Finally Jagan Reddy and entourage have resigned from the Congress party. But there is an uneasy calm, with everyone involved waiting for his next move. A new party is expected to be launched in less than 45 days. Sakshi TV and channel have benefited from the entire ‘just war’, according to some media observers.
News television in South India is a peculiar animal. It is brazen, it is loud, it is openly aligned with political parties; it practices a no-holds-barred brand of journalism. It will be a poor joke to even talk of journalistic ethics. No one ever claimed anything of the sort.
Since public memory is short, many viewers may have forgotten the ugly footage of Karunanidhi’s midnight arrest during Jayalalithaa’s rule. Such vicious skirmishes are routine in Andhra Pradesh too, though no former chief minister is subjected to similar treatment so far.
In Andhra Pradesh, YS Rajasekhar Reddy’s death has brought twin tragedies to the state – his death itself and his son wanting to be king. As a fond father and loving relative, YSR is rumoured to have been more than generous with favours to family and friends. Just like the unbelievable majority with which he won the state elections, the magnitude of the sums also is said to be unbelievable.
One manifestation of the robust wealth of the family is the media empire they have created out of nowhere, Sakshi newspaper and Sakshi TV. Some 400 to 500 crores of rupees all told to start and further expense till the media house stabilised was available. If not, it is perhaps indicative of the net worth of a politician in power. Eenadu and others washed much dirty linen in public about the nature of investment in the enterprise.
The avowed purpose of the paper and the news channel were quite openly declared during YSR’s lifetime. There are too many powerful anti-Congress media houses; Congress needs its own media house to counter them. The paper was launched with good design and massive print run to outweigh the market leader Eenadu. From the earliest edition of the paper, there was open confrontation between Eenadu and Sakshi. Then the Sakshi news channel was launched with state-of-the-art equipment and very good-looking graphics. Money, as one might guess, was never a problem. Because it either did not get or did not need the small time advertisements that pop-up and clutter the screens of other channels, its screen looked more elegant. The partisan behaviour of the channel was overlooked because that particular malaise was not new to Telugu news channels and papers. When the channel was launched, there was hope that it could be a genuine counterpoint to the existing brand of journalism.
Then, after a glorious electoral victory for a second term, YSR was plucked from the political scene by death. True to Congress tradition, the son Jagan Reddy expected to be crowned as CM. Intense speculation about leadership began even before the funeral was over. Sakshi TV began to orchestrate Jagan’s desire to step in to his father’s shoes. Every second of his public life was put on Sakshi television. YSR’s smiling visage with flower petals showering on it became the second station logo that is fixed on the top right corner of the screen.
Despite the rumoured proximity of Veerappa Moily’s son to Jagan, the Congress high command put Rosaiah in CM’s chair. The Jagan camp began a vicious media campaign ridiculing and jeering everything that the new CM did on the Sakshi channel. Mr Rosaiah was considered one of the most experienced (decades of work as a loyal Congressman) and well-informed finance ministers and was much respected. But for Sakshi he was YSR’s courtier and ‘never in his wildest dreams expected to be CM’, according to one of Sakshi TV reports. The report implied that by default he should have been a Jagan loyalist and ought not to have accepted chief ministership. The weeks of attack on Rosaiah and his repeated complaints in public that Sakshi TV and newspaper were targeting him more frequently and viciously than the traditional opposition papers and channels, Eenadu, ETV and ABN-Andhrajyothi, found no response from the high command.
Jagan began a public mobilization strategy of touring the state to ‘console’ families of those who are supposed to have died of shock and grief on YSR’s tragic death. This he undertook despite the high command and the local party discouraging him. For months after YSR’s death, the son kept up a relentless stream of live coverage of his ‘Odarpu Yatra’ across the state on his channel. The attempt was also to keep YSR’s memory alive in public consciousness so that he can cash-in on it later, a la the Gandhis. Innumerable statues of YSR were erected all over the state.
This strategy was of course supplemented on the channel by direct attacks on rival channels and papers and Telugu Desam party. When Telugu Desam chief Chandrababu Naidu was caught on camera being impatient with a woman petitioner at a public meeting, the channel went to town the whole day repeatedly showing him and calling him Dussasana (the one who disrobed Draupati in court) with sensational graphic/music play-up, interspersed with studio discussions by ‘experts and politicians’.
When serious transgressions and show of public support during the yatras were not evoking any response from the high command, the channel aired a special on the occasion of 125 anniversary of Congress that directly took sideswipes at the party icons, Rajiv and Sonia. In addition to several uncouth titbits about Sonia’s early life in Italy, the programme had references to Bofors. Enraged Congressmen took to the streets, burning Sakshi copies and holding protests in front of Sakshi offices. There was a spate of studio debates on that old chestnut, ‘freedom of speech and expression’.
That week also saw the resignation of Rosaiah and installation of Kiran Kumar Reddy as the Chief Minister. The stage is set for the next round of blackmail through media. Already Sakshi channel is emphasising the fact that Kiran Kumar Reddy never held any ministerial post and that he has no previous administrative experience.
Today, the channel looks like a God channel, with hours of transmission time dedicated to Jagan himself holding forth on how YSR and his family were instrumental in putting the Congress party in power in Delhi.
Most channels and newspapers in Andhra Pradesh have obvious political loyalties. The political parties themselves are fiefdoms built around individuals. Whether Telugu Desam, TRS or Congress, all have feudal, hierarchical and therefore, dynastic inclinations which do not appear to have any desire to democratise. Electoral politics are seen as horse-trading, money-liquor affairs which require enormous amounts of unaccounted for money. Politician-criminals and criminal-politicians have taken over in all parties. Attaining power is all about looting the state exchequer and building the wealth of friends and relatives. It is clear why someone wants to be king.
The tragedy is, the channels and newspapers are being started/used blatantly to promote the political ambitions of one individual or the other. If it is Jagan today, earlier it was Chandrababu. The unemployed lumpen gangs maintained by the politicians are used to ‘astroturf’ spontaneous protests and ‘public response’. The pseudo-events of screaming protestors breaking buses, burning effigies, disrupting civic life are brought in to our living rooms through live coverage, with smatterings of studio discussions. During the 70s and 80s, criminalization of politics was debated much. Now that generation of criminal-politician has understood that media can be used as a tool to promote self and near and dear. We can naively call it democratisation of the media. But what is happening is the systematic undermining of democracy to promote a feudal, caste-ridden, hierarchical system. The ordinary person’s ordinary desire for food, shelter, clothing and education have been invisible on the media over the last several months. Civic administration in cities like Hyderabad has collapsed. At a time when unprecedented rains have facilitated good power generation, there are power shut-downs. Even if any thing is shown/written on these issues, it is deeply coloured by partisan agendas.
The Sakshi saga has some lessons to offer us.
1. If the issue is one of political parties differing in ideology and using the media houses to enlighten people of these differences, it may still be acceptable to an extent. But this is not so. Sakshi TV and paper have begun the attack on a duly elected government belonging to the same party as their owner. The fight here is not ideological, but merely the desire to ‘be king’. This raises an important question about whether politicians can run channels and papers, just as it can be questioned whether individuals with extensive business interests in the economy can be allowed to run media houses. In both cases, when push comes to shove, the media houses resort to blatant promotion of self-interest. In case of the politician, at least the public knows the political connections of the individual. In the case of the business tycoon, without adequate disclosure norms in media, the public has no way of knowing what is news and what is being done to promote business interests.
If political parties run the channels/papers, there is a chance of them serving the ideological agenda of the party, which is also understood as such by the consumer. When an individual belonging to a party owns the media house, as in the case of Sakshi, given the right conditions and the ‘right’ aspirations, the entire political process can be perverted with the help of media.
2. Media houses, by virtue of their origins in partisan political and economic agendas, cannot represent public interest. Public interest is used merely as rhetoric, while personal empires are built through privileged access to power. The media houses, in the name of providing access to grassroots leadership, are actually showcasing local mafias who help strong-arm the local elections. The media houses are abdicating their responsibility to question the antecedents of the so-called local pretenders to leadership, leaving the ordinary citizen to their mercies. In their pretensions to egalitarian access, they are losing sight of what is in public interest and what is not. In such media ecology, which individual journalist can survive if s/he wishes to practice ethical journalism?
Years ago, Justice Sawant as the Chairman of Press Council of India called for alternative ownership models for media industries. Predictably, august media bodies like the Indian Newspaper Society shouted him down. The political class in India seems to be riding on corruption and malleable media. The time has come once again to debate whether business interests and politicians should own and operate media houses in a democracy; whether there is any regulatory framework that can limit the impact of such ownership on general public.
Saturday 11 December 2010
Monday 6 December 2010
The Making of a Journalist
This was published in the jubilee souvenir of Potti Sriramulu Telugu University in December 2010
As any wise one will tell you, there are many paths to get there. Be it Nirvana or the newsroom. Often, University-bound academicians assert the importance of journalism schools in making good journalists. One would like to believe, given the necessary sets of abilities, like language skills, commonsense and a healthy curiosity about the world, any one can be trained to be a journalist. And, the training may come from in-house schools, universities, private institutes of higher learning or just self-study. We have all read with great joy famous journalists who have never stepped into a j-school in their life. But then it took us anything between 10 to 20 years to find them shining in the firmament. However, for a profession in a hurry, it is easier if someone endorses/certifies that a given individual is fit for employment as a journalist, a priori.
And this is where the necessity for j-schools arises. The need was discovered as early as the 1950s when first the Hislop Christian College of Nagpur University (Eapen:1991) and later the Department of Journalism in Osmania University were started. Dr Roland Wolseley was associated with Hislop, while Prof DeForest O’Dell (Benner:1980) came to head the journalism department in Osmania, which was started in 1954. Dr O’Dell, who earned his PhD from Columbia University, worked for many newspapers and for Associated Press. He also had a distinguished career as a professor teaching journalism and public relations at several universities in America.
Under Prof O’Dell’s leadership, the Osmania Department began by offering the journalism course to editors and sub-editors of English language papers. The early course structure, curriculum and general orientation were all shaped by the American tradition of journalism education. Later, Prof Govindarajan who earlier worked for The Hindu headed the Department. The department continued to have a blend of faculty experienced in the journalism, advertising and PR industries, individuals with English Literature and creative writing background, and also those who specialised in communication theory and research. Till about the late eighties, Osmania University played a significant role in helping various universities in designing and setting up their media programmes.
By late eighties, according to a survey by Prof K E Eapen (1991), there were some 50 institutions offering journalism courses. The year 1991 also marked economic liberalisation and brought with it the phenomenal media expansion. It was logical that there would be a parallel expansion of j-schools as by then, a large number of media organizations began to look for and recruit graduates from j-schools through regular campus selections.
Till the early nineties, it was the conventional universities with well-conceived and designed courses that were providing recruits for the media industry. Many of those recruits are now in senior positions in their organizations. The expansion in media industry caught everyone unawares, creating a serious supply crunch for a rapidly expanding industry. The nineties saw a sudden spurt and a haphazard expansion of j-schools both in the conventional university systems and the private sector.
Expansion in the university system
In Andhra Pradesh, two new universities with journalism programmes were started in 1983 and 1988. The first one Sri Padmavathi Mahila Viswavidyalayam in Tirupati, exclusively for women and the second, Sri Potti Sriramulu Telugu University in Hyderabad, which is the first university to offer journalism exclusively in a regional language. Makhanlal Chaturvedi Patrakarita University in Bhopal began functioning in 1991 for Hindi journalism. Andhra University started its journalism programme in 1984 and Nagarjuna University in 2003. With the launching of several new universities in Andhra Pradesh, Nalgonda, Telangana and Krishna Universities have launched journalism courses during the mid-2000s.
From the 1990s onwards, there has been both a vertical and a horizontal expansion, with close to 250 universities and colleges offering journalism and mass communication courses.
Before 1990s, most conventional universities were offering broad-based journalism and mass communication courses that would cover a range of subjects like reporting, editing, newspaper management, history, media law and media research. The courses also had a wide variety of structures. Some were two-year postgraduate programmes divided into one-year post-graduate bachelor’s degree (BCJ) and one year post-graduate master’s degree (MCJ). This was the preferred mode as the students after completion of BCJ would go with a degree in journalism and begin working for a media organization. If interested, they would come back to do a masters degree in journalism later. Those who were keen on joining the profession welcomed this flexibility. Some universities began to offer a 2-year MA with a specific focus like TV production. The nomenclature varied from BA, MA, BCJ, MCJ, BJMC, MJMC and so on. The confusion in nomenclature and the need for comparability of courses is forcing several departments to gravitate towards a common 2-year MA in journalism and mass communication.
Another trend over the 2000s has been the vertical expansion of the journalism programmes. Many universities, under pressure to offer ‘job-oriented’ courses began to introduce journalism in under-graduate colleges. This was either as one of the three majors or as an entire programme for journalism. The downward expansion, however, still faces several problems. There is a severe shortage of competent faculty to teach the programmes. If there was criticism about journalism faculty not having professional exposure, these courses are often run by faculty drawn from other social sciences, who have not gone through a formal university-level journalism programme to know the essential strategies for teaching journalism. Apart from faculty shortage, most of the courses also lack basic infrastructure like subscription to a news agency, focussed library, subscription to newspapers and magazines and now TV channels. Such courses are struggling to survive as enrolment begins to rapidly dwindle even in the university systems, as most of these courses are offered under the self-financing schemes.
The upward expansion has been by way of introducing MPhil and PhD programmes. After the passing of the first generation of faculty who pioneered journalism education in India, the emphasis of the academic programmes also began to shift towards communication from just journalism. The communication component of the courses opens up the possibility for those inclined to research to pursue courses like MPhil and PhD. But the universities that have started the research degrees find that the preferred career choice of the graduates after their masters is to join the profession. It is those who cannot for some reason join the profession who opt for the research programmes.
But the horizontal and vertical expansion has also exposed the universities to much criticism as the industry looking for trained personnel finds the system falling short in some way. The earlier focus of the departments on just journalism education catering to a much smaller field of demand was more closely attuned to the industry needs. Today, university systems have not expanded enough to feed the vast markets of varied demands.
The media industries, like all other industries, tend to look for cheap labour. Unlike the legal or medical professions where the education of the graduate is rounded off with on-the-job training with senior colleagues, journalism schools are expected to produce ready-to-use ‘hands’. And unlike the West, the media industry failed to value the liberal education the graduates bring to the job, and therefore, did not bother to build synergies with the j-schools that would have strengthened both the schools and the profession in the long run.
Private Sector
Barring a few exceptions, many private sector training institutions began to offer purely skill-oriented programmes. Several of the media organizations like Eenadu started their own, in-house training facilities. Later entrants into the newspaper and television market also routinely have an in-house training wing that moulds the new recruits into the organization. Some of the establishments like Eenadu select the recruits through a rigorous entrance exam/interview process. But, the concentration of the media houses is really to train a person in journalistic skills. Unlike the university courses which attempt to impart critical thinking about the profession itself by teaching media laws, media economics and industry, media ethics and history, these schools require ‘good hands’ who will deal with basic news production tasks.
Training set-ups that have come up in the private sector like Asian College of Journalism and Symbiosis have acquired a formidable reputation in the market but are prohibitive in their fee structure. Whenever there is a window for expansion of the private sector, there is a parallel buzz in the market that systematically undermines the conventional university systems. The private sector institutions can dictate not just the fee structure, but also which students they can take in. Sometimes the institutes conduct multi-stage, multi-layered entrance process that skims the creamy layer (both intellectually and financially). This is a luxury that the state-run university systems do not have. The universities do not have the flexibility sometimes to design their own entrance exam. Selection of candidates by interview process is virtually impossible in the highly politicised university environment. But a significant plus for the university system is the social profile of the candidates they offer to the market. It is a profile that is more representative of Indian social reality than that offered by the expensive private institutions. For instance, among the trained professionals sent by the state universities to the media industries, there are several who are first generation learners. This is beginning to matter in the regional language media.
Lastly, whether the in-house training facilities of media organizations or the private institutes, there is a technology fetish that they successfully infect the conventional universities with. The measure of good journalism education appears to be largely based on how much ‘media hardware’ the departments can provide. True, in a modern media environment a lot of technology is used. But if the objective of the school is to produce a competent journalist, reporting, writing and editing skills remain fundamental. The need for understanding journalistic ethics and values should be more privileged than the need to be tech-savvy. It is also futile for the schools to struggle to be ahead of the game in a constantly changing, volatile technology scene. No school can perpetually muster such resources.
Conclusion
Journalism and media education has grown into a big industry on the back of a media boom. There are trends in the media education market that are still crystallising into a pattern – if some trend followers start ‘new media’ courses, some others talk of ejournalism. One would think these are just modes of delivery. It is clear that there is a vast opportunity for expansion. Neither the private enterprise nor the state sector has been able to satisfactorily bridge the huge gap in supply. In a market poised for multi-dimensional growth, there is space for conventional journalism degrees offered by university systems and skills training offered by the private schools.
The upside of the situation is that there is a vast pool of talent that enters laterally from varied backgrounds, learns the conventions of responsible journalism and goes on to enrich the field. Over the years, through the thick and thin of market vicissitudes, one can observe that there are various routes through which one can attain great success in the field of journalism. Some have done it through formal training, some through self-learning and some through in-house training. But the formula for the success in the newsroom appears to be good language skills, better understanding of the social milieu and most importantly, great personal integrity that can distinguish the ethical from the unethical.
References
Eapen, K E. (1991). Journalism education and textbooks in SAARC countries (July 1991) retrieved on 25 October, 2010 from http://www.uta.fi/textbooks/india_saarc.html
Benner, V. S. (1980). DeForest O’Dell. The USGenWeb Project retrieved on 25 October from http://ingenweb.org/inmontgomery/bios/o/odell-deforest.htm
As any wise one will tell you, there are many paths to get there. Be it Nirvana or the newsroom. Often, University-bound academicians assert the importance of journalism schools in making good journalists. One would like to believe, given the necessary sets of abilities, like language skills, commonsense and a healthy curiosity about the world, any one can be trained to be a journalist. And, the training may come from in-house schools, universities, private institutes of higher learning or just self-study. We have all read with great joy famous journalists who have never stepped into a j-school in their life. But then it took us anything between 10 to 20 years to find them shining in the firmament. However, for a profession in a hurry, it is easier if someone endorses/certifies that a given individual is fit for employment as a journalist, a priori.
And this is where the necessity for j-schools arises. The need was discovered as early as the 1950s when first the Hislop Christian College of Nagpur University (Eapen:1991) and later the Department of Journalism in Osmania University were started. Dr Roland Wolseley was associated with Hislop, while Prof DeForest O’Dell (Benner:1980) came to head the journalism department in Osmania, which was started in 1954. Dr O’Dell, who earned his PhD from Columbia University, worked for many newspapers and for Associated Press. He also had a distinguished career as a professor teaching journalism and public relations at several universities in America.
Under Prof O’Dell’s leadership, the Osmania Department began by offering the journalism course to editors and sub-editors of English language papers. The early course structure, curriculum and general orientation were all shaped by the American tradition of journalism education. Later, Prof Govindarajan who earlier worked for The Hindu headed the Department. The department continued to have a blend of faculty experienced in the journalism, advertising and PR industries, individuals with English Literature and creative writing background, and also those who specialised in communication theory and research. Till about the late eighties, Osmania University played a significant role in helping various universities in designing and setting up their media programmes.
By late eighties, according to a survey by Prof K E Eapen (1991), there were some 50 institutions offering journalism courses. The year 1991 also marked economic liberalisation and brought with it the phenomenal media expansion. It was logical that there would be a parallel expansion of j-schools as by then, a large number of media organizations began to look for and recruit graduates from j-schools through regular campus selections.
Till the early nineties, it was the conventional universities with well-conceived and designed courses that were providing recruits for the media industry. Many of those recruits are now in senior positions in their organizations. The expansion in media industry caught everyone unawares, creating a serious supply crunch for a rapidly expanding industry. The nineties saw a sudden spurt and a haphazard expansion of j-schools both in the conventional university systems and the private sector.
Expansion in the university system
In Andhra Pradesh, two new universities with journalism programmes were started in 1983 and 1988. The first one Sri Padmavathi Mahila Viswavidyalayam in Tirupati, exclusively for women and the second, Sri Potti Sriramulu Telugu University in Hyderabad, which is the first university to offer journalism exclusively in a regional language. Makhanlal Chaturvedi Patrakarita University in Bhopal began functioning in 1991 for Hindi journalism. Andhra University started its journalism programme in 1984 and Nagarjuna University in 2003. With the launching of several new universities in Andhra Pradesh, Nalgonda, Telangana and Krishna Universities have launched journalism courses during the mid-2000s.
From the 1990s onwards, there has been both a vertical and a horizontal expansion, with close to 250 universities and colleges offering journalism and mass communication courses.
Before 1990s, most conventional universities were offering broad-based journalism and mass communication courses that would cover a range of subjects like reporting, editing, newspaper management, history, media law and media research. The courses also had a wide variety of structures. Some were two-year postgraduate programmes divided into one-year post-graduate bachelor’s degree (BCJ) and one year post-graduate master’s degree (MCJ). This was the preferred mode as the students after completion of BCJ would go with a degree in journalism and begin working for a media organization. If interested, they would come back to do a masters degree in journalism later. Those who were keen on joining the profession welcomed this flexibility. Some universities began to offer a 2-year MA with a specific focus like TV production. The nomenclature varied from BA, MA, BCJ, MCJ, BJMC, MJMC and so on. The confusion in nomenclature and the need for comparability of courses is forcing several departments to gravitate towards a common 2-year MA in journalism and mass communication.
Another trend over the 2000s has been the vertical expansion of the journalism programmes. Many universities, under pressure to offer ‘job-oriented’ courses began to introduce journalism in under-graduate colleges. This was either as one of the three majors or as an entire programme for journalism. The downward expansion, however, still faces several problems. There is a severe shortage of competent faculty to teach the programmes. If there was criticism about journalism faculty not having professional exposure, these courses are often run by faculty drawn from other social sciences, who have not gone through a formal university-level journalism programme to know the essential strategies for teaching journalism. Apart from faculty shortage, most of the courses also lack basic infrastructure like subscription to a news agency, focussed library, subscription to newspapers and magazines and now TV channels. Such courses are struggling to survive as enrolment begins to rapidly dwindle even in the university systems, as most of these courses are offered under the self-financing schemes.
The upward expansion has been by way of introducing MPhil and PhD programmes. After the passing of the first generation of faculty who pioneered journalism education in India, the emphasis of the academic programmes also began to shift towards communication from just journalism. The communication component of the courses opens up the possibility for those inclined to research to pursue courses like MPhil and PhD. But the universities that have started the research degrees find that the preferred career choice of the graduates after their masters is to join the profession. It is those who cannot for some reason join the profession who opt for the research programmes.
But the horizontal and vertical expansion has also exposed the universities to much criticism as the industry looking for trained personnel finds the system falling short in some way. The earlier focus of the departments on just journalism education catering to a much smaller field of demand was more closely attuned to the industry needs. Today, university systems have not expanded enough to feed the vast markets of varied demands.
The media industries, like all other industries, tend to look for cheap labour. Unlike the legal or medical professions where the education of the graduate is rounded off with on-the-job training with senior colleagues, journalism schools are expected to produce ready-to-use ‘hands’. And unlike the West, the media industry failed to value the liberal education the graduates bring to the job, and therefore, did not bother to build synergies with the j-schools that would have strengthened both the schools and the profession in the long run.
Private Sector
Barring a few exceptions, many private sector training institutions began to offer purely skill-oriented programmes. Several of the media organizations like Eenadu started their own, in-house training facilities. Later entrants into the newspaper and television market also routinely have an in-house training wing that moulds the new recruits into the organization. Some of the establishments like Eenadu select the recruits through a rigorous entrance exam/interview process. But, the concentration of the media houses is really to train a person in journalistic skills. Unlike the university courses which attempt to impart critical thinking about the profession itself by teaching media laws, media economics and industry, media ethics and history, these schools require ‘good hands’ who will deal with basic news production tasks.
Training set-ups that have come up in the private sector like Asian College of Journalism and Symbiosis have acquired a formidable reputation in the market but are prohibitive in their fee structure. Whenever there is a window for expansion of the private sector, there is a parallel buzz in the market that systematically undermines the conventional university systems. The private sector institutions can dictate not just the fee structure, but also which students they can take in. Sometimes the institutes conduct multi-stage, multi-layered entrance process that skims the creamy layer (both intellectually and financially). This is a luxury that the state-run university systems do not have. The universities do not have the flexibility sometimes to design their own entrance exam. Selection of candidates by interview process is virtually impossible in the highly politicised university environment. But a significant plus for the university system is the social profile of the candidates they offer to the market. It is a profile that is more representative of Indian social reality than that offered by the expensive private institutions. For instance, among the trained professionals sent by the state universities to the media industries, there are several who are first generation learners. This is beginning to matter in the regional language media.
Lastly, whether the in-house training facilities of media organizations or the private institutes, there is a technology fetish that they successfully infect the conventional universities with. The measure of good journalism education appears to be largely based on how much ‘media hardware’ the departments can provide. True, in a modern media environment a lot of technology is used. But if the objective of the school is to produce a competent journalist, reporting, writing and editing skills remain fundamental. The need for understanding journalistic ethics and values should be more privileged than the need to be tech-savvy. It is also futile for the schools to struggle to be ahead of the game in a constantly changing, volatile technology scene. No school can perpetually muster such resources.
Conclusion
Journalism and media education has grown into a big industry on the back of a media boom. There are trends in the media education market that are still crystallising into a pattern – if some trend followers start ‘new media’ courses, some others talk of ejournalism. One would think these are just modes of delivery. It is clear that there is a vast opportunity for expansion. Neither the private enterprise nor the state sector has been able to satisfactorily bridge the huge gap in supply. In a market poised for multi-dimensional growth, there is space for conventional journalism degrees offered by university systems and skills training offered by the private schools.
The upside of the situation is that there is a vast pool of talent that enters laterally from varied backgrounds, learns the conventions of responsible journalism and goes on to enrich the field. Over the years, through the thick and thin of market vicissitudes, one can observe that there are various routes through which one can attain great success in the field of journalism. Some have done it through formal training, some through self-learning and some through in-house training. But the formula for the success in the newsroom appears to be good language skills, better understanding of the social milieu and most importantly, great personal integrity that can distinguish the ethical from the unethical.
References
Eapen, K E. (1991). Journalism education and textbooks in SAARC countries (July 1991) retrieved on 25 October, 2010 from http://www.uta.fi/textbooks/india_saarc.html
Benner, V. S. (1980). DeForest O’Dell. The USGenWeb Project retrieved on 25 October from http://ingenweb.org/inmontgomery/bios/o/odell-deforest.htm
Facing the Truth or Facing the Music?
Posted on Mediawhistle site on July 27 2009
Back in 2007 when the now famous/notorious show The Moment of Truth was launched by Fox network in the United States, Mike Darnell, the President of Alternative Programming at FOX is quoted by TV Week as saying, “This is going to be the talk of the town and knocked out of the park. You’re either going to love it, or think it’s the end of Western civilization.” Now we have a clone of The Moment of Truth in the form of Sach Ka Samna. Interestingly, there is an eerie similarity to public response to the show here in India with that of the US audience.
It is indicative of the universality of concerns of ordinary people who subscribe to everyday standards of morality. There appears to be a general consensus that certain sets of social relationships are inherently capable of providing social stability and therefore, desirable. And a show that targets this moral framework is a threat to stability.
What is it about such shows that gets under the skin of people? Firstly, of course, the novelty of the ‘boldness’ and the hard ball ‘honesty’ of the show. Unlike the soaps and serials on television, reality TV genre finds its primary claim to credibility from the fact that it is presenting real people in their real roles – not a constructed visual presentation to represent a fictional story.
Be that as it may, in a show like Sach Ka Samna, it is evident that the process of putting together the show itself has a significant bearing on who gets to be on the show. If it is Kaun Banega Crorepati or Sa Re Ga Ma kind of show, it is the intellectual equipment or talent of the individual that gets them on to the show.
To get to be on Sach Ka Samna, the contestant has to have a colourful personal history (real or fictional). What the ‘ordinary moral viewer’ might consider a deviant and undesirable social profile. That is only a part of the story. The contestant also has to be daring enough to bare all in public for a price with his immediate family bearing witness. The price is large enough for someone to take a shot at it (Assumption: for the right price you can get some people to do ANYTHING). The worst part of the deal is, the lie detector will decide the truth of the matter. In KBC and SRGM the viewer can assess the veracity of the judgement. The structure of SKS therefore also can compel individuals to answer to suit the perceived ratings requirements of the show (anyone who has done social surveys knows how self-reporting works). If they don’t, there is always the lie detector.
Both in The Moment of Truth and in Sach Ka Samna the questions are similar. The focus is on intensely personal issues of money, sex and relationships. With minor variations, the questions probe infidelity, adultery and emotional betrayal. And the lie detector will decide if the participant is speaking the truth.
The severe and swift negative response to the show both in US and in India is from people who believe that the show is attempting to naturalise such deviant behaviour. The viewers whose personal experience of society around them does not indicate such behaviour as widespread enough worry that the television show will project this as the norm rather than as an exception.
One may argue that worse things are being shown on films and soaps. Why such uproar only about SKS? Both soaps and films are understood to be works of fiction and are seen within that framework. The USP of reality shows is that they are ostensibly about real people and real situations. However, the audience is not consciously aware that even a reality show is a function of pre-selection of content (of contestants and what they say) and form. The lingering close ups of the wife when the husband is confessing to cheating on her are not an accident. They borrow heavily from the familiar conventions of dramatic narration on television. It is this aspect of pretended reality done up like drama that is problematic about such shows.
Those who read it like drama leave it at that. Those who read it as reality protest. Ultimately, how real is the reality show?
Back in 2007 when the now famous/notorious show The Moment of Truth was launched by Fox network in the United States, Mike Darnell, the President of Alternative Programming at FOX is quoted by TV Week as saying, “This is going to be the talk of the town and knocked out of the park. You’re either going to love it, or think it’s the end of Western civilization.” Now we have a clone of The Moment of Truth in the form of Sach Ka Samna. Interestingly, there is an eerie similarity to public response to the show here in India with that of the US audience.
It is indicative of the universality of concerns of ordinary people who subscribe to everyday standards of morality. There appears to be a general consensus that certain sets of social relationships are inherently capable of providing social stability and therefore, desirable. And a show that targets this moral framework is a threat to stability.
What is it about such shows that gets under the skin of people? Firstly, of course, the novelty of the ‘boldness’ and the hard ball ‘honesty’ of the show. Unlike the soaps and serials on television, reality TV genre finds its primary claim to credibility from the fact that it is presenting real people in their real roles – not a constructed visual presentation to represent a fictional story.
Be that as it may, in a show like Sach Ka Samna, it is evident that the process of putting together the show itself has a significant bearing on who gets to be on the show. If it is Kaun Banega Crorepati or Sa Re Ga Ma kind of show, it is the intellectual equipment or talent of the individual that gets them on to the show.
To get to be on Sach Ka Samna, the contestant has to have a colourful personal history (real or fictional). What the ‘ordinary moral viewer’ might consider a deviant and undesirable social profile. That is only a part of the story. The contestant also has to be daring enough to bare all in public for a price with his immediate family bearing witness. The price is large enough for someone to take a shot at it (Assumption: for the right price you can get some people to do ANYTHING). The worst part of the deal is, the lie detector will decide the truth of the matter. In KBC and SRGM the viewer can assess the veracity of the judgement. The structure of SKS therefore also can compel individuals to answer to suit the perceived ratings requirements of the show (anyone who has done social surveys knows how self-reporting works). If they don’t, there is always the lie detector.
Both in The Moment of Truth and in Sach Ka Samna the questions are similar. The focus is on intensely personal issues of money, sex and relationships. With minor variations, the questions probe infidelity, adultery and emotional betrayal. And the lie detector will decide if the participant is speaking the truth.
The severe and swift negative response to the show both in US and in India is from people who believe that the show is attempting to naturalise such deviant behaviour. The viewers whose personal experience of society around them does not indicate such behaviour as widespread enough worry that the television show will project this as the norm rather than as an exception.
One may argue that worse things are being shown on films and soaps. Why such uproar only about SKS? Both soaps and films are understood to be works of fiction and are seen within that framework. The USP of reality shows is that they are ostensibly about real people and real situations. However, the audience is not consciously aware that even a reality show is a function of pre-selection of content (of contestants and what they say) and form. The lingering close ups of the wife when the husband is confessing to cheating on her are not an accident. They borrow heavily from the familiar conventions of dramatic narration on television. It is this aspect of pretended reality done up like drama that is problematic about such shows.
Those who read it like drama leave it at that. Those who read it as reality protest. Ultimately, how real is the reality show?
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