Yes, people I think that the Fourth estate is for sale or most likely has already been bought off by the people who have the money.
When there are so many other issues like Naxal problem, J& K problem, the rising inflation, food grains rotting in godowns, the perennial corruption, and so forth. The news item that really has caught the imagination of most of the new channels is that of the Spot-fixing done by some Pakistani players.
Over the last few weeks the Indian News Media at least the so called News Channels have been covering the Spot-Fixing scandal like it is the most important news item that everyone should know about. They have run expose video & audio taken by News of the World reporters again & again so much so that I am sure many people who have by-hearted it by now.
The fact that these News people are missing is that, a common Indian doesn’t really care it. Sure, the people would have cared if it had been done by an Indian but we are least interested if it was, is being done by a non-Indian player.
Somehow, the fact that many Indian athletes who were to participate or were probable for the Common Wealth Games have failed the doping test is not big news. In fact, this is supposed to be the all-time record for the number of athletes caught doping for a host country.
Just imagine, how it would be, if in most of the events the host countries athletes are banned from participating because of drugs use? And, here we are worried about Pakistani players involved in spot-fixing.
Here’s a quick statistics:
I went to the Times Now website and did search for “doping + CWG”, I got 9 hits. Do a search for “spot-fixing” and I got 10 hits. I did a search for “sopt-fixing” and guess what? I got a total of 66 hits, most of them relevant to the on-going row.
Okay, one may argue that since corruption scandal hit the CWG and given the fact that India was never anyways gonna be a contender to win the most medals in the games, people were least interested in the doping scandal.
What about the Rotting Food Grains in the godowns of the FCI? That is an important issue given the price rise, right? I did a search for “food grains” and “rotting food grains”. Yes I did get many hits, but almost 95% of the hits had nothing to do with this issue. In fact, most of the hits for the “food grains” were about the cooking shows that are broadcast on the channel.
And the biggest of all is that most of the News Channels and the print media have kept silent about the Paid News scandal. In fact, if any other group had anything like this these news channels and print media would have been hounding away about the scandal for 24 hours for at least 4 months.
But when they themselves were caught, with their hands in the cookie jar, these institutions have decided to act as if the whole thing never even happened.
I did a search for “paid news” on the times now website, I did not get even one relevant hit. That just about sums it all up for you.
Here, I have to note that The Hindu has been publishing many articles about the paid news phenomenon and so has Outlook magazine on its blog. However, these two institutions have not gone public with the report, though outlook has provided a link on its blog.
Imagine, being able to control what news you want to see published or broadcast. The power of propaganda is so powerful that any news can be twisted to suit your needs.
Here are some links for you to look at:
Paid News You Can't Read About
A blog on the paid news scandal with extracts from the report.
Who Voted How?
Details of who on the PCI council voted for the report to be made public and who did not.
'Paid News': The Buried Report
The full report of the PCI subcommittee, which has been buried by the publishers.
Final Report on Paid News
The final report created by PCI that does not have the sub-committee’s report.
The above links clearly show that the Fourth Estate - at least a major share of it is up for grabs.now, who grabs that up is something we can never be sure of.
What needs to be done is that the News Publications involved in the paid news should be investigated and all thsoe involved should be banned for life from participating in any other media institution. Legal action taken should also be initiated against the institutions.
The PCI's functioning must change, eminent members of the public should be invited on board. The PCI given more powers to act against erring members.
The Fourth Estate should act as the soul of a nation, if it is corrupted then the nation itself will become corrupted. This will lead to a rot from the inside and we can forget about India being a Superpower by 2050 let alone 2020.
