Media Activism

The communication revolution in the last couple of decades has vested huge responsibilities on the media. Media now has the capability to create an opinion among millions of more people than anytime in the past. With this far reaching effect, it now has gained the power to affect the country’s systems as a whole. Its role has evolved from a mere information conveyer to a powerful activist. I assume this is the very reason that it has been named the Fourth Estate.

Media’s role in a number of recent cases like Ruchika’s case, Jessica Lal case, BMW case, etc has been instrumental in getting all attention on them and forcing the judiciary and the law and order agencies to undertake a fair trial. Manu Sharma, for example, had been acquitted by the high court but is being found guilty by the Supreme Court. It is quite evident that the earlier trials were influenced by the high profile personalities involved in all of them. The unravelling of facts to the general public by the media relating to each of these cases had been the key to this success. We may call it media activism or media exposure.

But there has been a lot of criticism on the medium too. Many critics blame it for sensationalizing the information to allure more and more viewers. It has been tagged as only a corporate interested in making money through higher TRPs leading to higher advertisement profits. This could be true to a large extent. The presentation of each of these stories has been dramatic. The extent and the kind of coverage given to them make these channels source of entertainment in general households. They provide information which the public likes to see and the way they like it the best. This fact is evident in the selectiveness of cases to be covered. All of these are the ones which find most widespread interest. Media has done a great job in getting some of these influential criminals to law but at the same time, to do justice on being called an activist, there should be stress on a myriad of other areas starved of attention of national concern as well.

There have been some efforts in this direction. There are some examples of initiatives by the media which could not have been done by individual efforts. Initiative like “Teach India” by Times of India is one example which could have a far reaching effect in the literacy rate of the country as a whole. A few sting operations in sales tax offices were some excellent efforts to induce fear from corruption in many government offices. Let us hope to see more initiatives like these and many more areas to make India’s future brighter.