Indian Media Bash Blog

We have moved a long way from censored single window Doordarshan days. It’s free market now; the market forces determine the direction of news and the bias that it carries along. We now see a “war for news”, but it’s also a war between spin doctors. With the revolution in mass news dissemination services, news channels are now able to affect public opinion in a major way. In other words, media is the new God, that more or less enjoys blind faith. This provides spin doctors an excellent medium to forward their agenda, particularly when it’s veiled in the form of a news article or an editorial. You may call it “fooling the public”, but I understand that journalists are mortal human beings, who need to feed.

But how is the media able to play a God? I find the answer in Fran Trampiet’s words:

Media literacy is really a necessity in today’s world. We live in such a media-saturated environment. We’re continually bombarded with messages from newspapers and magazines, movie and television screens, Internet Web sites, chat rooms and listservs. We have to know how to filter out what we don’t need or want and how to access and then interpret, analyze and evaluate what’s useful. Media literacy is about asking smart questions and making smart choices; it’s about using media selectively and reflectively.

Media literate people want to know the source of a message, its purpose and the source’s credibility and reliability. They can recognize bias, distortion, stereotyping and sensationalism. They try to get information from multiple sources and to consider any issue from multiple perspectives.

Media education develops critical thinking skills. It cuts across all areas of the curriculum and can be integrated into every subject area.

Lack of media literacy is the culprit. Our high school boards have no provision for media literacy. But then, it’s in a country where being able to sign one’s name is enough criterion for being a literate.

The definition of being a literate has to change with changing times, and this change has to be reflected in our high school curriculum. Center for Media literacy, for example, is an organization that is bringing about this change in American schools. We need something like that in India as well, in a bid to save the Indian public from getting dragged into the spin.

Disclaimer: I didn’t receive any monetary benefits from Fran Trampiet or CML for writing this post :D

Oh! before I sign off, a futuristic high school examination question:

Q1. Identify the spin article among the following:

a. Sonia’s sacrifice – Rajdeep Sardesai
b. Shayane Munshi gets back to business

Related News article:
Is This Journalism? (via)