by By a moral standard, the true role of media is to represent the news as is without any deviation,exaggeration or sensationalizing it. Be it a conspiracy, or a national tragedy or a new law that has been passed, the role of a newspaper or a TV channel is to merely represent the actual facts and the truth. The media at no point should ideally take a stand between their personal favourable outcome. The viewers should be left with the sole discretion of deciding on how the news should be construed.
Millions of people across the world read a newspaper first thing in the morning as soon as they wake up and rely on the respective newspaper for the current news. The impact of a media can be felt even across the small cities and villages and the responsibility / onus is on the media company to maintain their journalistic ethics
When people begin to believe the news published in a paper or news channel ,they tend to stick with it and make conscious decisions based on the same. So when the channel makes it a point to merely point mistakes at the opposition meanwhile glorifying the current part, it can lead a very bad impact on its viewers. It raises reliability, trust issues and you are no longer neutral to the events
I recently came across a show called “The Newsroom” written by the famous Aaron Sorkin. The show discusses in detail the journalistic ethics followed by media companies across the world even in times of adversity. When faced with a breaking news , and if they are unsure of whether the news is false or actually true, they withhold the news to the viewers . Only after verification they actually find out that the news was indeed a rumour and never happened , upon which they finally and proudly declared that other agencies who rushed ahead with the news for TRP sake , were indeed incorrect . The impact of truth is very hard on a person. Even more dangerous is the impact of a lie and its disastrous consequences that can lead to rappelling effects.
There are hundreds of agencies in India where 80% of them either lean or left and do not take a neutral standpoint when it comes to broadcasting politics based news. They merely do it either to get favours from the current political party or the next in line. Or in some cases they are sponsored by the political parties themselves which makes matters even more worse
Hopefully the respectable field of journalism will stand its ground and retain its fairness in this country
This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.
