Time to hold Indian Mainstream Media to Account

How many people in India (or outside) have heard about Canning riots in 2013? The fact that for many it won't even ring a bell without Google says a volume. In summary, a crowd of “misguided youths” with no religion burned Hindu homes and shops, leading to around 2000 of them being displaced and forced to live in relief camps. Strangely, I could not find any statistics about loss of life due to limited coverage overall, with most of the webpages removed. No awards were returned, there was no outrage about the damage to secular fabric, and of course no media coverage. This is just one of the several examples of selective, agenda based reporting by the mainstream media in India. All violence needs to be condemned and punished. Crude tactics to shame the majority to benefit the minority is a dangerous game to play (or the other way round). Balanced, issue based reporting is the need of the hour (fat chance). In pursuit of electoral maths and power both political parties and media have lost sight of the nation.

For example, the key issue is that why parts of India have such low level of human development index even after several decades of independence? I would love to see an in-depth issue based analysis on the performance of various governments since independence and the lessons we can learn from it. May be a panel discussion on what can be done to change reservations, as clearly the current system is not working? Or, a daily discussion on how we can realign our political system to look beyond electoral maths?

The crude, decibel intensive, shallow, negative, biased news that we are seeing today is playing a negative role in the Indian democracy. The challenge is to legislate to make it accountable without damaging its independence. 

Following may help:

• requirement to clearly label strictly factual news, opinions/ conjectures/ gossip/ rumours, and paid news. 
• speeding up court decision times to kill rumours soon
• if a media house has run a news extensively 24/7 so as it is likely to damage somebody's reputation, they should be required to run a clarification multiple times over similar number of days at prime time to demonstrate their intention to do fair reporting. The number of clarifications should be determined by hours of footage, language used, negative opinion espoused, and history of false reporting. Serial offenders should be heavily fined
• the same should apply for any false positive news, if so proved in a court of law
• clear guidelines should be established on reporting in sensitive situations (riots, wars, terrorist attacks)
• a media channel should clearly indicate what kind of news they aim to cover and ensure that their viewers know what they are watching. E.g. if the intention is to cover and sensationalise a select list of cognisable offences, they may as well say it clearly

A well-functioning democracy needs a strong, independent, ethical media. It is about time that the media articulates what role it wants to play and how it will determine the ethical and cosntructive behaviour of its members. I sincerely hope to see the emergence of a media group that works towards issue based reporting and improving the state of our democracy.