming to the print media, most newspapers read like they are the election pamphlets of some political party or the other. It is as if the reader is paying to read about the political ideology and electoral campaign of political parties.
And then there is the new kind — the Web media which is filled with gossip and trivia. The average consumer of the media has long been acclimatised to paid news. Today, we are dealing with a new animal. Most print and electronic media houses are affiliated to political parties through ownership or by contract — a case of institutionalised ‘conflict of interest’. Had he been alive, I wonder what Joseph Pulitzer would have said.
Ravi Aravelli,
Cheepurupalli, Andhra Pradesh
