2009/4/26 George Pinto <georgejpi...@yahoo.com>: > Not to pile on journalists but there is no such thing > as a "neutral point of view" anymore. Everything has > to be read as a commentary or opinion-editorial > (op-ed) piece. Which is not to say historical events > and facts do not occur, but the reporting is > prejudiced by one's political leanings and other biases.
In any other context, I would have hurriedly agreed with such a point of view. It is undeniable that the media takes sides, is biased, is run by men (and sometimes, women) who have their own political viewpoints and subjectivities, and is prone to manipulation by diverse quarters including by governments, political groupings and those with the moneybags. But, in this case, there's more than meets the eye... In recent times, the attempts to create smoke-screens about the media is amazing. For instance, in cyberspace, one of the mails floating around suggests all kinds of conspiracy theories about the ownership of the English-language media in India, a section of the media which has been fairly even-handed in combatting concerns like communalism, chauvinism and the like. One needs to take a deeper look here. What happened in this particular case? Those following the debates on wider networks (both Goan -- not just Goanet -- and beyond) would know the attempt to seize on a TOI report (reflected in some other sections of the media) which sought to portray doughty anti-communalism campaigner Teesta Setalvad in bad light. As a manipulator, and so on. These reports were quickly seized on, and amplified in cyberspace by those who obviously don't like the work that Teesta has been consistently doing over many years now. (Take a look at the magazine she puts out, Communalism Combat http://www.sabrang.com/ See also the manner in which her Wikipedia page has been twisted to make it out that, rather than fighting communalism, she is actually a controversial individual.) All this does have an impact. Openquote: The spiral of silence is a political science and mass communication theory propounded by the German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. The theory asserts that a person is less likely to voice an opinion on a topic if one feels that one is in the minority for fear of reprisal or isolation from the majority. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence Closequote Now, a new set of facts have emerged in the India mainstream media, saying that the critics of Teesta might have been the manipulators, after all. At this stage, we are told that the media is not to be trusted. Rich, isn't it? The media will be used, manipulated and discarded. It will be used to propagate views that tally with our bias, and then held out as unreliable when the facts that emerge are contrary to what we'd like to believe! To my mind, there are clear options here. Either Teesta manipulated the facts or she didn't. Either there was a genocide (not "communal riots") in Gujarat or there wasn't. If there was one, either it was carried on with the State support or it wasn't. The facts are emerging, even if they're taking their own time and prone to a whole lot of manipuations. The media -- or sections of it -- are doing an interesting job, and the truth is indeed coming out. There is no need to create smoke-screens by apologists of the indefensible, to just muddy the waters. A cursory look at the situation would make it clear what the game being played. The slaughter of the Sikhs in Delhi and beyond (post-Indira Gandhi's assassination) is being used as a justification for the Gujarat genocide, as if the culpability of one party in one situation justifies the role of another further westwards! Minor inaccuracies in statements about who died (or got raped) and when are being used as arguments to question the credibility of those taking up the wider cause of justice, as if the horrible incidents we know never happened! Given the chance, and despite all its many defects, the Indian media still has enough diversity to allow for a wide range of the truth to emerge. We need more of a free press, not less of it. Yes, the media can manipulate (and does manipulate) our views, what we think, and what we think about. But so do the critics of the media! My point of view, though I don't intend to get caught up in a ceaseless debate on this. FN -- FN * http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com http://twitter.com/fn
