22/05/14

Politics of Media

  ‘’Victory has many fathers, but failure is an orphan’’ the quote made famous by John F Kennedy is very relevant today after Modi’s spectacular win.Modi’s ascend to the top post is significant especially after 10 years of scam-affected  regime of Congress lead UPA. But I almost felt sorry for those senior journalists who were ‘crawling’ (if I borrow the words of famous journalist Vinod Mehta) in front of BJP leaders in a bid to please them. Incredible Medias (read paid Medias) of Incredible India. Today business and political interest supersedes the ethics of journalism, and they behave as if the mouth piece of winning side.
Now a small Infant party like AAP doesn’t have the money or power to make them crawl before them, so that everything they do is mocked at and termed as drama. I just copy paste here a witness account during the Tihar jail dharna of AAP to show how the biased media functions.

      ‘'I am not an AAP activist but support them. Yesterday I too went
outside Tihar to express solidarity.AAP supporters were on the
pavement & absolutely peaceful and there was no disruption of traffic.
After an hour police asked us to cross the road & congregate on the
other side, following their orders we were quickly crossing the road,
the police stopped the traffic( for not more than 5 minutes as AAP
workers told us to cross quickly) and the media rushed to cover that
traffic had been disrupted. Sad! and then police started lathi
charging AAP for disrupting traffic.A bus came and AAP
workers/supporters were pushed into it .Later at home I came to know
that they were booked under sec 144 but it was not announced there
that sec 144 had been imposed. Hope you and me would not have to fight
this impossible system for a personal loss!’’
 
   I feel disappointed reading news today. Perhaps going by this standard of Medias Gandhiji too was performing ‘drama’ against British Raj to get sympathy. Arvind Kejriwal refused to pay the bail bond on moral ground that he is not a criminal as he did in the previous occasions as well, but perhaps due to the ‘Modi effect’ he has been arrested. Nobody seemed to have any issues when Kejriwal had been called Pak Agent and other certain derogatory names, but when a corrupt BJP leader Gadkari was termed as ‘corrupt’ all our system joined hands to put a honest man in prison.It is funny that BJP demands evidence of the corruption charges against Gadkari when all their election campaign was concentrated on the corruption charges against Congress leaders. Incredible India.It is unfortunate that a law cannot be questioned if find unjust. During freedom struggle Gandhiji was asked to ‘obey’ the law, to which he said, all laws were not just. Strange that Indian Penal Code written by British in another century cannot also be questioned. 


   All media is blind about this injustice, and as there is no opposition in parliament or none dare to criticize Modi and BJP, I think the future of Indian media is pretty bleak. It is a disturbing development.