We know the term ‘Godi Media’, thanks to some unbiased journalists, who claim themselves to be the torch-bearers of truth among the Indian media houses. But, what if we come to know about another type of media which is also a ‘Lapdog Media’ but is sitting on someone else’s Godi i.e. the ‘Lutyens Media’ or the left sponsored media.
Media is considered as the “Fourth Pillar” in democratic countries along with the legislature, executive, and judiciary, as without a free media a democratic system cannot cease to exist. But nowadays this fourth pillar is losing its strength and may result in falling of this democratic structure due to their bias or one-sided reporting.
Let’s try to analyze some of the reasons for this apparent “bias”.
Ownership Patterns Of Media Houses
The reality is that a large number of media houses are owned by politicians and people close to politicians, be it the Right-wing supporting ‘Zee News’ owned by BJP MP Subhash Chandra or the Left Wing supporting ‘NDTV’ owned by the father-in-law of Congress MP Navin Jindal as well as by Radhika Roy, the sister of the CPI(M) MP Brinda Karat.
Strained Relationships With Individual Journalists/Editors
Media’s level of access to ministers, bureaucrats, and other key policymakers has largely affected the news stories and editorials that come out, thus negatively influencing the media’s narrative and opinions for different parties. Be it the current centre ruling party BJP, or the Congress, whose leader Brajesh Pandey (accused of molesting a minor Dalit girl in Bihar) is the elder brother of Ravish Kumar Pandey (Chief Editor of NDTV).
Media Houses Supporting A Particular Ideology
It is not a new fact that a group of people could have their points of view supporting their favoured ideology, and hence the same gets reflected in their ways of delivering content which further ends up being discriminatory or biased.
Today, a lot of people can be seen criticising many mainstream media houses and calling them biased for their uneven reporting towards particular issues, which is right and should not be tolerated in a democracy, but hypocrisy begins when the same people start to spread the fake news or the propagandist agendas of the different wing or different media houses. This crowd of self-declared intellectual/liberal group mostly consists of the youth, who just for the sake of their peer pressure share the news and post of which they have ‘zero-knowledge’ about.
This may seem hard to believe but I believe that that today, the educated youth is also sharing as much as fake news as their prior generation (who is not so much aware of social media) is sharing. And this is the bitter truth of the world’s largest democracy that its media has failed to provide unbiased and unaltered news to its masses, the facts and agendas are constantly changed according to their conveniences. Be it the news spread by ‘WhatsApp University’ or the foreign-sponsored ‘YouTube Channels’, the media has lost its credibility and we are unwantedly made to choose among these evils only.
As of today, the media is primarily divided into two segments and parties namely the Congress and the BJP, and both of them have a great share in the media market. While the Congress leaders and their relatives own far more ‘channels/newspapers’ than the BJP and are much better established in the media than the BJP. But the latter also holds its sway with maximum and the most popular ‘Hindi news channels’, which gives it a very clear edge over its competitor in a country of maximum Hindi news viewers.
This rivalry among the political clans is leading our nation towards a heap of fake news and propaganda. Be it the ‘Godi Media’ or the ‘Lutyens Media’ both have done their parts in ruining the democratic setup of the country, and both of them are on the laps of different parties and wings justifying their agendas. So, it becomes the prime duty of the youth, to completely examine the facts and truth before sharing anything on social media and not just sharing anything for the sake of showing our presence on social media or to be counted as an aware citizen.