HOW FAR THE PRINT AND VISUAL MEDIA ARE TRUE TO THE PEOPLE?

Though the press is said to be the fourth pillar of democracy,  in the recent times it does not seem to be doing justice to the people as expected. While legislature and executive are slanted towards ruling political parties, these two pillars are removed and reerected from time to time by political ideologies and sometimes by even individual preferences, people have left faith in only one pillar, judiciary.

While most of the print media were often bringing  only truth to the people until a few decades ago, atleast some of those have now silently expressed solidarity with their political parties and ignored the truth and justice of what they say. Over and above these some of them have started to express their integrity to those business group by whom they have economic gains.  There are incidences that some of these business houses when committed criminal offences, those left unreported by these media. It has also become a practice that when a criminal offence is committed by a common man all about him including his name, address, father's name etc are put up to the people in most hateful language. When such crime is committed by a politician, neither his name nor even status is made known to the public. Is it fit for the fourth pillar?

The prime task of the media is to report what is happening around us. Many of our media generally do justice to this task, but it get exploded when they define the cause of the happening in their own view. Here is an incident that happened somewhere at sometime. During a general election meeting a political leader was delivering a hot speech. While speaking he vomitted on the stage. We may find here reports of three media on the next day. 1) Mr So and so while delivering the election speech for his candidate at such and such place vomitted on the stage. 2) ............ vomitted on the stage. He was travelling extensively and attending meetings after meetings without taking any food and rest, that made him to vomit (This is the media that supported his party) 3) ...... he vomitted after taking alcoholic drinks continuously (Media supporting his opposition party) When the media report an incident and stops there, it is a news. When it say how and why it happened, it misinterpret the incident according to the preference of the media. This is what happens around us now.

K V George