But since last year, the whole media field is one that I find utterly repulsive. You must be wondering what happened to make my view change so drastically. It all began with the election time in Tamil Nadu when I first got a glimpse at the ugly side of the media, the side that makes it a very powerful political tool. There were two TV channels, each controlled by the two main competing parties going at each other with full gusto. One was going full steam about offering people free TVs and land if they voted for one party while the other was making equally outrageous promises.
Then there was literally mass buying of people from one side to the other, and when i say buying I literally mean that people were paid huge amounts just to change their stance. I don't know how many millions of rupees exchanged hands during that period, but people sure did change their stance, everyone from respected faces to movie stars. And how they changed, everything from falling prostrate at the feet of their "new" party leader to vilifying their former leaders using the foulest language possible. And all this was highlighted by the media more and more in a bid to woo the votes of the people for themselves.
But the best joke of all was when the final counting of votes was taking place. Both channels were displaying the count of the number of seats won by themselves and the other party together. And shockingly, both channels showed that their party was leading by over 40 seats. Only the supposedly neutral channels showed anything close to reality. Until the very last moment, until the final result was announced, the losing party's channel still showed them as leading by 50 something votes after which they abruptly ended this program and began showing a movie or something and resumed its everyday schedule like the election process never happened. The other channel showed celebrations of a grand magnitude and then it released the fine print in its promises of offering TVs and land to everyone.
While this was last year, more recently, even the neutral news channels seem to exhibit a habit of strongly taking one side or of ignoring a matter completely. Throughout the cricket world cup, news channels were hell bent on analyzing every aspect of the lives and the performances of the Indian team players rather than focusing on important news. News channels also have a tendency to try and outdo each other with each one making "sensational" sting operations and other such claims. This happened to such an extent that the government had to bring about a law to put a stop on such sting operations.
While you would hope that the media would be better outside the country, it isn't. The VT incident was capitalized upon by the various news channels which kept showing the killers face and even the videos over and over again to secure their TV ratings and in the process getting a maniac's last wish fulfilled. Media is also being used as a way to placate the people by making them believe in something that isn't quite true at times.
According to me, the clearest proof of a lack of integrity is when people jump the bandwagon and show their support of it as though they have supported it all their life. This is widely the case with fans of Chelsea FC in the English Premier League. These fans were nowhere to be seen until the Abramovich era. It is a similar situation with the media world. They made several mentions of the fact that Indians are making their country proud when a person of Indian origin became the president of one of the West Indian islands. Everyone now knows about Sunita Williams, the NASA astronaut of Indian origin. The key word here is "Indian origin", because she was born and brought up in the United States to an orphaned Indian father. She is also half Slovenian because of her mother and the only link she has to India is through supposed distant relations of her father in Gujarat.
Despite all these facts that show that she is barely Indian except for her origin, all the media in the country proclaimed that she was doing India proud. There were people supposedly praying for her safe return because of all the glitches on the International Space Station. While this sounds like a very concerned and considerate act, it was actually more an act of garnering media attention. There was not a single mention of the other astronauts scheduled to return with Sunita on Atlantis. There was just the constant repetition of stock video from her time in space and the constant proclamation that she is doing India proud. Upon her safe landing, her distant relations and a bunch of utterly random people in Gujarat even went to the extent of organizing a party and celebrating with fireworks just for their one moment in the media spotlight.
All this left me utterly disgusted with people. If you want to be proud of someone, be proud of the Indians who are risking it all to protect our country's borders, be proud of the people who are helping the country progress. Stop looking for some distant person who barely has any connection to the country just to proclaim that they are doing the country proud. Try to have the integrity to stand for something honest, stop kidding yourself that someone of Indian origin somewhere does something just to make India proud. If everyone was doing this, then England should be proud of America because it is of British origin and somewhere up in heaven there is a humanoid ape that is proud because its descendants are doing well for themselves.
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