A letter to the Indian Media,
I am an aspiring journalist and have never been this sad about the state of journalism before; it breaks my heart to see how the Indian media is operating. You have managed to kill millions of dreams of an upcoming journalist.
In the month of June, we lost a talented actor, but we also witnessed a fall of our GDP, rise in unemployment, migrant crisis, farm bills, lack of healthcare facilities during the pandemic, student suicides and more. Four months down the line, and you have just managed to talk about one. Journalism is no more journalism, but ‘selective journalism’.
The ‘prime time’ coverage is no more about important issues, but only about reading out WhatsApp chats of actors and then labelling them. I, as a citizen, am least interested in knowing what someone ate in jail or what someone wore while visiting the police station.
A debate is considered a debate when people give their opinions even if it doesn’t fit your opinion and their views are not the same as yours, but now, you suppress the ones who have opposite views and just keep ‘shouting’ in a dramatic way.
The youth who is dependent on you is still unaware and the ones that are aware, you have successfully managed to invalidate their independent opinion. Few have already lost faith in you. The job of a journalist is to state facts, but instead, we only see opinions being stated as facts. It is high time we realise that we are losing out on well-read, woke citizens.
Media holds a lot of power, but misusing it for your own agenda means going against the central ethic of journalism. We have seen a lot in the year 2020, including the death of journalism and media.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Journalism should never be prostituted for selfish ends or for the sake of merely earning a livelihood or, worse still, for amassing money.”