Journalists and their Journalism

Who am I? I am a present day Journalist with negotiation skill. Why I require a negotiation skill when I am a journalist? I require this skill to become a liaison. Why I want to become a Liaison? I want to become a liaison to exploit my position for my personal benefits but I am a journalist and my job is to cover and present the news for my audience! Though the present situation is - Journalism is divided into two sects: One who is with the government and other is against the government. The one who is with the power has forgotten their as well as the anti-government ones. What a pro government. journalist thinks? Pro journalists – represent government indirectly and always stand with the government decisions. And the anti-government journalist didn’t want to see any positives in the government decisions and mostly he represent the opposition political party and run those parties political agendas in public. Where we in India have adopted Democratic way of governance and in that - Journalism is defined as one of the important Pillar of Democracy. 

In Democracy it is never wrong to criticize your government - especially when you are a journalist and performing your duty honestly of course the power will not going to like you but that does not mean you should not criticize the government. This is what your job is. And do not only criticize the government do appreciate when you see things are going in the right direction. But if I ask - at present are we as a journalist’s performing our duty honestly? And the honest answer to the question will be a definite no. Why we see the news on TV? We see the news channels to know what is happening around us. And at present we have so many private news channels who overload us with the information’s which are very biased and provoking towards something irrelevant. Country is run by the government and they have to take care of many possibilities and in this an important part is played by the journalists for smooth running of the system with their informatics reporting. And there are very few journalists who dared to expose the government and because of their daringness they all are suffering right now and we should not hesitate to appreciate their work. Of course it has to be with proofs and of course investigating journalism has saved the country many times in the past.  .    

The sad period of Journalism is going on at present. And the journalists in many ways have gone to their all-time low. Here I would not say that government is not responsible for this, and If you are very active on all these mediums of information you can see the biased as well as neutral views of these journalists. A journalists take an oath – “I will perform my duty as a responsible journalist towards my country and my profession”. But what am I doing now? Am I really representing the way it is supposed to be represented? Answer of this question we all know and sadly I have to say it is not the right phase of journalism which is going on. Most of the big journalists of today have a very influential family background they have not become big because of their honest and dedicated service in the field rather influent has helped them become what they are today.

In the past - there were many reporters or journalists who have achieved their name in the journalism field with their brilliant work and big political leaders use to respect them. From the past we have many examples of fantastic journalism but contemporary one would be when the country was under emergency. At that time many journalists were imprisoned because of their investigative journalism and taking out the truth in front of the country which was against the government. You can’t ignore their work because without their support and work even Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan wouldn’t have achieved his Goal of toppling the Indira Government for the very first time of Independent history of India. Also many journalists at present time had learned their skills from those early and mid-70s senior Journalists but yes the time has changed now and because of which the definition of journalisms has also changed. Present day journalism is more about agenda setting and the journalists become the tools in the hands of politicians for their agenda setting games. Now a new trend has started in which the journalists disliking their own counterpart openly. This hatred towards each other has become so big now - that they go to any extent to insult and humiliate each other on public platforms. 

There are so many examples of biased reporting are going on at present in the news – which is quite shameful. A Journalist should not favor a government rather report the event as it is - and if possible with all its pros & cons. Unfortunately now a day we don’t see any such reporting these days. At present most of these big media houses are either being owned by big business family or under the influence of big political party.  And that is why they can’t stay neutral or unbiased - one of the recent example on which a rage is going on in opposition these days is of “Central Vista project” of Central Government many of us know what it is. But the way it has been presented to masses and which raise the question about journalists and their reporting and of course it is not neutral reporting by many big journalists. This is a fine example of agenda setting politics and in which lots of renowned journalists playing important part by supporting the opposition political party. What the opposition saying at present - the country is suffering from COVID-19 - why the government is continuing with this project?  Where a big amount is involved we should rather postpone this project or suspend it for the time being and fight and help the people who are suffering from this.  If you go back in history – you will come to know that this project of building a new Parliament House and some new Ministerial buildings were proposed long time back. It never took place because a very long period rather between 1989 – 2014 no single party majority government ruled India. In spite of urgent need of a new building was required to run the administration smoothly. The present government took initiative and decided to go ahead with this long pending project. Central Vista Project is one big project - like this several projects are going on in different parts of the country which are equally important. But the journalists are not interested in reporting those projects but this one because it is taking place in New Delhi. Of course on one hand it does make sense of suspending the project at present but on the other hand if we’ll stop the project it will slowdown the speed of the economic growth of the country. The government is providing uninterrupted employment to lot of workforce at this adverse time.  In the history of Modern and Medieval as well as in Ancient India we have many examples where the Kings initiated projects to provide their subjects work when the subjects didn’t have any work to take care of their families.  Certainly this example is not the comparison or I am saying government is doing the right thing. It is just an example.

Unfortunately most of us absorb the anti-government news as it is we do not try to find out about its authenticity and this is the advantage - what these journalists enjoy afterwards. Legitimacy in the reporting of theirs has gone away from the present day journalism. If you will start following the basic idea of journalism you will definitely going to help journalists and their followings. It’s been said that the present government has a team of volunteers whose job is to follow all the news channels throughout the day and submit the report to the their superiors at the end of the day and then accordingly the directives being issued to all the news channels on what content they should run and write on their respective formats. If it is true - then it is not a good practice in the democratic form of governance. But It is also quite sad for the organization to follow these instruction. The other truth is - every private organization needs money to run their show and money has to come to them from somewhere and if the hands of the supreme are on your back you are the King. And you have to oblige them as well.  

I have a suggestion – it is in practice in couple of countries BBC England and DW Germany are the example where news agencies do not come directly under the government undertaking. And they are independent bodies there. These two news agencies get money from the tax payers directly to run. This kind of system should also be adopt in our country but in our country we have a slight problem in implementing this system as the government does not get tax from major population and collection is low directly. But we can always donate a little amount from our pocket so this organization can run independently here as well. If you think you can be a responsible citizen of India and you want your country to flourish take a pledge and start donating whatever minimum you can think of giving. This act will certainly give confidence to the organization or the individual journalist whom so ever you think is doing a good job in the field of journalism.